You’d find it difficult to find someone as lazy as I am when it comes to working out. I’m the queen of excuses. Right now, it’s, “Too hot. If I want to work up a sweat, I’ll walk down the stairs and back up again.” Earlier, it was, “I don’t have a scooter to get to the gym and it’s ridiculous to bargain with auto rickshaw drivers every morning.” Mind you, this was a place 1 km away from home, easily walkable in 10 to 15 minutes (yes, I’m Captain Slow), through residential roads.
The only time I didn’t use (genuine?) excuses to skip the gym—deadlines, interviews, travelling—was when I was introduced to strength training. It was there that I found something I didn’t totally suck at, and which made me feel like I was doing the real thing, you know, like Batman, not Robin. Granted, it made my baby cousins treat me like a real beast of burden with their requests for “horsey rides”. It was a welcome change from being asked for elephant rides though.
What struck me during and way after I’d lost sight of the barball was just how invested some people are in other people’s fitness routines. I got the friendly neighbourhood Aunty ‘joking’: “Are you getting into wrestling?” to guy friends telling me to “Man up”. Not sexist at all guys. Bet you if I had continued a few months longer, they’d have known the true meaning of the kettlebell swing.
I had someone text me months after I took a break from strength training, “I see taking public transport has made you slimmer than that gym stuff you were doing.” In my head, I used some choice words that are unpublishable in a family-friendly newspaper, and then replied with, “LOL. Nothing I could do now would have the effect of those workouts.” <Insert smiley here to show that I am serious but not mad at you for having an ill-informed opinion.>
Maybe next time, I’ll just pull up a picture of my erstwhile trainer every time someone tells me I’m gonna bulk up like the Hulk if I bench-press and dead-lift: she’s a state-level gold medallist in power-lifting. (I promise, we’re not a cult.) But you couldn’t tell if you glanced at her on the street: she’s about five feet tall and looks like she is 15 years old, but she’s one of the strongest people I know. What I won’t be sharing a picture of is one of my earlier trainers from a typical gym, who told me how to do a plank instead of showing me, because she “would get out of breath”. Coincidentally, that was the day I stopped going to that particular gym.
Of course, there are women with muscles—Instagram star Sonali Swami is a great example—and that’s because they want them. My motivation is completely different: I just want to enjoy my pepperoni and cheese pizza knowing that I’ll burn off most of those calories the next day. Oh, and why I stopped strength training? I told you: it really did get too hot.
