Bunny Corcoran

Today I had my fist personal training (PT) session with ‘J’.

I met J at the gym at the weekend. I was using the chest press (or whatever it’s called) and this guy wandered over with a smile on his face and kind of watched me. I had my headphones on. I pretended I hadn’t noticed to begin with but then he struck up a conversation. Out came the headphones and it was all mildly perturbing as my gym routine is the same month in month out and I do not (like most people) talk to anyone else whilst at the gym. You stay in your own little world. Which suits most people.

Anyway, he said “you must be new?” to which I said “errr, no, I’ve been coming here for one year now…”. “Ah,” said he, “well your posture is wrong; you need to lean back and stick your chest out”. Anyway, it soon transpired (I hadn’t realised until this point) that he was a PT. We had a fairly long chat; he was nice (I’m fairly sure he’s gay but so what - so am I, doesn’t mean much). Anyway, the long and the short of it is that we arranged for me to have a freebie session with him today, which I have now had. All members get a free session with a PT of their choice but it’s never something I’ve bothered with.

It went quite well. We started in one of the consultation rooms going over my stats. He won a rather gargantuan brownie point when, after discussing my weight, he said, apropos my age - “and you are twenty-….?”. “I’m 32″ I said. “Wow!” was his actual retort, “you certainly don’t look it”. That is the only upside of having rather oily pubescent skin - I’m regularly told I don’t look my age. One of the (indulge me, pray) highlights of my last holiday abroad, visiting my father, was when a middle-aged rather well to-do lady at his golf club enquired “and what are you studying at university?”. Dear papa laughed out loud but I was, well, not unhappy, shall we say.

Anyway, back on track. The gym was heaving - really, horribly heaving. But we managed to get on some of the machines (really esoteric looking things that I wouldn’t have touched in a million years). It really worked muscles in my arms (like the triceps) that I’ve never before worked and I enjoyed it. He pushed me quite hard. He was also very tactile, lots of pressing on my chest, repositioning my hands on the bars, holding my arms, etc. Being single one isn’t over-used to that kind of thing. Not unpleasant (though for the record I should state that I didn’t fancy him, I’m not into very muscly men, never have been, but he was friendly and bubbly which I did like).

So there we go. He’s obviously keen that I sign up to private lessons (they don’t get paid by the gym, but from what they charge their ‘clients’) which are £45 an hour. I’m tempted. I’ll probably do it in fact. On Saturdays. It’s not vanity, since stopping smoking I’ve made a huge effort to be healthy and on the gym front I have plateaued to an extent. I have a flat stomach, little to no fat, a few muscles, but that’s about it. There’s a lot more I can do. I do not - under any circumstances - want to be a ‘muscle mary’, but taking it to the next level is not a bad thing to do. So I probably will. Being (long-term) single makes you insecure about how you look and you do tend to go the extra mile.

There are worse things to spend one’s money on I’m sure.