Let me start this piece with a disclaimer: I hate ‘gym cardio’. The phenomenon of running or walking or stepping on something that doesn’t go anywhere seems pointless. But if I have to grit my teeth and do it, I usually end up hopping onto the treadmill. Not because I like it any better than the elliptical or spin cycle or stair master. But because — like that annoying uncle you have learnt to put up with — it is the most familiar of the lot.
I’ve been treadmilling since the age of 14, when I tipped the scales at 94 and three-quarters kg (sounds better than 95, doesn’t it?), and was marched off to a fitness centre by the worried parent. Branded gyms were just about setting up shop in Chennai back then, and none had reached Kilpauk yet; so my gym that went by the rather disreputable title of Viji’s Slim Centre, was a far-from-glamorous one. It was manned, rather womaned, by a lady who, in Jillian Michaels-style, believed that weight could be fat-shamed away. It was a dingy, musty godown for discarded gym equipment crammed into the ground floor of her house. In her defence, she had plenty of clientèle — the main draw, perhaps being, that is was a ladies-only space, where you could get rid of blubber and not worry about the bounce. But that is another story.
Now, there were only two pieces of equipment in her studio (I use the term loosely, of course) that were fuelled by electricity: the hugely popular vibrator (Not what you think; this is a belt you slip around your waist and watch the fat getting jiggled away) and a treadmill (that only went at one speed).
This was my first brush with this terrible piece of equipment, that was devised to reduce labour in ancient times, and went on to (fittingly) become a source of punishment in the Victorian era. The prison treadmill, invented by English civil engineer, Sir William in 1817 and aimed at, “reforming offenders by teaching them habits of industry,” had prisoners step on what was called the tread-wheel for hours altogether, serenaded by the jeers of jaded onlookers (the replacement for this now is your personal trainer).
In 1952, it entered a medical space, when Robert Bruce and Wayne Quinton began using the treadmill to monitor heart conditions. In fact, the Bruce protocol, a treadmill-centred diagnostic test used to evaluate cardiac function invented by Dr Bruce, is still used by cardiologists today.
By the 60s and 70s, the treadmill was standard ‘furniture’ in fitness centres and home gyms, becoming more and more popular as time went by. Today, of course, it is a ubiquitous part of the fitness space; the convenience, control and easy availability of using one means that it often becomes the foundation of many people’s workout routines.
For me, however, the treadmill is torture — there is no getting around it. Until, after 15 years of trying to power through 45 minutes of mind-numbing, boredom, I discovered HIIT. And trust me, it’s the easiest way to “just do it”. Hop on, warm up, go full blast for 30 seconds and slow down for another 30. Do it 10 times and then cool down. The entire exercise from start to finish takes less than 20 minutes. More importantly, training like this blasts a lot more fat and conserves muscle tissue. No, it doesn’t mean I like the ‘mill’ any better. But this way, I don’t have to deal with, as New York prison guard James Hardie once wrote, the “monotonous steadiness, and not its severity, which constitutes its terror”.
