Upon Entering a Gym for the First Time at 50!

Upon Entering a Gym for the First Time at 50!

I find that i write to seek solace when my mind seeks to salve its wounded self when it has nothing better to think. This week's piece is on my going to a gym which despite its quotidian reality has been a significant change in my lifestyle and work. I now look forward to its continuance and I am now enthusiastically evangelical about its benefits like a new convert preaching to the already converted!

I was told that 40 was the new twenties, and i wondered whether at 50 i was really 30 as i held myself in disbelief that i was old (enough) and much beyond the average life expectancy in the first half of the last century in India. People including those close to my age have been for a while calling me uncle or chacha (it is soon going to be nana and dada) and i dismiss it off as a displeasurable greeting.  Not that i have any illusions about my youthfulness or senescence whatever people attribute to my greying and much bald head and whiskers. At 50 i know my destiny but not the Truth and can still not follow my heart without wrongdoing. Having been single i have not had the pleasure of counting the years by ones children’s growth and their declarations of having ‘grown up’ regardless of what their parents thought. Their desire to grow up coupled with their ignorance of not knowing what it means to be grown up is heartbreaking. Being cerebral was merely an excuse to justify that i had paid little heed to my emaciated body and it conveniently reinforced stupid stereotypes of being a nerdy professor quite like Prof Calculus. I wore loose and oversized kurtas that made me look quite like a scarecrow outfitted on a hanger billowing in the wind and weighing about 48 kilos (mostly in my head ;-)) even into my late thirties. I was as a child barely allowed to play and would have fitted the Hollywood stereotype of a geeky Jewish boy who could recite the Torah whole and little else. I was good at no sport and wondered why people made such a fuss about it. To the way I was brought up, for a long while i believed that i am my head and that my body a mere appendage to keep that head afloat and in locomotion. I remember the nightmares that plagued me as a child when i would cry terrified like Calvin (and Hobbes) at seeing a spiky head of a demon which was only a ball covered with needles and limbs growing out of it, living beneath my bed. That probably was my own self image.  So with that self image i breezed into my fiftieth birthday and wondered at my impending mortality as a single man fated to sickness and in isolation to be noticed in my absence only when noses crinkle in disgust at the stench.

Valetudinarianism and hypochondria are not synonyms though they plague us just the same especially once we touch 50. A hypochondriac is a nuisance who convince themselves that their symptoms are real and significant enough to warrant medical intervention especially after looking them up over the internet where a hearty meal would suffice. A valetudinarian on the other hand takes good if not excessive care of his health, and follows regimes with diligence and is also an uncomfortable presence. Given that being a hypochondriac was a full house i thought i must take membership of the other.  I was really forced to do so given that apart from keeping company with my books and being reclusive to a fault and given to taking walks with the tortoise pace of my mother, physical exercise was entirely absent (apart from guilty bouts of Yoga).  I thought i must join a gym but was fearful of the same. Those places looked like either for the very vain or the very young (or both) and that they had exaggerated notions of a body aesthetic that was quite like penis envy. My mother looked at me up and down assessing whether my girth like the annulus of a tree was a cause for worry. I could not but smile at the scorn that a conservative middleclass family looks at physical labour or activity.

When i opened the glass door of a gym with some trepidation, i was whisked up by a dainty sales person who ordered a trainer to show me around that mangle of metal into which some had inserted themselves in the most uncomfortable extensions and curls. I was scarcely listening to the narration of the trainer on the glory of each machine, thinking he spoke a foreign tongue, worried at all the contortions i would be put through. I signed up before i changed my mind and the girl to my horror said she was giving me a ‘senior citizen’ discount. I soon realized that i was probably the oldest member at the time and that gym registrations are inversely proportional to age despite medical demands to the converse. The trainer was the Alpha Male in the gym and i realised that his claims to knowledge were inversely proportional to the aggressiveness of his assertions.  It took me months to figure out that if i followed him i would be worse off than if i heeded my own body. Within days i was told how terrible i was in comparison with the other members exaggerating my flabby physique and that it would take the most dedicated and muscled trainer to take me under his tutelage and shape the hell out of me. I was subject to three senior trainers each whose job was to convince me to sign up for premium personal training sessions as i resisted until they gave up on me and my training thus began in earnest only after that first month of being pronounced useless. Each of them gave me gratis and ludicrous advice on eating quantities of Whey protein (including 12 egg whites after each workout) that they would procure for me at a discount. It is only my stubbornness and tiny purse or miserliness that wearied their vain attempts. I knew that i joined the gym not to flex my biceps and triceps but to remain fit which was a dignified expectation at my age. I smile as the youth seemed preoccupied with their narcissistic though cute preening in long mirrors hoping that some miracle would happen after each set of exercise and show them how bigger their muscles got. I wish some fairy trainer (no i don’t mean gay) would hit them with a wand to make them into the dashing dandies some wish to be. Yet i am often dismayed by how when not preening in the mirror they seem to be glued to their smartphones texting furiously their whatsapp groups and facebook likes; pausing every set with a visit to the phone and getting stuck for more than 5-10 minutes to resume their lost warmup or set count.  

