Gym Guilty Pleasures

No, this isn't me.

I don't often blog about going to the gym, although I have done this 2-3 times weekly since I was about 14 or so. (Interesting fact: girls can do this more safely than boys as our bones stop growing earlier. I reached my full height about 13.)

I don't blog much about it because what appeals to me about it - the simplicity - doesn't generally make for a good blogpost. I like the gym because I spend much of my life employing the grey matter between my ears. The gym appeals because it doesn't require this in the same way. Let's face it, it works as follows:

1. Pick heavy thing up.
2. Put heavy thing down.
3. Repeat until step (1) is no longer an option.
4. Eat.
5. Sleep.
6. Repeat.

Actually, brainpower is involved, but in a different way. It's closer to meditation than brainwork; when I do my exercises, I mentally picture the muscles I'm using and try to focus on using only them, not any others. It helps if you picture them as being in bright colours, like those big wallcharts of people with their skin off that used to freak you out aged 12 in biology class at school.

This usually works, but not always, and sometimes you get distracted by annoyances and guilty pleasures. Namely:

Gym Annoyance 1
People who don't throw their bottle caps in the bin, but instead leave them lurking in the bottle holders on the treadmill. If you can run 2 miles, you can walk 5 metres and throw your damn bottle cap in the bin.

Gym Guilty Pleasure 1
Noticing that someone has left the machine that you are about to use on the correct weight setting for you, and you don't have to fiddle about with it.

Gym Annoyance 2
People who sit around for ages on the bench or seat for the equipment you want to use, staring at the football, then, when you ask, say "yes, sorry, I'm still using it". No you're not! You're watching Everton lose to Man U!


Gym Guilty Pleasure 2

When the someone in Guilty Pleasure 1 was male. 

Gym Annoyance 3

People who don't put their weights away. Seriously. I should not have to lift 200+kg of weights of the squat rack machine so that I can do my exercises (which use about 60kg, max). This annoys both myself and one of the senior instructors at the gym to the extent of spitting. His solution is to make tannoy announcements about banning people from the gym if they can be identified on CCTV doing this. Mine, I fear, will be that one day I'll snap and hand out some gymnasium justice with a 10kg dumbbell.

Gym Guilty Pleasure 3

Watching the unfeasibly muscular lads in Annoyance 2 going on the treadmill and blowing up* after ten minutes, because they spend so much time building muscle they do no cardiovascular work at all, and thus cannot run for shit. 

I can't run that well either, although I can do 3km without stopping and am pushing for the 4km. And I can put my damn weights away.

* not literally, thank God - the brains would take FOREVER to wash out of the bottle holders.

Painkiller Sandwich

Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness is a fucker. I was alright (more or less) the day after the boot camp, but spent today hobbling around going "ow". I resorted to the Painkiller Sandwich, as explained to me by a doctor who was trying to treat my back pain a couple of years ago.

Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor, don't recommend you do this without medical advice, etc., etc.

Take two ibuprofen tablets. Wait two hours, take two paracetamols. Wait two hours, take two ibuprofens. Repeat until you reach the maximum daily dose of each (six pills of each a day if I'm reading the packet instructions right - I'm still here, so we'll assume I am), or the pain goes away.

This way you can get maximum pain relief - and the anti-inflammatory effect of the ibuprofens, which is what I needed - without maxing out the dose of pills. Ibuprofen and paracetamols are processed in different ways by the body. It slightly concerns me that I've lived the sort of life where I need to know this, but so it goes.

Last night I added my own variation on this, which is to skip the final dose of paracetamols and drink half a bottle of rose (wine not the flower) instead. It's not big, it's not pretty and it's not clever, but after the week I've had, it was necessary.

Today I'm feeling better.

Got Shouted At By The Marines

And I paid for the privilege.

How did this come about? I paid £10 to take part in the Help for Heroes Boot Camp at Eldon Leisure. 90 minutes of what was essentially a circuit class with attitude. We were put into eight teams, and eight exercise stations were set up, complete with bellowing Marine instructors straight out of central casting.

You could have put these guys straight into a Hollywood movie: bellowing sadist (who you secretly know would be the guy who braves the mortar fire to drag his wounded comrade back to safety), thoughtful guy trying to prepare his recruits for the reality of going to Helmand Province and killing people ("I look for aggression in my trainees"), bald tattooed older guy, and several rather attractive young instructors who could have stepped off the recruiting posters. Since they were all in sleeveless white T-shirts, camoflage trousers and boots, it certainly made running round the Eldon Leisure Main Hall carrying a stretcher with 40 kilos of water in a more aesthically pleasing experience.

Although by the time I'd lugged a Bergen pack full of water over three wooden vaulting horses, pulled myself over them, then crawled on my hands and knees pushing the pack along the floor, I was too knackered to care.

Possibly I'm just a glutton for punishment, but I really would do it again.