If you are an earlier reader of this blog, then you know I mentioned how I had about 17 visits to the gym to get in before the end of March, that is if I don’t want to have my gym membership be ‘counted as a loss’. We’re talking purely on financial basis alone here. Fitness has nothing to do with my current gym attendance.
Positively, what I’ve already taken away from my total 8 sessions at the gym will more than satisfy other objectives in my mind beyond the marketed aspirations that one usually anticipates when they sign up for their membership. I think when I reached 8, I realised the situation was going to be a win win whether I complete those remaining 9 sessions or not.
I am writing this on March 23rd and it will become March 24th in 15 minutes. So, there may only be 8 days left for me to complete my 9 sessions – but the financial incentive would be satisfied with me doing two different activities within the establishment once I am there. Such as my treadmill session and then a Zumba class, for example. So, it is still possible. Also, some real gym bunnies may go twice in a….nah let’s just stop that right there, a waste of sentence for me to even entertain.
Let me walk you through my journey over these 8 sessions I’ve completed at the gym during these last months. You didn’t catch that? Months, yes, months. Oh, how many months you asked? Look! What’s that over there? Cough *6* cough. Moving on.
Firstly, my reticence to going to the gym is 80% equipping oneself and getting there. I originally signed up because I like walking, but I live in a very traffic dense area and even the walk over to the park we have in our town involves centering myself in a ‘rat run’ that inevitably takes some of the relaxation away that I just tried to incur on the walk. Admitting an unsatisfied defeat at my attempts to enjoy walking in the local area, I accepted that if I’m going to walk in traffic to get to a relatively busy park that I can lap around quickly, why not get the whole shebang and go to the gym where I can have my own little designated walking space on a treadmill, where I can walk interrupted by cars for some time. So, walking was my only real interest in the gym in the first place which is quite minimal motivation considering walking on a treadmill vs the kind of nature walks I was craving are pretty incomparable.
Equipment wise, getting proper trainers was the next obstacle. Don’t ask why but I overcomplicate seemingly simple things (to others, we are all different and unique) in my brain (cerebellum stuff, remember) and shoes are up there on ‘most complicated’ of purchases I can make. I so put off finding appropriate footwear that on two separate occasions when I was abroad last year, my first task was to go to a trainer store. On neither occasion did it pan out and I recongnise the absurdity of having only one day in Chicago and Marseille and on both occasions penciling in on my plan for exploring these great cities “find and go to the asics store”. I survived both trips without the shoes just fine. My husband took over my endless deliberation over what ‘stepometer’ I was to get – have you ever read reviews for these things? Or anything for that matter? If you read reviews you cannot make decisions, you will just be more confused – and gifted me a good enough fitbit in November, about 4 months after I decided I wanted to track my walks. It turns out, I actually do quite well with all of these incentivised apping and mapping stuff. It’s a way of breaking things down for me into steps when my brain tends to stay zoomed out on an ariel picture of a different planet.
It was way better then I expected, and I enjoy making it happy with me. When you hit 10k steps it gives you a little firework display on your wrist. I did find myself justifying my taking it off the other day to my husband though, telling him I just wanted it to leave me alone for a bit, and I wished I could pause the app to tell it I’m not ‘doing nothing’ I just don’t want it knowing what I’m doing, and how long or little I’ve slept for a few days – it’s okay for us to have space from each other sometimes. It’s been good for teaching me that the little things you do, do count, and also when you don’t do those little things it’s easy to look like you have died to your fitbit. Why didn’t you get any steps today? Are you okay? Are you collapsed on your floor? (No, just the sofa). When it’s really advanced it will probably send someone to check on me on these inactive days, and in an even more frightening thought of the future I’m possibly helping endorse a device where you can’t even take the thing off your wrist, by my embracing of such personalized surveillance. Argh! For now, it seems harmless enough and it’s mostly on par with like, a Furby or a Tamagotchi, except I’m the thing it’s meant to be looking after.
