Gym visits can be a little more assertive than usual

Attitude and gyms go hand in hand. Whether it’s over-muscled steroid junkies or princesses in pink, gyms across the globe seem to attract the aggressive “look-at-me” types.

My new gym in Bombay is no different in that respect, but having lived in parts of Sydney and Melbourne that are too far up their own backsides for their own good, I’m used to a certain degree of attitude. I was never, however, in fear of the personal trainers.

Sure, the trainers at my Bondi and Prahran gyms stalked the floors for people to hit on or chastise for not using a sweat towel, but my breasts were too small for the straight trainers to be interested and too large for the gay ones, so I pretty much went under the radar. I’d need to be trapped under a pile of weights and twisted metal and Lycra before a trainer would come to ask if I needed a hand.

Not so in Bombay, where my gym has a phalanx of trainers lining the walls, waiting to pounce on anyone exercising in a manner they deem inappropriate. This can be good and bad. It’s good that you get personal attention. It’s bad that the attention is so intense and rather dogmatic.

My first run-in came as I was using a weight machine. A personal trainer came screaming over with a murderous look on his face. “No weights!” he barked.

I took my headphones off.

“Pardon?”

“No weights. Weights are tomorrow, you did cardio today.”

“Yes, but I only did half an hour, and I haven’t even broken into a sweat yet.”

“No.”

“I’m not lifting much weight, and I’ll only do a few sets. I promise.”

His folded arms and stern glare told me pleading was getting me nowhere and I ended up using a line that made me feel a complete tool the moment I spoke.

“Look, I pay to come here.”

Despite the clear fiscal logic of my argument, he was not to be dissuaded and stood in the way of the machine.

The following day I presented myself in the weights room for my approved session. The trainers were all there, like a row of eagles along the back wall, looking for field mice to pounce upon. My trainer from the previous day came over again.

“Where’s your exercise card?” he almost shouted, looking at me as though I was an errant schoolboy who had forgotten his homework.

I was starting to have flashbacks to high school. My years of Catholic schooling were by and large an uneventful and rather enjoyable period in my life – apart from gym classes, where our teacher was a tough nut from the north of England who also trained the local professional rugby league team. He probably also made kittens cry in his spare time. All muscle and no hair, he was ex-military and suffered no fools. His favourite line was to scream: “Son, do you want to play a game called ‘running up and down the fucking hill?!’”

The only thing that saved me through six years of gym classes was the fact that I played sport for the school and wasn’t a fat kid. I think the fat, non-sport-playing kids are still in therapy.

Back in Bombay I was staring at an Indian version of my school nemesis.

“Ummm, my card’s still in the change room.”

He rolled his eyes and disappeared to fetch my exercise schedule.

The next 60 minutes were tense as he worked me through the machines that were off-limits 24 hours earlier. I was getting a little frustrated as he clearly thought I was some puny wimp. Nothing else could explain the ridiculously low amount of weight he was getting me to lift. Each time I tried to up the weight he would put it back down and I half expected him to suggest I go run up and down the hill if I didn’t like the way he was doing things.

Eventually I convinced him that the amount of weight I was lifting wouldn’t tax a baby kitten – even one that had been terrorised by a bald, wiry, physical education teacher in the suburbs of Sydney. He relented and let me add more weight.

As soon as I lifted the bar I realised I’d added too much weight, but my ego and testosterone wouldn’t let me admit defeat. I gritted my teeth and agonisingly counted my way through the set. With every muscle tensing in me I threw everything at the machine and launched the bars straight up – and into the face of my trainer, who reeled back, clutching his jaw.

He stared at me in disbelief. I looked at him with an equal lack of belief.

We stayed like this for some time, then, without saying a word, he moved onto the next machine. I sheepishly followed and sat down, setting the weights at an appropriately low level.

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