As I was getting changed, a naked figure emerged from the clouds of steam in the showers. The upper half was the Incredible Hulk, the lower half Charles Haughtry. I recognised the face. It was a lad I always used to see working out in the other gym. Usually, we’d be the only ones in there: him red-faced and grunting, lifting big weights in front of the mirror; me on the warm-up mats, bending myself into shapes. At first I didn’t speak or even acknowledge his existence. But I saw him there so often that eventually it would have been rude to continue ignoring him, so I used to give him a single curt nod before going down stiffly into Downward-facing Dog or the Plank. But seeing him here, at this other gym, in this other town, where we were both strangers, made me feel like we were old comrades, so for the first time I spoke to him. ‘What are you doing over here?’ I said.
He was a lot bigger than when I last saw him. His chest and biceps were massively pumped, and the absurd disproportion between the huge upper body and the thin neglected legs, which I had been beginning to live with, was even more startling than usual.
My own workout, after stretching on the mats, is 20 minutes each on cross-trainer, treadmill and rower; then maybe some light reps on the fixed weight machines to finish. And that’s it. I don’t even look at the heavy weights. My goal is suppleness and cardio-vascular fitness rather than an altered shape. But in these tough, undisciplined times, it’s great to see unemployed lads coming in and working out with the heavy free weights.
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