Americans, pound for pound, are reputed to be the most obese people in the world. What to make, then, of their relentless pursuit of youth, longevity and fitness? Everyone I know belongs to a gym, or at least owns the latest running shoes. The better-heeled have a personal trainer, of whom they speak in tones once reserved for famous hairdressers. You can’t take a Sunday stroll in New York without crossing dozens of people pounding the pavement in leg warmers and headbands, headphones strapped to their ears and a grimly determined look in their eyes. Every second bus stop sports an ad for gyms, each outdoing the other in the range and luxuriousness of their facilities–and the attractiveness of their membership discounts, if not always their clientele. If someone drops dead on a Manhattan street, he probably had a heart attack while jogging to the health-food store.
To foreigners, especially one accustomed to thinking of physical exertion as something you pay others to do, this is intimidating. All these lithely fit folk, slinging gym bags over their muscular shoulders as they stride purposefully toward their next fitness destination. Ignore this national mania and stay defiantly out of the gym? Lazier men than I have succumbed.
When I finally gave in, I joined a gym that advertised itself as a cardiac fitness center. Here businessmen and managers of a certain age disported themselves in genteel surroundings. There was more silver on their heads than in the average Nevada mine; locker-room conversation usually focused on the latest gyrations–of the stock market. Most of the membership was even flabbier than I, so I was able to ease myself into the gym habit without feeling entirely out of place.
But then the pressures of time and proximity prompted me to switch to a larger gym, closer to home. This is part of a gigantic nationwide chain with a dozen branches in Manhattan alone. Walk into one and you get the impression of a large machine huffing and puffing to spew out fit Americans. Large barnlike spaces, often in basements, are crammed with exercise machines of every type–treadmills, steppers, stationary cycles, elliptical cross-trainers. Weight machines follow in rows, contraptions of bars, levers and slabs of iron that allow you to stress your chest, shoulders, abdominals, legs, rear end and other muscle formations you had previously been unaware you possessed. Gyms even exercise vocabulary! How many of us know we’re sitting on our “glutes,” or that by banging at the keyboard, as is my wont, I exercise my “deltoids”?
At every machine an earnest young (or not-so-young but trying to look it) person pumps bleakly away, burning those extra pounds, trimming those recalcitrant inches. Techno music thumps in the background. A dozen TVs flicker silently, their sound requiring the rental of a headset. Young men in T shirts emblazoned with personal trainer or fitness consultant circulate amiably but commandingly, dispensing advice here, hands-on instruction there, quite literally pressing the flesh.
As if the machines aren’t enough, large spaces are set aside for the most recent calisthenic fad. Taebo, or cardio-kickboxing, is the current favorite. Though lashing out with your feet may be a great stress reliever, you can strain your back, tear your hamstring and dislodge your hip in the process. It’s safer to try last year’s rage–spinning. Did you miss that one? When a friend told me about it, I had visions of him sitting cross-legged at a spindle in the best Mahatma Gandhi tradition. “Spinning is an intensive group workout involving cycling at rapid speed,” he retorted humorlessly. “It burns 900 calories an hour. The mahatma’s knees couldn’t have handled it.” You never dis a New Yorker’s workout, I learned, even among friends.
Is there consolation for folks like me, less keen on fitness than might be wished? Yes, it’s called human nature. Many is the well-rounded exerciser who seems more intent on the good-looking neighbor riding the next machine. Conversations at the water cooler sometimes seem to go on longer than the workouts that brought on the thirst. And then there’s mortal laziness. I once came in and noticed a woman on the gym floor, resting in a decidedly unstrenuous position and contemplating herself in the mirror. Resting between sets, I surmised. Forty-five minutes later, as I left, there she was, still resting, still contemplating. But at least she’d be able to go home and say truthfully she’d spent an hour at the gym.
