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Jan. 11th, 2014 05:49 pmTo mangle an old, old joke: I just got in from my first proper session at the gym -- and boy, are my arms tired!
I'd been weighing up a gym membership for a while, but the thing that pushed me into actually doing it was getting cast in the Rep Club's next musical as a character who I picture as being in noticeably better physical shape than I am now. (One of the underappreciated perks of being an actor is learning things or developing skills or habits that have always interested you under the banner of "preparing for a role".)
I'm on a program of weight training with a side order of general cardio exercise. The weight training involves a circuit of five machines which each give a person one-fifth of the experience of actually lifting a heavy object. I'm not sure I see why a person couldn't just lift the heavy object and be done with it -- it's not as if the gym doesn't have the heavy objects; I could see them racked up on the wall -- but as a complete noob I didn't want to be asking awkward questions. The cardio exercise involves a bit of time on a rowing machine and a bit of time on a stationary bicycle, which is amusing because riding an actual bicycle is one of the few bits of real exercise I got last year. (Come to think of it, I mentioned that during the initial assessment; I don't know if the trainer decided I'd therefore find cycling more comfortably familiar than the alternatives.)
There was an amusing thing I noticed: When I was being given the mandatory tour of the facilities before signing on as a member, the tour guy made a big deal about the set of stationary cycles near the entrance, which have video screens and apparently you can ride along virtual cycle routes and race against people on other cycles or against your own past times or play a video game where you ride around an imaginary landscape collecting macguffins. Later, when the trainer was showing me each of the machines in my assigned workout and explaining how to use them, he went straight past that set of cycles as if they didn't exist, and commended me to the more basic cycles deeper into the gym.
I'd been weighing up a gym membership for a while, but the thing that pushed me into actually doing it was getting cast in the Rep Club's next musical as a character who I picture as being in noticeably better physical shape than I am now. (One of the underappreciated perks of being an actor is learning things or developing skills or habits that have always interested you under the banner of "preparing for a role".)
I'm on a program of weight training with a side order of general cardio exercise. The weight training involves a circuit of five machines which each give a person one-fifth of the experience of actually lifting a heavy object. I'm not sure I see why a person couldn't just lift the heavy object and be done with it -- it's not as if the gym doesn't have the heavy objects; I could see them racked up on the wall -- but as a complete noob I didn't want to be asking awkward questions. The cardio exercise involves a bit of time on a rowing machine and a bit of time on a stationary bicycle, which is amusing because riding an actual bicycle is one of the few bits of real exercise I got last year. (Come to think of it, I mentioned that during the initial assessment; I don't know if the trainer decided I'd therefore find cycling more comfortably familiar than the alternatives.)
There was an amusing thing I noticed: When I was being given the mandatory tour of the facilities before signing on as a member, the tour guy made a big deal about the set of stationary cycles near the entrance, which have video screens and apparently you can ride along virtual cycle routes and race against people on other cycles or against your own past times or play a video game where you ride around an imaginary landscape collecting macguffins. Later, when the trainer was showing me each of the machines in my assigned workout and explaining how to use them, he went straight past that set of cycles as if they didn't exist, and commended me to the more basic cycles deeper into the gym.
