Sunday, January 13, 2013

Joining the Gym


Joining the Gym

Now that Barbara and I have more time at home, we decided to join a Gym.

There is a big gym near us and it is a member of the Silver Sneakers network (hard to believe we qualify).  We went over to see what the deal was.  It turns out that our Medical Insurance supplement pays for our membership in full so we went ahead to register.

We sat down with a counselor who asked us a series of questions about what our goals were, etc. 

Not being able to help myself I told him Barbara’s goal was to get in shape for her second husband to be.  She didn’t deny it!

After thinking about that, he said most of the women were getting in shape for their first husbands to be.  I thought that was pretty funny and true.

I signed Barbara up for a personal trainer for 3 sessions, since she had never been in a gym before and was unfamiliar with the various machines and exercises.  I asked for a “drill sergeant type”, but Barbara, rolling her eyes in familiar way, vetoed that idea.

We got a tour of the gym.  It’s very nice, with an indoor pool, sauna, hot tub, steam room, racket ball court, basketball court and lots of machines and weight stations.

We then proceeded to the most important phase of joining: buying snazzy workout outfits for Barbara.

My daughter had already given Barbara a list of items to purchase and where to get them, Target.  So off we went.

$150 later, Barbara was suitably outfitted and we were prepared to start.

Our free membership had now cost $280 dollars including the personal trainer for Barbara.

That Monday, we went for out first sessions.  The personal trainer had called to make sure Barbara was coming and met us at 10AM.

I went off on my own and would catch glimpses of Barbara with the trainer during the hour.

At the end of the hour, we met up in the front.  Before leaving, we went over to the scale and weighed ourselves.

Barbara went first.

“The scales wrong,” she promptly declared. “It’s off by 6 pounds. The scale at Publix (our local supermarket) doesn’t say I weigh this much”.

“Really,” I said, “let me see what my weight is.”

The scale seemed to be 3 pounds off.

The Publix scale has been wrong in the past, usually under-reporting in an attempt to get people to buy more fattening food.

A woman who had been standing behind us spoke up.

“Let me on the scale, I weigh myself all the time here,” she said.

“Sure,” I said.

She got on the scale, adjusted it and declared it accurate, much to our chagrin.

Maybe she was a plant from the gym to get us sign up for some diet program.  No such luck, she left without saying a word other than “see ya”.

Barbara and I looked at each other. 

“I might have gained a little,” Barbara said, “but my clothes fit”.

“Yeah maybe its all the cake, cookies and chocolate,” I offered as an excuse.

At any rate, we seemed to have our work cut out for us.

We went home and Barbara “rested” for the rest of the day.

On Wednesday we returned to the gym and split up to go our separate ways.

Looking around, I realized that 65% of the people there were our age or older.  The Silver Sneakers were much in evidence.

We returned home and Barbara again felt the need to “rest”.

On Friday, we went again and once more Barbara felt the need to “rest” afterward.

She seems to like going and doing the exercises. However, she is not prepared to do anything afterward. 

This coming Monday, she has a doctors appointment in the afternoon and has told me she isn’t going to the gym on Monday morning, because she will be too tired to go to the doctor in the afternoon.

I’m hoping this isn’t a repeat of the “Bike” fiasco, where she rode her new “Barbie Bike” once and hasn’t ridden it in 2 years. To be fair, I only rode my new bike twice.

It really is a “Barbie Bike”, hot pink in color, 1950’s look to it, wide tires, rear brakes, no gears.  We found it already assembled at Kmart at the end of an aisle, with a spotlight on it (no, really).  We had to buy it.

I am hoping for a change in pattern, Wednesday will be the telling point.