Pink!
Silver Member
Walking into the gym for the first time you’re bombarded with the sound of the clunking, hissing and thumping of various machinery as it’s being powered by a vast array of freakishly healthy people and the odd fellow fatty or pensioner. Of course, there’s music in the background, songs that are barely discernable over the racket to begin with, but add the furious pounding of your own heart and your poorly disguised ragged breaths as you sweat it out on a treadmill or cross trainer and it’s barely worth mentioning. Of course, all of the fitness freaks have headphones plugged in and iPods strapped to their arms; they know better than to trust the gym to provide the soundtrack to their work out.
Now really, it’s not nearly as intimidating as it seems to be from my first description. Yes, the first time you walk up to the desk and ask the slim blonde or buff brunette about a membership it is a little daunting, but they’re paid to be nice to customers, whether they’re tiny little slips of things dressed in the smallest swatches of lycra, or a podgy student hoping to look a bit better by the beginning of a new term.
Right, you’ve paid a ridiculous amount of money for a membership, trackies, a t-shirt and pair of shiny new trainers boasting some sort of genius new sole that will either make you feel as though you’re walking on air or will make your bum as neat and round as Felicity Kendal’s in her dungarees. Now it’s time to actually work out. You’ve learnt how to use the machines; you vaguely remember what buttons to press to get the whole thing going; where to start? The rowing machines seem a safe bet, no where nearly as scary as the weights or treadmills. You sit down, strap your feet in, just in case you lose so much weight whilst you’re exercising that you float away (yeh right), push the requisite buttons, slide the weight dial to a suitable number, grab the horizontal bar and, well, it’s time to start pulling. Five minutes in you think you may die; pass out from dehydration due to the vast amount of sweat you’re losing, fall off the seat and die in a less than elegant pose thanks to the fact that your feet are still attached to the machine. Ten minutes in you feel amazing, as though you could do a hundred years of this exercise malarkey and never feel the strain. Fifteen minutes in you lie somewhere between the two, suitably knackered, but on the right side of death, for now anyway.
You’re sweating and taking a break, a plastic cup of water in hand (of course the fitness freaks have their own fancy ergonomically shaped bottles to sip from as they glow serenely whilst running faster than you’re sure is possible). Glancing briefly around the room you try to decide what to tackle next, you’ve heard that the cross trainer kills calories dead as effectively as a semi-automatic rifle in a Texas high school, to that then. Once again having pushed a myriad of buttons the screen flashes at you encouragingly; it’s a cross between cycling and running, with your arms moving in tandem with your feet, hands sticky on the heart rate monitors built into the handles. After literally three minutes you’re back to greeting death, why do people put themselves through this? After seven minutes you can’t feel your legs and your brain is floating in a fuzzy space where the sweat collecting in every niche of your body seems unreal. At ten minutes you decide it’s time to stop, you’ve done very well for your first ever time at the gym and you’ll do better tomorrow.
You wobble to the exit, stumble down the two sets of stairs on imaginary legs (the stairs themselves being some sort of Darwinian plot to keep the weaklings from ever even entering the gym, God knows how you got in then) and stagger to the car. Well, that went far better than expected, no one openly pointed and laughed, you weren’t nearly as dire as you thought that you’d be; you’ll be back tomorrow you decide, make that membership fee worth it.
Of course in two weeks time you’ll be going to the gym wielding headphones and a water bottle; probably not in lycra just yet, but maybe one day. It gets easier day after day and you wonder how you could have possibly ever been afraid to go to the gym when now it seems like such a normal thing to do, almost essential really. The endorphins salsa through your blood stream making you grin and charge towards your day with shield and sword, or at least a P.D.A and a mobile. The clunking and hissing and thumping of various machinery is a soothing soundtrack to your mornings, at least until you plug your headphones in.
***
This is a new style of writing I'm trying out. It has been read through and edited a couple of times, but if you see anything that snags or you feel should be changed please let me know! I'm doing an English degree and I crave criticism in the hope of self-improvement.
x
Now really, it’s not nearly as intimidating as it seems to be from my first description. Yes, the first time you walk up to the desk and ask the slim blonde or buff brunette about a membership it is a little daunting, but they’re paid to be nice to customers, whether they’re tiny little slips of things dressed in the smallest swatches of lycra, or a podgy student hoping to look a bit better by the beginning of a new term.
Right, you’ve paid a ridiculous amount of money for a membership, trackies, a t-shirt and pair of shiny new trainers boasting some sort of genius new sole that will either make you feel as though you’re walking on air or will make your bum as neat and round as Felicity Kendal’s in her dungarees. Now it’s time to actually work out. You’ve learnt how to use the machines; you vaguely remember what buttons to press to get the whole thing going; where to start? The rowing machines seem a safe bet, no where nearly as scary as the weights or treadmills. You sit down, strap your feet in, just in case you lose so much weight whilst you’re exercising that you float away (yeh right), push the requisite buttons, slide the weight dial to a suitable number, grab the horizontal bar and, well, it’s time to start pulling. Five minutes in you think you may die; pass out from dehydration due to the vast amount of sweat you’re losing, fall off the seat and die in a less than elegant pose thanks to the fact that your feet are still attached to the machine. Ten minutes in you feel amazing, as though you could do a hundred years of this exercise malarkey and never feel the strain. Fifteen minutes in you lie somewhere between the two, suitably knackered, but on the right side of death, for now anyway.
You’re sweating and taking a break, a plastic cup of water in hand (of course the fitness freaks have their own fancy ergonomically shaped bottles to sip from as they glow serenely whilst running faster than you’re sure is possible). Glancing briefly around the room you try to decide what to tackle next, you’ve heard that the cross trainer kills calories dead as effectively as a semi-automatic rifle in a Texas high school, to that then. Once again having pushed a myriad of buttons the screen flashes at you encouragingly; it’s a cross between cycling and running, with your arms moving in tandem with your feet, hands sticky on the heart rate monitors built into the handles. After literally three minutes you’re back to greeting death, why do people put themselves through this? After seven minutes you can’t feel your legs and your brain is floating in a fuzzy space where the sweat collecting in every niche of your body seems unreal. At ten minutes you decide it’s time to stop, you’ve done very well for your first ever time at the gym and you’ll do better tomorrow.
You wobble to the exit, stumble down the two sets of stairs on imaginary legs (the stairs themselves being some sort of Darwinian plot to keep the weaklings from ever even entering the gym, God knows how you got in then) and stagger to the car. Well, that went far better than expected, no one openly pointed and laughed, you weren’t nearly as dire as you thought that you’d be; you’ll be back tomorrow you decide, make that membership fee worth it.
Of course in two weeks time you’ll be going to the gym wielding headphones and a water bottle; probably not in lycra just yet, but maybe one day. It gets easier day after day and you wonder how you could have possibly ever been afraid to go to the gym when now it seems like such a normal thing to do, almost essential really. The endorphins salsa through your blood stream making you grin and charge towards your day with shield and sword, or at least a P.D.A and a mobile. The clunking and hissing and thumping of various machinery is a soothing soundtrack to your mornings, at least until you plug your headphones in.
***
This is a new style of writing I'm trying out. It has been read through and edited a couple of times, but if you see anything that snags or you feel should be changed please let me know! I'm doing an English degree and I crave criticism in the hope of self-improvement.
x
