At last, the gyms are open again. No more exercising in the living room whilst the cat tries to bite my ankles. I feel like Dennis the cat should contribute to my gym membership. If it wasn’t for him and his ankle biting habit I would be happy enough exercising at home. Although I would still need air conditioning. Also a vast range of equipment and big heavy weights. And classes.
Ach, OK, I do need the gym after all.
Everybody has different levels of comfort in terms of what they are happy to do. If you’re not comfortable using a gym right now, don’t worry about it. It’s fine. For me, this is the most normal thing I’ve done in months and that’s why I like it.
Except it’s not the same and lots has changed – kind of like a baby level Spot the Difference challenge. You can see what’s different straight away.
My local gym opened at the weekend and, ever the nosy bugger, I ran along to see what had changed. Rats up drainpipes were admiring my speed, if not so much my technique. Biggest differences were:
- My fitness
No lockdown glow-ups here. I’m definitely less toned, but I have faith in my muscles that they will rise up like Lazarus once I put them to work on the kettlebells again. - Less people
My gym has been relatively empty. Yesterday I went to a Bodytone class that had capacity for 19, but only 4 showed up. - It’s cleaner
I mean, I wouldn’t recommend that you eat your dinner off the studio floor, but it is all pretty sparkly. Antibac spray and hand gel all over the place. Gyms have to be shown to be clean right now if they want to gain their members’ confidence. - Less equipment
At my gym, every other treadmill is turned off to give people space to exercise without breathing in each other’s fumes too much.
Personally I believe that a second wave of the virus is on its way, and so we may see the previous lockdown tightened up again. Therefore now is the time to use facilities like gyms because they may well close again before the end of the year.
The most recent research from the University of Bath found that regular exercise benefits immunity and slows down the changes that happen to the immune system with ageing. So yeah, gimme plenty of that.
I am not in any way worried about catching Coronavirus when going to the gym, any more than I worry about it when going to the supermarket. If anything, I think the risk is greater at the supermarket simply because of the numbers of people involved. What do you think?
Read more about my fitness adventures here