Opinion: RHETA JOHNSON - Alien on the planet of fitness
Fishtrap Hallow, MS
In the flush of the new year, and at an old friend’s prodding, I joined, for the first time ever, a health club. My dear friend’s theory is this: On days I don’t want to go exercise, she’ll make me, and vice versa.
This is the same friend who 40 years ago suggested we follow a faddish hot-dog diet. I can’t remember, for the life of me, what were touted as its merits, beyond the nutrition of sauerkraut.
Mercifully, that hot-dog disaster lasted only one day before I rebelled, and looking back, neither of us needed to be dieting. But my failure to stick to the plan angered the friend – whose name will remain Betty – and I remembered this all too well as I stood beside her and signed up to pay for a year’s worth of indoor exercising.
After suggesting to Betty, to no avail, alternative plans – walking, biking, joining a free exercise group at the library – I vowed to try it her way. I need some kind of exercise, and, more than that, all the friends I can keep. I did reserve the right to critical observation.
The club is scab ugly. Let me begin there. Health, in my opinion, should include an emotional component, and who can be mentally disposed to become fit if the place you’re exercising is garish, a love child of Chuck E. Cheese and the ER?
If you have the sensibilities of a colorblind goat, you’ll gag at bright purple and gold as a backdrop for sweating people. I suspected that a health club would not look like the inside of Sainte-Chapelle, but this is beyond the pale.
The contortionist machines are lined up in what must make some sense to the owners, most of them facing a bank of televisions to distract the customers pedaling, walking or running.
When I walk on the road at home, I don’t want music in my ears or a television as my prow. I like to use the time to think. And while you do have to wear earphones to hear the club’s TVs, it’s impossible to avoid – without bringing your own – the piped music that bears no resemblance to any genre with which I have a passing acquaintance. It is simply awful.
There are many possibilities for pleasing, fast-paced music to exercise by. Maybe a little Jimmy Buffett, to remind us that another swimsuit season will be here before we know it? Maybe a reasonable rotation that would attempt to please some of the people all of the time? Maybe classical as a classy compromise?
I have found, however, if I concentrate on the tattoos of club members lifting weights, I forget somewhat about the terrible music. My mind starts to explore the juxtaposition of defacing the body on some days and working to build it up on others.
And I also can marvel at gym trivia – for instance, how a trio of middle-age women manages to talk the whole time they ride stationary bikes, a lung-capacity feat that beats anything I could do at 22.
Twice now, I’ve completed a 30-minute, station-to-station plan that seems to work body parts I had put on a high shelf, out of reach. A green light signals when it’s time to move from one machine to another, a red when it’s time to stop. Half the time, I’m still reading the instructions when red flashes.
Betty goes about her business in another part of the building, and I think that’s best. If I had the breath to talk, I might say something that would make her mad.
Rheta Grimsley Johnson’s most recent book is “Hank Hung the Moon … And Warmed Our Cold, Cold Hearts.” Comments are welcomed at rhetagrimsley@aol.com.