Gym regime all washed up
By
Sheryl-Lee Kerr
IT'S a well-known fact that the post-festive season causes strange
side effects to one's washing. The washing machine, by January, will often
mysteriously shrink absolutely everything you own. Most oddly, even things
you didn't wash. Spooky, eh?
There may be a very remote, distantly outside chance that this
phenomenon could also be linked to one's Christmas pudding-powered diet of
the previous month. Although I'd dismiss this as about as likely as a
shaggy-haired TV wrestler with the IQ of a gnat being elected to the United
States Senate. Oh ... Right.
Anyway, it would seem I have been no exception in succumbing to this
curious clothes-shrinking phenomenon. This has meant two things: one, that
washing machine has gotta go. And two, it's back to the gym for me.
One of the downsides of returning to gym after an absence of many
festive weeks is that not only doesn't your body forget, it doesn't forgive
either. It will make you suffer more the second time around, because you
have the cruel, added memories of how fit you used to be.
Visions of being able to benchpress or hammercurl the equivalent of two Jesse Venturas in the “good old days” - while not even close to accurate reflections - will still haunt your mind. (And if that image doesn't haunt, it should.)
My own reappearance at gym was greeted with a somewhat cynical
smattering of applause. I think it was more shock on their part that I had
squeezed into my track pants at all. It was a close call at that.
Undaunted, I set off with gym trainer Sharni on a fast walk/would-be
jog. About eight minutes later, I was emitting loud, throaty phlegmy rattles and had fallen behind, and Sharni was 300m up the road obliviously chatting away to a complete stranger (who was starting to look at her weird).
Sharni ambled back to fetch me and affixed stern thumb to my earlobe
to drag me along behind her for the rest of the hour. So endeth my first gym session.
The second session was even less promising. Because not only did I
have to do things that hurt but I was using body parts I had pre-hurt during the first session. This did not seem at all fair - a point I felt a need to reiterate regularly.
Sharni exercised the Selective Hearing Option (utilised by all good married men and gym trainers), and cheerily said: “Good, just so long as you're having fun.” So endeth my second session.
My third session, in what I hope will become a new benchmark for me,
found me fast asleep on the floor mat by the time Sharni had finished her
instructions. Existence can be so wearying.
Which brings me to my fourth session. I'd rather not say how it ended except to stress it wasn't entirely my fault and I am certain the other client’s hair will grow back. Well, fairly certain.
I think I liked life better when I could just blame the state of my
thighs on the washing machine.
© The Advertiser & Sheryl-Lee Kerr, 18 JAN 2000.