by Vani Viswanathan
I’m covered in sweat, and I’m taking long breaths.
“Aaarrrnnnhhhh!”
I wipe my face on my sleeve.
This guy just lifted 115 kilograms, working out his rear deltoid. Another ‘aaarrnnhh’ later, he gets up and nods at me. He’s done with his ‘set’, and I can go now, and he’ll wait till I’m done with my set. I go and change the weight to 11kgs, giving him a sheepish smile. This guy just lifted weight more than twice what I weigh. I’m going to manage maybe what my 1-year-old niece weighs.
I’ve been working out for two months now, and this is my story from my gym. Not all about me, but also some about the many fascinating people I meet there.
The first thing everyone asks when I say I go to the gym, is “For what?!” Then follows a string of you’re-slim-good-metabolism-if-I-had-a-figure-like-you type of statements. I’m just trying to be modest here, but most of it is true – for the amount that I eat, I am blessed with good metabolism, and so far, I haven’t swung much to the chubby side. And thankfully, now that I’m in my late 20s, the baby fat – what I think my chubby cheeks were due to – has finally started reducing. But the gym workout is the result of months of a psychological battle with my husband who, being a marathon runner and sports enthusiast, seemingly couldn’t digest how I couldn’t care less about fitness. And well, after months of half-hearted online searching for a good pool near where I live, so I could put to use the only exercise I care about, I wanted to try the gym.
Before I joined here, I’d only been to a gym twice. Once in Chennai in my beautiful apartment complex where the only machines I could identify were the treadmill and the cycle, and another time in Mumbai in my college, when my awareness about gym equipment had grown to include the cross trainer, dumbbells and the twister. The first time I didn’t work out, I had accidentally gone into the gym on my way to the ‘games’ room. The second time I tried the cycle and the cross trainer for a grand total of 20 minutes and came back and decided jogging was much better.
So you could say that joining the gym here and signing up by paying for three months was a significant step forward. And in this short span of two months, my respect for male film stars with six pack abs and female stars with flat tummies has gone up manifold. I will never, ever, think they are doing anything frivolous again. And after a long time, the gym has given me fodder to make up stories. New things to take note of, a whole new planet of people to observe and try to understand.
For instance, there’s the person I call the little man. He looks young enough to be a college student. He’s in the gym pretty much every time I go. 6.30 in the evening? He’s there. 7.45pm? Yup. When I leave at 8.15pm? You bet. Heck, he’s even in on Saturday mornings when I go early. He knows everyone there, and he’s one of the ‘aarrnnhhh’ers. Every time I see him, adding those extra kilos to whatever he’s lifting or pulling, or increasing the speed on the treadmill till he’s making a racket running on them like a sprinter, I wonder why he does this. Why is the fitness regime is so important that he’s there day in and day out, spending a good couple of hours everyday? Is he trying to impress someone? Maybe he wants to look older and more mature, and be taken seriously? Ah, maybe he’s a sportsperson and needs to stay fit to play whatever it is! Every few minutes, in between my workouts, I try to see what little man is up to.
Speaking of interesting, I cannot forget the new lady I’ve seen around. A little on the older side, long hair dyed orange-brown, with a fringe. Wrinkles on the face, but a proud I-don’t-give-a-damn-er. Not to be ageist or anything, but she turns up in the gym with clothes I wouldn’t ever consider, only because I wonder how easy it is to work out in those. Say, a mini skirt. Anyhow, to each her own. She works out in her own state of zen. Eyes closed, she freely lets her arms fly about as she lifts those 1-kg weights. She pauses after each set for a good couple of minutes. Sitting on the pectoral fly, she rests her chin on the seat with her eyes closed (and one day I embarrassedly tapped on her shoulder to ask if she was done and I could use the machine). She also tosses her long hair about every now and then, and spends a good few seconds scanning the room with her large eyes. Interesting, I think every time I see her.
There are the typical loud show-offy boys, and girls who work out with their beautiful long tresses undone and in halter neck tops (I don’t even…). There are sweaty boys who forget to clean the seats after they’re done and kick-ass girls who run on the treadmill full-speed for half an hour non-stop. All around, there are people who are pushing the limits everyday, making friends, and gaining confidence.
What do I do, you ask? Well, I’ve progressed. From the days when 1-kg weights made my arms ache, through to when lifting a 5kg dumbbell meant I had to do a little jig with my left arm, I’ve now come to the stage where I can lift a 5-er with relative ease, and the 2.5kg has become a pfft-er-‘bhaiyya-yeh-bahut-halka-hai’ weight. I look at the rows of ceiling lights and scan them one by one instead of counting down to 50, so that the number doesn’t seem far away. Doing the leg extension – or where you lift weights from near your ankles while a horrible weight presses just above your knees – I quickly finish each set with a swear word accompanying each count: “10, holy, 11, s#!t, 12, f*&$, 13, f$!k, 14… 15… f,f, f” – set done!). I have been progressively fighting my battles and can’t help a proud grin when I can do some exercise with relative ease, or my husband makes note of tiny changes in strength. My biggest battle left is the damned chest press. I ashamedly can’t move the handle more than an inch – all strength, any little practice, just vanishes that moment.
But as they say, if it were this easy, it would mean nothing. I just have to look at that little man for inspiration or the skinny girl who lifts the 5kg dumbbell with ease, to know I’d get there too. If I just stick to it, and push myself (or something) up or down, one ceiling light at a time, one swear word at a time.
Vani Viswanathan is often lost in her world of books and A R Rahman, churning out lines in her head or humming a song. Her world is one of frivolity, optimism, quietude and general chilled-ness, where there is always place for outbursts of laughter, bouts of silence, chocolate, ice cream and lots of books and endless iTunes playlists from all over the world. She is now a CSR communications consultant, and has been blogging at http://chennaigalwrites.blogspot.com since 2005.
Pic by https://www.flickr.com/photos/v1ctor/
