As some of you may remember from the Procrastination Proclamation way back last year, there were a few remarks on the whole matter of exercise. Well that and getting stuck into Plants vs Zombies while pi**sing away a 3 month notice period.

Now settle down for a little story about what has happened since….

The whole issue for me has been akin to having a little goblin in the room of your mind, a constant companion reminding you that you haven’t moved from the sofa all day, and those sores developing on your back from lack of movement, may in fact be a bad thing. You then mumble “meh”, and go back to sleeping while the drone of crap from Netflix continues to stream away.

Last year, I had attempted to care once again about my health buying actually buying a treadmill via the gift of Amazon, via a third party who sold old equipment etc. After one hard worked Saturday afternoon with both the delivery guy and myself attempting to navigate tiny corridors with a giant heavy box, it then took up residence in the bedroom, where after a few runs, the issues with the machine quickly became apparent.

The belt was not able to support myself to the point where if I didn’t hold onto the sides, the belt would slide and would have provided the perfect opportunity for those lovable rogues from Claims direct to sweep in and blame everyone for this happening, including the pope, the parents and those music videos from the 80s.

After tightening it all up as much as it could, the display panel fell off. Just like that, just fell. What are we paying those people in Taiwan 3 cents a year for?

After being sent a replacement, and taking a hour or so to correctly reconnect all the electronics, it was only a few more times before it become a stand for the spare duvet, and clothes that needed to be dried. Like with all endeavors before, the issue of exercise was sidelined because it was boring, hard, and sleeping was more fun to do.

Then during Christmas of last year, something a little bit shit happened, which to those who saw the twitter and facebook feeds, know exactly what had happened.

It had caused something to change. This was not so much what happened to Dad at the time, as he had an amazing turn around in terms of recovery, I had basically seen the future of doing nothing and just carrying on down the same road, in the form of another member of the family who basically had let themselves go….and was now walking like John Wayne after a painful shit, and whose knees clearly were starting to buckle under the weight being carried.

This basically frightened me so much, that upon returning to London after all that had occurred, I had taken time to visit a gym properly again for the first time in ages.

It was a free day trial to give everything a go, and it went as badly as expected. I was wheezing after 30 seconds of movement, coughing up a lung and was ready to be taken out the back and shot like old Yella.

So with that in mind, I signed up for a different contract type this time. One of the biggest mistakes generally has been to sign up for a year, or 6 months. Knowing I ended up wasting a lot of money in past by not going, I went for the rolling month contract. So far so good. But then there was the point of a “mandatory” training session with a personal trainer which happened to be £65 quid. I told them I didn’t need it, and they replied obviously that there was no choice. Jolly good, we know what to do then, don’t we?

As I began walking out the door, and the loss of money was ringing clearly in their ears, the tune was quickly changed, and after the tried and tested b*llocks of wandering off to speaking with management (apparently I was buying a car at the same time…) magically the price was massively reduced to £15.

So in essence, most of the time, it’s a shake down to get as much off you.

So….with that I had a training session and then the big question came. Did I want to spend what was a hell of a lot of money I didn’t have, on training with someone who was going to push me into physical misery twice a week?

Hate them, hate them all.

But what came crashing into my head was what I saw before at Christmas, and with great reluctance and a heavy heart knowing that all my free cash was about to disappear down the toilet, I agreed.

What has happened since has actually been very good from a fitness point of view. The man I’m with, has concentrated on everything the body over, and remarkably there has been a difference. For starters, I’ve kept going to the gym longer than 6 weeks. Having someone to train with has made a significant difference to keeping going, and there are further changes to make in terms of the diet etc, but overall, I can fit into clothes again and lost over a stone in weight, which has remarkably stayed off a lot of the time.

Of course the tired old rubbish of being in a gym still remains and you still see lots of steroid-ridden muscle people grunting like they are starring in a cheap porn film, and women walking on equipment surfing the internet on their phones while chatting away about who has the nicest ass. (I wish that was made up).

Also, if you see people smiling like someone brain damaged while working out, they are not working out. Exercise is not fun at all, it’s hard, soul destroying and frankly after each time you’ve finished a session, you’re almost ready to cry and require a shower in liquid oxygen just to recover. Or maybe that’s just me.

The main issue for all these good times is the pure expense of it all. It’s not cheap to be doing this all the time, and it’s close to £400 a month that is being spent on the whole thing, and that cannot be sustained. So at some point, it will have to be reduced or other changes made in order to continue to pay for it, but does that then mean I would fall back into old habits of doing nothing?

Whatever happens next, I just at the moment cannot shake off the image of Christmas, and for now, Mondays and Fridays will remain painful times.

Woman smiling far too much for it to be real was taken from:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/freecs/10993282005/in/photostream/