Gym Bunny

I’ve joined a gym. It was that or stick to the following advice I read in my new Australian Woman’s Weekly Cookbook:

Incidental Exercise Tips:

(a) See household chores as an opportunity to burn kilojoules. Put on lively music and sweep to the beat.

(b) Mix ingredients by hand rather than using a mixer. It’s marvellous for hand and arm strength and will relieve stress and frustration.

(c) Instead of setting the table all at once, walk around the table placing the forks, then around again placing the knives, and so forth.

(d) Don’t use your clothes dryer (unless it’s raining of course) – peg your washing on the line, bending and stretching with each item.

(e) When watching TV, circle your feet and jiggle your arms and legs.

(f) Get up and walk to the other end of the room during ad breaks or get up and stretch a few times.

(g) In the supermarket, gently push your trolley backwards and forwards while walking down the aisles.

As some of these suggestions could easily be grounds for divorce, the gym membership seems the wiser option.

I paid my first visit today. It’s not quite as easy as going to the gym back home, where you simply drive up to the hotel and park near the door. The gym here is inside a shopping mall and the approach to the car park involves a badly-designed one way system with lots of zebra crossings and unfeasibly slow pedestrians. As if that wasn’t enough to dissuade you from making the journey, the car park under the mall is officially the hottest place in Australia and the one available parking space is usually the one under the noisy engines for the shopping mall’s air conditioning unit. By the time you get into the gym (on the second floor) you have almost lost the will to live.

I was a little concerned that the gym would be packed out with Australia’s body beautiful, so was relieved to see a variety of ages and body shapes working out. It’s a much bigger, less intimate place than the one I’m used to at home, and it’s odd being at the gym without having somebody to stop and chat to (though probably significantly more productive). It does, however, have the advantage of a view of the Pacific Ocean from one window and the AMP tower from the other, which is an improvement on looking at the A49, so I can live with it.

The equipment is much the same as the stuff in the gym back home and so are some of the obligatory gym bunny characters.

(1) Blonde Bunny - wears subtle tattoo and full Adidas combo, including push-up bra disguised as sports wear. Lifts free arm weights keeping one eye on the shoulder press.

(2) Shoulder press Bunny - wearing blue singlet and tight shorts, attracting attention of (1).

(3) Coronary-risk Bunny - referred to gym by his GP, puffing on treadmill in baggy white singlet.

(4) Baggy teeshirt Bunny - badly disguised baby belly, unkempt eyebrows, dubious hair.

(5) Trophy Bunny - flits from machine to machine, never breaking a sweat or a nail.

Being number 4, and having been embarrassingly absent from the gym for over three months, I was like a beetroot when I emerged - you could have barbequed prawns on my cheeks. It’s not a good look.