Exorcising the demons of the fitness suite

It’s February. New Year’s Resolutions are now little more than a month old and I would be confident in betting that a solid 96 per cent of you have not behaved as you’d declared you would do just a short time ago. To the 4 per cent, The Survivors, well done. I hope you are reaping the benefits of being a nicer/thinner person/having done more academic work/having budgeted more efficiently/ the arrival of something that could almost be mistaken for a six pack (or whatever it is you men yearn for) that remains a mystery to me. But all of this has got me thinking: Exercise… it’s a strange concept if I ever heard one.

I can comprehend that sometimes it is genuinely fun – clusters of girls get to enjoy the team spirit that emerges from springing around a netball court, the success of an elusive goal and the naturally implicit social side. And the herds of boys that gallivant around the Tarkett once/twice/thirty times a week get to indulge in small time 5-a-side successes and the chance to ‘hang out’ with other men, without having to make conversation beyond ‘MATE, I’m here!’

A personal favourite is skiing. Nothing comes closer to the feeling of flying and being totally free, adrenaline pumping as you’re swooping down the too-steep mountain side with potential impending death/serious injury (though it never actually happens) and the freeze of the snow versus the concentrated sun beams steadily building your goggle tan line… Oh the things I’d rather be doing right now…

But enough of that, we must skip swiftly on to the gym-obsessed. This I find a little more stretching when trying to get my head around it. No stranger to the gym myself, I understand the reasoning behind it. Girls – we want to be thin. Boys – you want bigger muscles than the other boys. Don’t contest this: we all know this underlies whatever reasons you think you’re going to the gym for – (I know exercise is ‘good for you’ – we all want healthy hearts, to avoid obesity and so on). But the gym is just… weird.

I joined the university gym for the first time this January in some kind of generic New Year’s resolution lifestyle change attempt that has in fact resulted in exhaustion, significantly less time and shin splints (woe is me) and I noticed something bizarre.

The gym reminds me of the kind of scene I would expect should I be abducted by aliens. The treadmill chap-and-chapettes have a strange other-worldly look upon their faces. They look like they’re running for some kind of reason you could never get to the bottom of. Staring straight ahead at TV screens to which most of them can’t hear the sound, a blank look lingers on their faces as if they’re temporarily wiped of all emotion, perhaps a naturally-occurring side effect of extreme determination; the occasional smile creeps in when they have presumably stumbled across a comedic memory in their trance-like state, though it’s gone before you can say QUICK START. And then they’re lost again.

They’re plugged into iPods – it’s as if there’s something hypnotic streaming into their reddening ears that has a poisonous knock-on reddening effect that spreads first to facial invasion, with the chest and arms not far behind. In my home gym, old people and The Obese reign happily and opt for a casual ‘speed’ walk, but the setting on the university treadmills doesn’t seem to fall any lower than around 8km per hour, forcing even the long-legged immediately into a slow jog. But most don’t touch down on anything less than 10km per hour, competitively glancing to the side to ensure they have at least a slight incline more than the fitness freak next door.

The muscle men – the same ones who are there every time you attend the gym without fail – look close to explosion. I genuinely fear for their well-being when they load even more weights than on the previous days. We should probably all run for cover in fear of the impending muscle detonation. They will eventually leave, long after you do, shiny, proud and spilling out of their tops slightly more than the average interestingly-dressed fresher at Top B.

So if you’re reading this with horrendous guilt that emerges from your failed New Year’s Resolution, delight in the knowledge that for now at least, you are not a part of these strange goings-ons in the Running Bear Fitness Suite.