The new gym.

The unfamiliar habitat of the urban gym-goer.

I recently signed up to a new gym. It has been a while since I actually did any gym training and boy, have things changed.

So many observations, so many differences from my old gym of twenty-five years ago.

I joined this one because I was eager to cut a deal and get my hands on some serious training equipment and start a new structured regime.

I did a lot of shopping around and everything was just stupidly overpriced, with their ‘admin fees’, ‘monthly subscription’, way over the top rip-off charges, etc. But this one offered me concessions (based on my age - sadly) and ‘off-peak’ reduction, which suited me just fine.

I have always been sceptical about the health industry. My Welsh grandma used to say, ‘Colemans Mustard became millionaires by what people leave on the side of their plate’, and so it is with the fitness industry. They make their money out of the false-promises people make to themselves. New year’s resolutions fizzle out really quickly and the gym businesses rake in the money of unused subscriptions.

The new gym.

This was a council-run facility, newly kitted-out with lots of space, tucked onto the side of a very new athletics stadium.

The ’induction’ was hilarious. I think the young guy responsible (he looked about twelve) had made a whole bunch of assumptions about what I might be looking for. When he asked me what I was wanting, I mentioned that I was needing to tax my body ‘at a cellular level’. It took him a while to figure that out, but once he made the mind-shift, he got all excited and his vocabulary became much more specialised – good, we were now on the same page.

In the months I have been going there, often twice or even three times a week, I have noticed some things that have left me puzzled, bemused, baffled and bewildered.

Social animals.

First of all; nobody talks to anybody, or gives eye-contact. It’s a bit like being on a London Underground train; British reserve remains intact. The up-side of this is that you stay in your own headspace and are able to just get on with it. (So many of them wear headphones, which discourages any form of social interaction and drowns out the mindless techno music that is pumped through the ambient speakers).

When there are supervising staff present, also, they don’t communicate, except for maybe a polite ‘hello’ or ‘goodbye’. It’s very odd; I wonder, is this the norm?

The clientele are also interesting - I find myself something of a flaneur in this environment – I am an incorrigible people-watcher.

There are the ‘walking wounded’; older people, who have either got to the point of ‘I must do something about my ageing crumbling body’ or, ‘My doctor says I must do something about my ageing crumbling body’. I am not going to criticise them, at least they are being proactive, or is it reactive?

Also, the younger guys are working to achieve… something.

On days when it’s mostly younger guys I can pretty much guarantee that there will not be a queue for the leg equipment. Instead, they are pumping biceps with concentration curls, or straining at the cables on triceps push-downs, and their technique is dreadful.

I said to one of the staff. ‘don’t you get times when you want to intervene?’, he raised his eyebrows in a knowing way and replied, ‘yes but they don’t listen, even if it’s on health and safety grounds’.

As you can see, I was intrigued by the motivation of the clientele. Etched across their faces was a kind of stoic earnestness, as they clutched their water bottles.

I found myself following suit; resting between sets, my gaze drifting off into space, purposefully not watching my fellow gym-goers, but you can’t help but observe people, the same way you do on public transport (unless you want to hide yourself and become totally anonymous by staring into your phone).

Weird training routines.

One young girl was going through the most bizarre set of exercises, mostly based on hooking her legs up to cables; she pronated and supinated her hips and agonised over controlled sets that just baffled me.

The amateur physiologist in me was trying to figure out her objectives; was she a speed skater whose coach had given her a very specific workout? (Speed skaters tend to have hugely developed thigh muscles, but this girl didn’t fit the pattern), perhaps something to do with equestrian sport?

It only became obvious, once the supervisor had quietly explained. According to him (and this might have been speculation on his part), she was working to achieve a Kim Kardashian butt.

The world is indeed a very strange place.

And then there is the previously mentioned music… the pumped-up version of ‘music for lifts’, supposed to be subconsciously motivational. Was it preferable to silence? Perhaps.

Treadmill runners.

The next oddity I am going to share with you is to do with the running machines, the treadmills. A bank of expensive hi-tech gizmos, all lined up to face the windows which overlook the stadium. So close that if the window was open and you were so-inclined you could lob a training shoe on to the track. Beautiful, new running track, open air, nobody on it, available for anyone to use, and yet cooped up inside are the treadmill runners…. WHY??

One guy in particular was pounding away on the running machine at a furious pace. He was whip-thin, looked like Mo Farah. After he’d been on there for maybe 30 minutes flat out, he stopped to chat with one of the supervisors. I overheard him saying that he was a competitive runner from Nigeria. I couldn’t help wondering what his aversion was to open air and the professional track?

I get it, it’s not a social club; it’s not a place to make new friends, it’s as impersonal as a dentist’s waiting room. Any idea that it is a community is quickly dispelled. It’s an ideal place if you are freaked out by crowds or just a total misanthrope. What was it that John Paul Sartre is supposed to have said (but never did)? “Hell is other people”. If you are self-absorbed and don’t like your fellow human beings, this is the place to hang out.

As for me; I will continue to slowly and incrementally work through my ‘carefully crafted’ routine, and, if I am in the right frame of mind indulge in the mild form of voyeurism that stays the right side of line and away from just being creepy.

I think of myself as a kind of David Attenborough, observing creatures in their natural environment, with their rituals, hard-wired habits and peculiarities - fascinating.

Humans, in all their shapes, sizes and ages, are indeed strange life-forms.