“Pleasure and pain are two sides of the same coin.” Why thank you Mr Grey, but us fitness addicts have known this for quite some time, in a slightly different context perhaps, but one cannot deny a degree of pain is indeed present in many forms of productive exercise.
It would seem we’re only just recovering from the fifty-shades fever that has recently hit the Western world so very hard, no pun intended.
Did we ever stop to think in what sort of a world such a sordid tale could possibly reach such dumbfoundingly dazzling heights? It says a lot about our society, but I’m certainly not here to carry out a sociological evaluation.
I’d like to think I’m here to help you become more active and live a healthier lifestyle, identifying how you respond to the ‘pain’ of effective physical training that could actually help you make smart decisions about your lifestyle-improvement choices.
Research on adherence tells us that your chances of making it past six months of exercise once you begin are, at present, no better than 50 per cent.
Time to put the book or DVD down and get into 50 ‘reps’ towards a fitter you
There are so many methods of training to choose from that it stands to reason some of them must be more suited to us than others. The fitness industry isn’t just getting bigger and more varied. It’s turned several shades darker too. During the birth of the modern fitness industry long ago, it was the bodybuilders who first emerged out of their dark-dungeon weights rooms and began to spread the good news. They showed us how to lift weights and ‘cut carbs’, how to build muscle, burn fat and look and feel better about ourselves.
The dark dungeons were quickly replaced by the glitzy commercial fitness centres, where instructors covered their bulging and intimidating muscles with smart polo shirts and exhibited textbook customer service and interpersonal skills. Receptionists wore beaming smiles and fitness staff did all they could to help Mr and Mrs Public from all walks of life feel so very welcome and at ease.
Fancy machines and electrical gadgets presented fitness in a language people understood: push the right buttons and the desired outcome will follow. We sat on comfy exercise bikes measuring our heart rates, keeping them in the optimum ‘fat-burning zone’. “Yes, just 10 minutes of this, 15 minutes of that, two to three times a week, and you’ll be in the best shape of your life, just like us,” so they would suggest.
We loved the bright colours and cheesy pop music. Friendliness and approachability reigned supreme. ‘Fitness for all’ was the banner they flew.
It was the blue-eyed boy and brown-eyed girl shade of fitness. It was the modern era in all its glory, but the times are changing and the dungeons beckon us once again.
It’s all gone sort of, well, grey. We once expected to see treadmills, cross-trainers and resistance machines in a gym in pristine condition, polished to a shine.
These days, however, you might as well be walking into Christian Grey’s underworld, because you never know what instruments of torture are waiting, lurking in the corner of, dare I say, the quintessential ‘post-modern’ gym.
We’ve ditched the bubblegum tones and switched them for dark and dirty. And just like the infamous ‘playroom’, much of the kit looks like it’s been purchased from the local hardware store.
What’s most surprising of all is that this shift corresponds with the highest ever participation rates in exercise and fitness we have yet seen in Malta and indeed beyond. No longer must instructors greet us with million-dollar smiles, slick hair and wafts of sporty deodorants. They can walk over fresh off slamming 90 kilos down onto the platform they just finished snatching overhead.
They wear whatever they want, plenty of sweat and rolls worth of therapeutic taping. They pass us puny weights to work out and consequently struggle with, in total awe of the colossal weights we just saw them lifting by contrast.
We are put in our places, taunted by accomplishments scribbled on blackboards of the fittest people in the gym. If you want to be fit, strong and body-beautiful, you’ve got to suffer. A world of hurting and seemingly impossible gymnastic feats separate you from your goals, and only the strong will survive.
Your instructors have been there, faced the pain and mastered it. They are the Mr Greys of their fitness worlds and you must surrender to them. It seems the rest of us have become the ‘Anastasias’. We must take the hits and the strangest thing of all is, as rough and tough as all this sounds, we seem to just love it.
Have we really gotten so comfortable that a bit of a beating at the local gym at the end of another monotonous day at the office is something we crave? The rules are crumbling, the options are opening yet further. “Whatever floats your boat,” some might say, because while the warehouses of fitness continue to sprout up around Malta, the glitzy empo-riums still stand. So what will it be?
Anything from a million-dollar toothy smile to a snarl partially obscured by an overgrown beard awaits you in the fitness centres of today. How do you respond to pain? What motivational techniques do you best respond to?
A good beating or some tender loving care? Time to put the book or DVD down and get into 50 ‘reps’ towards a fitter you.
matthew.muscat.inglott@mcast.edu.mt