GYM CLASS ZERO

I MUST confess that I have never been a big fan of my body. Let's just say if the Greeks looked at the body as a temple, I look at it more like an utilitarian warehouse - as long as the stuff inside is safe, who gives a damn about the aesthetics! You might think talking this much about sport might have driven me towards being physically fit, but the armchair enthusiasm seems to remain confined to the chair itself. As a result I am technically still eligible to be boxer in the flyweight category. Anyway, recent health concerns finally made me pay attention and realize the dire need for a visit to one of those vanishing island of fitness and health in an
increasingly sedentary world - the gym. Somehow (even I find it difficult to comprehend how!) I have managed to stick around for a month, and actually plan to stick around for longer. The workout is a nice way to relieve stress, and I wouldn't terribly mind not jumping up to a higher boxing weight category. Actually, in all likelihood, I am not jumping categories anytime soon because I have realized one disconcerting truth in the month I have spent there - I suck at gymming! Yes, I am so terrible, I might make the trainer's dog look better if the canine ever showed up for a workout.

Now, now, before you blame my physical shortcomings, let me clarify that I am not exactly unfit; just that my mind wanders whenever I get down to excercising. And a crushing experience in my first gym about 4 years back didn't help either. In the third week, I was supposed to be doing some heavy lifting with the bar bell. The trainer put the bar on its groove above the bench and asked me to lift. Having seen the entire 'Rocky' franchise, I was disappointed that there were no cool loking weights fitted on the bar - it was just the bar alone. I asked the trainer, 'no weights to be put on?' He calmly smiled, 'Let's do the first set with the bar'. The rest is painful personal history. I almost got crushed under the bar's weight (the trainer came to my timely aid, thank heavens) and I never went to a gym again...until early in September this year, that is! This time, I'd decided it would be different and there shall be no 'I-am-so-pathetic-I-can't-even-lift-a-bar-on-its-own' tales to tell (or hide). But the routines kept distratcting me. While doing dumb bell curls, I'd think less about the pressure on my biceps and more about the physics of the equipment. (In my earlier gym, while doing a set of excercises with the dumb bell, my trainer asked 'do you feel the pressure on your triceps?' In all honesty i shot back, 'remind me where the triceps are again!') I am so fascinated by the structure and engineering of the gym equipment, so elegant yet so brillaintly flexible, that the workout feels like a lesson in understanding pulleys and levers and how they direct force and momentum! Sometimes, when I can't seem to go on with the count on say a bench press I try to think myself as Indiana Jones who has to exert all pressure to keep that treasure cave door from closing and failure is not an option. In most those imaginary scenarios Indy gets his foot or hand crushed and the treasure locks itself.

But despite all the pain and the cheating on counts while doing repititions or thoughts that hell must an endless repitition of weight excercises, I am hooked on to the experience. Perhaps, my beginner's spirit(something I mentioned about in an earlier blog) keeps me going. Perhaps the cries of 'Push!' from the trainer have an effect. (I must say, the gym does sound like a maternity ward sometimes, with so many cries of 'Push!Push!' going around!) Or quite simply, there's a little part of me that still believes that I can be Rocky Balboa and fight in the heavyweight category one day. Hey, trainer guy, would you mind putting on 'Eye of the Tiger' on the gym music system right now? :)

P.S. I heartily recommend everyone to weave a workout in their daily schedule; it just too refreshing to miss out on!