Working up a sweat

So I am now a member of a new gym. Whilst my old gym served a purpose, namely that it was cheap and close to where I lived, it really wasn’t a particularly pleasant place. Dark and dingy and cramped with limited equipment and a man who used to shout at you if you talked.


When my gym friend and I heard that there was a new fancier gym which could be ours for the taking for the same price as our rubbish gym we decided to go for it immediately.

It’s rather beautiful. Lots of treadmills (instead of the two you would have to fight for at the old place) and bikes and cross trainers and machines we’d never even seen before. And the weights machines? Oh the weights machines –weights machines for biceps and triceps and forceps (no?), hell there’s even a machine for your bum. Amazing.

And the best thing? You can escape from the horrible grunty groany men who like to parade in front of the mirrors and grimace and gurn while they lift ridiculous weights and surreptitiously check each other out. They have their own section of the gym, tucked away from everyone else. Go and be grunty elsewhere horrid boys. It’s even lit less well than the rest of the gym, you seriously can ignore them, it’s brilliant.

There’s a huge area to do your free weights or do your sit-ups (or if you’re me, do 20 sit-ups and then spend the rest of the time crying and clutching my stomach, why are my abs so ridiculously useless?!).

All that would be great and would be more than enough but it gets better. There are classes. Included in the monthly price. Classes?! Classes?! Could life get any sweeter? I want to try out everything, immediately, especially the Zumba classes. I have been banging on about Zumba for a very long time, ever since I couldn’t sleep and watched infomercials which must have brainwashed me in the early hours of the morning. I just need to find a time to go.

Gym friend and I signed up for just whatever we could find that was available – Pump. (I cannot say this with a straight face. It’s just impossible.)

We had no idea what it was and as the day approached I started to get a little panicky. I’ve never done an exercise class before and was wondering what we’d let ourselves in for. Turns out we couldn’t have picked a better class to start – Pump isn’t an aerobic class but is a kind of free-weight toning class you do lots of repetitive lifting to music and exercise different parts of your arms, shoulders, chest, legs and abs. We worked away and by the end I was feeling pretty knackered but more or less ok.

(Although I should tell you it was a concerted effort to keep my umbrella above my head as my arms were feeling a little disassociated from my body.)

Although it was great, I kind of like to really feel like I’ve done something. I need to feel gross and sweaty and ashamed to be seen in public after I’ve done a workout so I’m on the lookout for something a little more exerting and I’m thinking I might give spinning a go, the problem is finding a time when I can fit the class in, I’m not really one for arranging my life around the gym, it’s going to have to find a way to fit in around me I’m afraid.

But all of this for £20 a month makes me a happy girl.