Gym panic is real and apparently it comes with a lifetime membership
I have spent my entire adult life going to the gym. There was a time when I would hand over whole chunks of my salary to personal trainers in the hope of suddenly transforming into some muscle-rippled god. Of course, this never happened. Instead, I would find myself standing with a group of people as they indulged in some fitness banter, debating the merits of various classes or routines, until one of them would inevitably turn to me and say, “How about you Andrew, do you ever work out?” Don’t worry, I have workshopped this with my therapist and moved on.
Anyway, at this stage in life I am just grateful that they don’t ask me if I have a Zimmer frame parked outside. But you’d think that I would at least feel at ease when heading to a hotel gym for the first time or especially when using one of my regular hangouts. But no, it seems that I am one of those people who suffers from gym panic.
Like lots of folk who are not very fit, I am excellent at paying for gym memberships and currently have two to my name. One in London and one in Palma, Mallorca. The Spanish addition is relatively new and is for the very beautiful Palma Sport & Tennis Club. I can see this low-slung 1960s beauty of a building from my apartment. Indeed, sitting on my terrace, I can hear the music from various classes, see people swimming, whacking balls on the clay courts. This summer, after two years on the waiting list, they buckled and let me join. On my induction day, the lovely staff gave me a detailed tour, explained how the lockers worked and informed me of the various protocols to be obeyed. And then it was over to me.
In the gym, free of my chaperones, I felt like a child joining a new school where everyone knows the routines, how things work. I found myself watching people to make sure that I wasn’t breaking any etiquette codes, that I had the dress code covered. Staring at people in the gym, especially handsome ones, however, needs to be done with extreme caution, so I tried to observe them out of the corner of my eye as though I was in an old-school espionage movie. It probably just marked me out as a bit furtive.
While most of the machines were contraptions that I had unfortunately encountered before, there were several that were new to me and which I approached with the sort of trepidation that a cowboy might display when edging up alongside a particularly troublesome steed. Deep down, I feared inserting myself into a device back to front, or upside down, and hearing the rest of the gym break out in roars of laughter. I read the little charts attached to the machines and finally devised how you were supposed to get yourself into what looked like a fighter pilot’s cockpit.
I occasionally search for workout-routine ideas on my phone to be prepped and primed but this is especially irksome when using Instagram because suddenly the algorithm starts serving you up invitations to accept all sorts of fitness challenges. “Start your 30-day calisthenics workout tomorrow and by Christmas nobody will recognise you!” declared a recent one. Fine – but I am not sure that it will be helpful sitting down for Christmas lunch and my other half asking, “I don’t mean to be rude but who are you exactly?”
I put in an appearance at my London gym this week – I have been going there for years yet still avoid certain sections that I consider to be for the big boys. There’s a vast muscly guy who I often see in the morning – he’s about the size of Malta – and on Monday I suddenly saw in the mirror that he was heading in my direction. I panicked. Was I in his favourite spot? Had I broken some secret gym rule? I took out my ear-pods. “Grrrrr,” he said a little menacingly. But then he laughed and fist-pumped me (maybe my first-ever first-pump, what a day!), said “Well done” and walked away.
I have tried to workshop my encounter with various people and while the exact meaning might be hard to divine, I am taking it as a compliment – otherwise I might never return. But the gym panic? I think it’s here to stay.
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