Fliss and I joined a gym at the weekend there, in an effort to stave off unfitness and to tone those lesser used muscles. (i.e. all of them.)
After signing up on Saturday, we returned on Sunday with our paperwork complete and ready to work out with the best of them. First up was a stint on the stationary bike – a good ten minutes of that and we were off to a flying start.
While I had a look around at some of the more daunting looking weight machines, Fliss jumped onboard the “waggly stick machine” – a sort of power walking thingy that looked like good fun. After watching for a minute or so I decided to join in on the one beside hers, but it turned out not to be as much fun as it looked and was a bitch on the calf muscles too. So as not to look like a wimp by jumping straight off, I gave it five minutes before calling it quits and heading for the weights area.
They run a cool electronic key system that keeps track of everything you do, so I was eager to try it out on different equipment. After performing a couple of sets of bicep curls on that particular machine it said “Good Job” on the screen, before telling me that it was saving the recorded data onto my key. From that I went onto a tricep exercising machine, but managed to mess up the initial rep of my first set, which is the one it uses to set the parameters for the exercise. Due to that it badgered me through the rest of the set, and the next one, saying that I was doing it wrong, but at the end it still said “Good Job” regardless.
I was slightly disappointed at that – I was hoping for a slightly more Full Metal Jacket drill instructor type attitude from them, you know? if I put in a lousy set I should be getting “Are you quitting on me? Well, are you? Then quit, you slimy fucking walrus-looking piece of shit. Get the fuck off of my obstacle. Get the fuck down off of my obstacle.” rather than an oblivious “Good Job!”
Anyhow, after putting a couple of sets into the various weight machines I finished up with a 12 minute run on the treadmill. Sadly the heart rate sensor didn’t appear to be working, which made it kind of hard to guage my effort. Well, except for the fact that I felt shagged when I was done, but that was by my own judgement rather than the cold hard statistics I’ll be needing to get my lazy ass back in shape.
The intention is to go more than once a week, although we were told during our induction that it’s busiest right after work. Fortunately the membership gives us access to several other gyms in the area, so hopefully we’ll be able to go to one that’s closer to home and not full of post work city folk.
