El Jefe goes to the gym...
It's that time of year when you may be thinking about dusting down your membership and getting back on that painful horse they call the gym. El Jefe puts aside the Malborough lights in his bid to get back into shape...
It’s New Year, and for many that means renewing that gym membership you never use. Having your last Marlborough/Montecristo/plug of chewing baccy and making outlandish promises of forthcoming virtues to anyone that will listen, when you are a few too many sheets to the wind. With a heart heavy with cholesterol and a lung full of tar I have already ventured to the gym this year. I’d been haemorrhaging money into the place for so long, I felt obligated to make an appearance.
The most exhilarating experience of going to the gym is leaving, and relief and contentment wash over me as I slam the door behind me.
Sharp stabbing pains, of what I’m sure was apprehension, shot up my left arm and chest as I gripped the Tooting fitness centre door handle (these symptoms along with the fainting, sweating, nausea and shortness of breath may require further investigation at a later date). As you enter this hellish place of pain and machines, the smug staff scan your ID card so that they can greet their customers with the over-familiarity of your first name drawn from their databases. My card goes by the handle “OBI WAN”, which really never gets boring, though this year I have resolved to cut down on the Star Wars lines and cease telling my personal trainer (in my best Alec Guiness), “what ever you do to me, I will only grow stronger”. I always feel a tad uncomfortable when I struggle into my green flash trainers and baggiest sports clothes. This could be the fact that the changing rooms are crammed with the local Gym Gorillas who are constantly preening and flexing their muscles in the full length mirrors whilst comparing banana hammocks and dreaming up different ways of growing their necks thicker than their heads.
Full of determination, resolve, paracetemol and Dr Pepper I braved the gym. The “training” floor itself brings a breath of fresh, although maybe a little musky, air. I hardly have time for my customary ogling of the jiggling flesh in the Ladies step aerobics class when Saul, my personal harbinger of suffering, drags me away from the fast fogging glass. A rigorous four minutes follows, this usually involves customary whimpering, questioning Saul’s parentage and sexual practices in farms before I am violently sick on the latest abdominal muscle finding, high-tech equipment (usually caused by too much stretching). I dismiss Saul and his impudent grin. Pride in tatters, I resort to a vain attempt to sculpt my 50 calibre guns in front of the mirror and any hottie nearby who cares to watch (this would probably prove more of a fruitful exercise if I wasn’t struggling with the ladies pink, Pilates dumbbells). Aware that no one is looking at my Arnold sized muscles. I conclude that “this is rubbish”. I trudge home with the aim of bulking up my ample physique with Mars bars. The most exhilarating experience of going to the gym is leaving, and relief and contentment wash over me as I slam the door behind me. Exercise really is a little pointless, the hours spent at the gym will not be added on to the end of your life so Mr. Motivator be damned! - El Jefe