Hitting it off with my fitbit has overall been a good thing. But, it just reminded me further that I don’t really need to go the gym to get my heartrate up. I do that just fine dancing like a lunatic at home, in a way I couldn’t possibly do in public without the risk of sectioning. That’s basically been an adequate exercise regime for me for the last few months. I get aerobic workouts just by putting music on at home, with measurable improvements on my resting heart rate. But, I said I was going to try the gym, and I did want to do the incline walking as that isn’t something I can replicate without the treadmill, so I still didn’t cancel my membership.
Come January, in those first few days of the New Year, I decide to enhance my embodiment of the perfect statistic status for the managers at the gym, by not only being the person you can count on to not attend, but also the person who gets in there only few sessions of the year in the first week of January. As I suggest to my husband that we go along together (he uses his membership already and does not need my encouragement but nonetheless humored me when I invited his accompaniment) I then start to back out as I still don’t have the appropriate shoes.
At this stage I have one pair of trainers, and they are not the ‘gym’ kind. My mother in law gifted me the fanciest pair I’ve ever had. White leather, no logo, a beautiful turquoise and orange stripe. They are like dress shoe trainers. I thought I was going to look after them so well, but of course my endless resistance to buying shoes, they became worn for absolutely everything and I kind of spoiled them ☹ but they’ve been very much enjoyed. Did you ever see some brands rightfully get criticized for being completely gross and making ‘poverty’ shoes and clothing, where they charge like 500 pounds for something to look like it’s been worn for fifteen years? I kind of look like the asshole who went and purchased something like that, beautiful shoes that can’t be that old yet somehow falling apart.
This reminds me of when I was a more regular gym goer and used to go for the classes (so long ago it is practically another life as don’t our whole bodies turn over every 7 years or something, so it literally wasn’t me?) and I turned up to body pump in ballet flats, forgetting my appropriate shoes and decided not to stay as I just would have been sliding all over the place…I digress. I went to the gym, in my falling apart dress shoe trainers, remember that no one cares – most of all me – and put on a nice ‘Buddha at the Gas Pump’ podcast whilst I go on my walk. We get hot chocolate on the way back and keep up that memento for 3 days. The day my husband can’t go, well, it’s just more fun for me to dance alone at home again, isn’t it?
I don’t really think about it again until I come to cancel the membership and yet again realise how wasteful I’ve been in not cancelling it earlier and decide I can reconcile this if I commence with my 17 visits in one month. It becomes some kind of oddly punitive operation. Why am I going? To learn the consequences of my actions. You take out a gym membership, you will attend. I then start mentally rebelling against my own ludicrousness. I’m aware I’m only attending because of some mental gymnastics, and I have zero interest in working out there, I feel my workouts are more effective at home, so my physical attendance feels the equivalent of doing a relay race, where the only purpose is for me to swipe through the doors with my card, touch down and then exit. Declaring to myself, did it! I mean, who else cares? In my mind I’m victorious. When I exit I hold eye contact with strangers with the intensity of an exhibitionist. You see that? You see me? Here, in the gym? Yeah you do. Kidding, obviously. Actually it’s a firm rule of mine – no eye contact with anyone in the gym. You don’t know who is filming what for Tik Tok. I may already be on there as “girl who walks at 5km per hour and checks her fitbit 16 times in 6 minutes”. It’s true, but I was excited to see if there is a tangible difference between my “gym proper” workout versus the morning where my heartrate reached an easy 122bmp from a lovely hot shower and that counted towards my daily total ‘zone minutes’. They did, yay! Hot showers = exercise.
That makes me realise, I didn’t even swipe in on two of my other visits, I tailgated my husbands entry (can’t remember cards can I) so it’s literally between my conscience and the universe. I can’t prove anything to these imaginary data analysts I see in my minds eye in big board rooms, with a picture of my name on a whiteboard facing a long conference table using me as the perfect example of a non-attending member. I talk to my husband about how I’ve already failed by not swipe carding in anyway, and he doesn’t agree (I can’t get out of it that easily). This isn’t about the gym knowing, this is about you knowing, he reminds me, it’s on your conscience. Now I’m frustrated, I start rebelling more.
