the gym

In the US I had been going to the gym 3-5 times a week regularly, but stopped when I came here. Initially it had just been way too hot to even think about exerting myself. But now after five months, I am definitely noticing that the lack of exercise is making me feel worse after each month.

So I finally found a gym down the street from my flat. For three months I paid Rs. 2500 so a little over $50. It's a pretty small place - there is a walkway down the middle of the room, and on one side they have 2 treadmills, an elliptical trainer, 3 bikes, and a few weight resistance machines. Now on the other side, are these bed things that you lay down on and it 'works' a certain part of your body by moving it mechanically for you. So basically if you remember those black and white clips from the 40s and 50s of women with a belt around their middles, standing there while it "jiggled away the fat" - yeah basically that concept. And yeah, I would have had to pay extra to have the "advantage" of using those. And there are usually several people using them.

What is also interesting is that mostly I see women here, there are men, but mostly women. Seems like a lot of housewives and they don't wear work-out clothes like we wear, they just wear their regular salwar kameez suits - the long tunic with baggy pants.

I must have missed the times when the personal trainer, who is in his 20s and wants to be a body builder I guess like Arnold Schwarzenegger, was there because I didn't meet him the first several times I went. He's good, but now starting to irritate the hell out of me. But he's very enthusiastic which is good, and he seems very good at showing people the correct form of an exercise. And he was very enthusiastic about teaching me Hindi. There was another man there the other day who spoke no English, so they were all teaching me and explaining what was going on in the Hindi soap on the TV.

However, I only plan on going 3-4 times a week with other things going on here, but ever time I leave, the trainer keeps saying, now come regularly. Which irritates me because I am, I'm just not coming every day. Then the other day he asked me how old I was. When I told him, he seemed very surprised and said, oh I thought you were quite a bit older...yeah, thanks, so much...:P Then when I am doing reps with free weights for bicepts, he has been saying I should do 3 sets of 20 reps! And I've only been coming a few days, seriously! But whatever, it's nice that he's very enthusiastic about it all. And it does go by quickly. The TV is usually set to some Hindi bollywood music videos which I think I could watch for hours..