The gym was no quiet retreat but a loud place with loud people who sweated and grunted and did not notice anyone but themselves. I wondered whether the shapes that the gym promoted under the guise of a rugged individualism was a stereotype of conformity to an alien body shape underscoring different values of both lifestyle and diet. All the youth around me seemed almost similar if not identical barring the obviously obese (who were the only ones who wore their humility with dignity). It is likely that the male of the human species through history has always been an anxious to assert his sexuality with some exaggeration. The Koteka or penis gourd worn by the male members of certain New Guinea tribes may seem exotic but betrays a contemporary anxiety which we disguise in varied ways. If you are dismissive of it being primitive, look at the ‘codpiece’ fashion accessory worn during the renaissance (or look at a portrait of Henry VIII) it was a huge crotch pad worn outside the clothing (helping disguise inadvertent erections during bouts of violence or proximity to attractive mates). On the contrary look at what might be called ‘effeminate’ fashions of the court of Louis XIV where men wore a beauty spot, powdered wigs (perukes) with ribbons, frothy lace collars, high heeled silver buckled shoes and lace trim. In our own times one would surmise as Grayling does that the ubiquity of jeans and a tee shirt have made dress as inadequate carriers of virility among men but an attractive physique beneath is what crows for attention as shirt sleeves slide up over biceps and six pack revealed under low cut jeans. I believe like an old man i see less diversity among youthful bodies than i saw in my frugal years. The women are not far behind and the ‘unisex’ model of the gym is merely reflective of a mimetic anxiety that sways women as much as it does men. I wonder if any feminist minded would object to those gaily coloured dainty neoprene weights as carriers of inequity; just as the men seem to bother only by the weight poundage ‘heavier the better’. I believe that regardless of these vanities working out at a gym is virtue in itself notwithstanding the diversity in motivation and anxieties it seeks to allay. The gym business model harnesses those motivations differently and is predicated on signing you for a long term annual membership, and on the hope that you would drop out within the first three months. So they keep dropping rates to increase long term membership and keep signing up more than several times their capacity based on a belief that few people have the discipline or patience to subject themselves to hard work over a sustained period of time- that makes money for the gym apart from star trainers fees and sale of exotic supplements.

It took me almost a year of self experimentation with no personal trainer to find my right balance at the gym. My first trainer was a boy of 18 who would not stop giggling though indulgent with my clumsiness; he had lost his father and was a breadwinner and he needed some attention. Initially it was believed that i would be just restricted to the cardio section which was shorthand for the geriatric and the obese. I played with my treadmill and its wonderful programs of alpine hill, trailblazer etc to settle at an interval training regime which the trainers never told me about. I discovered that i needed to walk/jog at a pace that was at least for a few minutes above 80% of my maximum heart rate (formula being 208-0.7* age or other similar) so that my average HR was above 150; that my knees would not support the impact of landing on my heel but forefoot and that it was avoidable using elliptical machines/cross trainers; that i needed to work against resistance to build endurance. Soon i started weight training too and reduced cardio to just two days in a week and was advised to work with:  back and biceps (BB), chest, shoulder triceps (CST), quads, hamstrings, calves (lower body-oh dear i reserve that for Saturday as it makes my legs wobbly Jell O for two days) and finally Abs. I even read up “Weight Training for

Dummies” (especially the sections on risks), watched scores of YouTube videos on doing it right!  I discovered how knee pains are relived on a leg extension machine with low weights and even though it doesn’t sound big it was a happy realisation. I wasn’t there to compete; while some took increasing weights every few days to greater strength and performance, admirable though it seemed i erred in favour of moderation and avoiding injury.  I had to keep reminding myself to refuse measurements, that i was there for simple fitness and not body building. I started gaining weight to my alarm which my trainer dismissed as muscle mass. I discovered that a hundred suryanamaskars did more wonders to my belly annulus than hours of cardio and that VO2 Max which is an indicator of fitness is more easily achievable through Kapalabhati as with aerobic exercise.  I discovered that Yoga unlike the popular gym myth is not merely stretching exercise but cleverly decouples aerobic and anerobic through pranayama and that Yoga works on the core most efficiently than most abs workouts with lesser risks of injury (though i get indulgent smiles if i do yoga at the gym) and the trainer grunts ‘good do some stretching’!  I believe that it is consistency and not the content of workouts that the true benefits of a gym lie in, which is in one’s own hands and that it is not the sophistication or make of equipment or even ambience that makes any difference at the gym; it is You. I now believe that just squats, pushups, lunges are some of the best exercises overall if i were to do nothing else. I believe that our daily diet is sufficiently balanced and must be more trusted than albumin, creatine, protein, etc. It would be overkill if i were to list out the benefits of exercising in ones 40s as medical evidence gathers on lower rates of heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer, and in general delaying the onset of chronic illness.

I love my staff at the gym despite their chronic inefficiency; they are people with very common problems, of cash flow, children’s admissions, irregular meals, failed exams, unreasonable management etc. They look at me as an indulgent ‘uncle’ who brought them forbidden foods and celebrated their anniversary with cakes, and replaced their broken Hanumanji with a new idol. I love being left alone there and better still with no music (loud Bollywood mixes which vexes me). It is sanctuary for 60-75 minutes as i who ought to be working like an athletic hunter gatherer or agriculturist am now wired up to my chair across a laptop seek to redress a lost balance. I feel better, more relaxed and my best antidote for the blues is a workout. Though i think it cheesy i like a quote on the walls of my gym. “You don’t stop exercising because you grow old; you grow old because you stop exercising. Our problems are not those that emerge from ageing but those that arise by disuse of the body.  Few people know that the Delphic caption in ancient Greece “Know Thyself” (Gnothi Seauton) began really with “Care of the Self” (Epimaelia Heatou) and that was part of an entire process of self culture.