Back from South Africa and with some time on my hands, I was hell bent on keeping the promise I had made to myself to get back into shape. For most people I know, this would mean eating better and going to the gym more often. But for me, it meant eating better and going to a gym for the first time in my life.
I went to an elementary school with no athletic program. In Junior high, there was a minimal program but the other students I hung out with and I had figured out how to skip gym. Always. I did not attend high school. I did not attend college. I never joined a gym prior to the fateful Kalahari excursion with Lynne.
When I did eventually join a gym, and I’m going to tell you that story in a moment, I was an adult in my 30s, and the first time I went into the men’s locker room I saw more naked men all at once than I had seen in my entire life previously. That was also the first time I smelled a real gym locker room. Talk about sensory overload.
So, I went to a gym not too far from my house, and told them I wanted to join. This led to a meeting in an office with a couple of guys: a sales rep and a trainer. I had no idea that joining a gym would involve a committee meeting, but what the heck. The two men asked me a number of questions that I did not expect. They wanted to know why I wanted to join the gym. What were my objectives. At first I didn’t really have an answer for them, so they kept talking about why one might want to join a gym, a bit about their own personal experiences, and so on. They kept mentioning Thailand. I began to think that there was a connection between the Southeast Asian Sex Industry and joining a gym. Or maybe it was just these guys. I was confused.
Now, I should mention that as a biological anthropologist I was not totally ignorant of some of the fundamentals of diet and exercise, at least at the theoretical level, and before joining this gym, in the first two days after returning from South Africa, I had purchased and devoured a couple of fitness books. (In case you are interested, the most useful book I read was the then current version of Covert Bailey’s The Ultimate Fit or Fat
“I know why I’m here.”
“Huh? Wha… Oh, OK, why are you here?”
“I want to be the kind of person who sits down in a public restaurant and orders three pieces of pie, and while I’m eating the pie other people in the restaurant look over and say to each other, ‘Wow. Look at that guy. How does he eat that way and stay so trim and fit?'”
They looked at each other. They laughed. They looked back at me. I was not laughing.
Then one of them said, “Let me introduce you to Lenora.”
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What? We have to wait for Lenora?
Peter, is this your first time at the Greg Laden story installment rodeo? We have at least a week before Lenora shows up.
Hi,
Thanks for sharing tips related to the health i would like to say that if you going gym you must obey all the instruction of the trainer because if you don’t have obey then gym will be totally waste of money
I’m that guy. Never had a gym membership in my life. Also, I hated gradeschool gym and avoided it to the point where it cost me high school graduation. What I do have is an obsessive compulsive pacing habit.
When I first started running with a running club–after years of running alone–one of the first things I identified as a cultural norm was the standard greeting, “what are you training for?”, with your answer placing you on the spectrum of seriousness as a runner. So the woman who said “the Berlin Marathon” came into the group with a lot more cred than the man who mentioned a local 5k. I always answered with “eating cookies,” since, really, that has always been my real reason for running. I’d rather exercise more than eat less, and training for a marathon is a nice big calorie sink.
I had a graduate student with somewhat similar circumstances. He was very trim, but completely unfit and under-muscled. First day in the field station establishing a grid was a complete ass-whooping for him. Maximum load he could carry in his backpack was less than 20lbs. After a couple of days he was completely cooked.