Perhaps my new-found interest is the result of decades of conditioning by the media<\/p>\n
When I was\u00a0a schoolboy,\u00a0you\u2019d\u00a0have been unlikely to find the words\u00a0\u2018sporting prowess\u2019\u00a0and\u00a0\u2018Philip Womack\u2019\u00a0uttered in the same breath. Bar a brief moment aged 13, when, being lankier than my\u00a0peers, I could win sprints without too much effort, I was always much happier loafing about with my copy of J.K.\u00a0Huysman\u2019s decadent novel,\u00a0A\u00a0Rebours, than I was getting stuck into scrums on the freezing rugby pitches. Always picked last, I would hover by the lines,\u00a0oblivious to the cries of\u00a0\u2018Catch!\u2019\u00a0or whatever else came hurling my way.\u00a0
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My lack of interest in games was certainly not hereditary. I spring from\u00a0a long line\u00a0of sporting forebears, with accomplished cricketing ancestors going\u00a0back\u00a0four generations. One Victorian ancestress was the\u00a0All England\u00a0Women\u2019s Croquet Champion. Yet somehow, the sporting gene seemed to have skipped me. Whilst I\u2019ve always undergone some kind of weekly exercise unwillingly (and often hungover), this was mostly in order to stave off the portly, gout-ridden 18th-century vicar that I am destined to become, rather than for any love of physical fitness.\u00a0
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I usually view the\u00a0gym\u00a0with creeping horror, a chore to be endured as I, pasty-faced and\u00a0oddly-shaped, tiptoe gingerly amongst the\u00a0Adonises\u00a0and Amazons who sweat and grunt with such confidence.\u00a0This year, however, something has shifted. Last week, as I was groaning under a mildly heavy weight, I found myself experiencing something\u00a0I\u2019d\u00a0normally feel when reading Homer or George Eliot: pleasure. I had to check\u00a0myself. Was I becoming a jock? Was it, like\u00a0athlete\u2019s\u00a0foot, catching?\u00a0
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Perhaps my new-found interest is the result of decades of conditioning by the media.\u00a0Recently, I spotted one of my ex-pupils posing on the cover of\u00a0Men\u2019s Health,\u00a0like some ancient\u00a0Spartan.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0enough to make any chap feel inadequate. There is also the invasive power of Instagram. Every September (and January) my feed \u2013 usually a sedate parade of churches,\u00a0books\u00a0and horses \u2013 begins to fill up with pictures of sad, pot-bellied, middle-aged men. These are spliced next to later versions of themselves, in which they are muscled and beaming. The images are captioned with things like\u00a0\u2018We are looking 4 MEN aged 40-45 to TRANSFORM. Sign up here for 10 sessions.\u2019\u00a0If you betray mild interest in one, soon you will be drowning in adverts, and impossibly muscled\u00a020-year-olds\u00a0called Josh and Jack will be shouting at you.\u00a0\u2018Get a six pack without giving up\u00a0drink!\u2019\u00a0they\u00a0cry. Well, if\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0true, where do I sign, Josh?\u00a0
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Perhaps, too,\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0the fact that exercising engenders a sense of achievement. Writing, by contrast, tends not to. You never get praise, or much of a sense of career progression. But if\u00a0I\u2019ve\u00a0lifted a heavier weight, or run marginally faster, my personal trainer (when I can afford one) is delighted. One day, I am going to start talking about Personal Bests. (If I do that, please shoot me). Vanity lurks in the mix too: I take pleasure in being able to sport the dinner jacket I wore as an\u00a018-year-old.\u00a0There\u2019s\u00a0also a sense that, as I approach my late\u00a0forties, and the years blur past with increasing velocity, this is the last throw of the dice.\u00a0I\u2019m\u00a0hardly likely to take up kick boxing in my\u00a0fifties.\u00a0
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And so, I now find myself\u00a0anticipating\u00a0my visits to the\u00a0gym, despite its\u00a0foetid\u00a0atmosphere, with some eagerness. Though I am usually the sole floppy-haired, spindly aesthete in the room, the others\u00a0aren\u2019t\u00a0simply muscles and\u00a0lycraed\u00a0thighs. There is the chap who reads his\u00a0London Review of Books\u00a0on the treadmill. There are the old ladies cycling gently before lunch; a couple of buffers chatting about their French villas.\u00a0There\u2019s\u00a0a wide social mix, too, from tattooed cockney to Panama hat-wearing toff. My\u00a0gym\u00a0attracts the odd A-list actor, and even \u2013 or so\u00a0I\u2019ve\u00a0been told \u2013 a certain ex-Prime Minister. Old and young mix freely, navigating the machines with almost courtly\u00a0politesse.\u00a0\u2018Oh no, after you,\u2019\u00a0says the hulk who could snap you in two.\u00a0\u2018I do insist \u2013 I only have one set left,\u2019\u00a0replies\u00a0the plump matriarch.\u00a0\u00a0
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The one thing\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0missing is\u00a0connection: everyone wears earbuds, and glares at their exercise plans on their phones. Fair enough: nobody wants to strike\u00a0up\u00a0a\u00a0conversation when\u00a0you\u2019re\u00a0red in the face and pungent, though a smile would be nice.\u00a0Even better, I have, at last, found a use for my iPhone which\u00a0doesn\u2019t\u00a0drive me insane. When\u00a0I\u2019m\u00a0on the bike, the cross trainer or (my\u00a0favourite!) the step machine, I solve a Wordle as quickly as I can, then pull up a Shakespeare play\u00a0(I\u2019ve\u00a0been re-reading them in alphabetical order).\u00a0
\u00a0
There are downsides, sure. I have been introduced to something\u00a0literally uncomfortable, called chafing. And my hands \u2013 which have been consistently described as\u00a0\u2018maidenly\u2019\u00a0\u2013 must contend with blisters. Still, I console myself with the fact that, in using the\u00a0gymnasium as a space for exercise, both physical and mental, that\u00a0I\u2019m\u00a0fully in the spirit of the Ancient Greeks. Except, of\u00a0course, that\u00a0I\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0do squats in the nude. That might be taking it too far.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Perhaps my new-found interest is the result of decades of conditioning by the media When I was\u00a0a schoolboy,\u00a0you\u2019d\u00a0have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":780903,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[6647,102,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-780902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fitness","tag-fitness","tag-health","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=780902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/780903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}