You would think there was someone authoritative in the room with me when I was trying to get out the door for my 7th session. I start speaking out loud as the evening rolls in and they keep reminding me of my impending duty. ALRIGHT, alright, I’m going okay? Ugh! Get off my case, I’ll change into my sports bra in a minute, gee, what do you want from me? Why do you even care? You can’t make me walk fast when I’m there!
I decide to hunt for my missing gym card as I feel the receptionists are going to start getting suspicious of me requesting they open the doors for me. I can’t find it, of course, but I also can’t trick myself into that being my reason for giving up on my ‘challenge’. I’ll have to ask for a new card. I head out the door, and hit the pavement and then realise I don’t have my pound for the locker. Argh, GRR. Fine! I’ll go back and get it.
I hit the pavement again. It’s raining. Ugh, Seriously?! I go back and get an umbrella. Sulky and petulant but ultimately resigned to my own greater authority here, I’m going. I arrive and address the receptionist. “Hello, did anyone find my card?” she looks and they haven’t. “Would you like another one instead?” “Oh, yes please” I respond ever so politely and wait for the inevitable. “Er, but your membership is cancelled?” “At the end of the month” I quip back with a reflexive assertiveness that I rarely possess. That’s the nice thing about having a temporary attitude problem I guess, it bolstered me with a bit of confidence. I have the impression that had I not been arriving at the end of the day she probably wouldn’t have issued me one, or she was meant to incur a charge for it or something, but she was out of jobsworthy steam for the day. I used to issue membership cards for older people at the charity I used to work for. The members would forget their cards and I was meant to charge them 5 pounds, I never did. Members more than made up for it in donations, they didn’t need me lowering morale and penalizing them for losing their cards. If I was meant to be charged for my replacement card, I feel like the imaginary managerial meeting could quite easily justify affording me a second membership card on the condition that I continue to not attend. There, ethically reasoned and filed away in my mind by two accounts of positive karma, that is if I’m meant to be feeling more gracious towards the lady who issues me a replacement card for a two week only period. Now I feel bad, I am gracious, she was nice, I walked through those doors with my new card with no issue. All good.
By my 8th session, I decide I quite like it. Maybe I should un-cancel the membership after all? I hear snippets of conversations from people passing the corridors or locker rooms. I love microworlds; I know about coffee shops, and hospitals, here it turns out gyms are another communal ecosystem! We had two men discussing whether university is pointless or not anymore – a parental classic, then I even heard a retro covid dystopia throwback from a group of women departing the changing rooms “since when did everyone start dropping dead of heart attacks? Young people, too…it’s all about control” and I thought oofff not that can of worms again. I am so happy to not be passing those conversations everyday (or starting them, hey, I don’t know what to believe alright) anymore. Finally, I hear a conversation at the end that drills home just how strange my non-participation but participation in physical presence only is, when two girls remark “now that was an amazing workout” and I think I may be the only one here, whose intention isn’t really about ‘working out’.
It does feel a bit strange when the treadmills are busy and you are all lined up with people going nowhere at different paces. Although, that’s perspective. I am not going no where if you count going towards my own goals! And they have these virtual reality walks now, which really aren’t that relaxing because they must have been filmed by a real person visiting some of the national parks, with other tourists, and as you pass their now converted to cartoon like image, you still have their original reactions to whoever the real person was filming the virtual reality for my treadmill benefit included. They sort of duck out of the way, so ‘you’ can pass and then eyeball the camera (you) suspiciously, and rightly too – some of these people must have now been told they made it onto the ‘Yellowstone National Park’ setting of a leading brands workout equipment.
I think it’s probably best I don’t extend my gym membership for now, but maybe I’ll decide on my 17th session. For now, I’m waiting for my garlic bread to digest and then I’m off to the Grand Canyon, for a walk.
Cerebellum Chic 
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