Gymming has begun again. I want to run the marathon you see. Before I gave my hard earned money and precious time, I wanted to see a few gyms. I have been to a lot of gyms and lots of weightloss strategies have been tried. It wasn’t successful until I found my zone. I enjoyed walking and hence ditched a gym to walk 25 kilos off. Read more about that here. Since I have the experience, I thought I should write about my hunt for the perfect gym, in case someone finds it useful.
1. Distance: I have been to gyms that are 15 minutes away, 20 minutes away and I have realized that what you really need is a gym that’s a hop skip and jump away. If you have to trek to the gym, it will give you more reasons to ditch the gym. I wanted a gym I could reach in 10 minutes tops. Luckily there were two gyms which were a 7 minute walk away. I chose one of them. This way even if I’m late, I still end up going for half an hour.
2. Friendly and understanding staff: My last gym was Talwalkar’s which is highly reputed. They have an awesome staff but, when I shared my walk and diet regime with them, they reacted weird. When my walk and diet regime showed results where they had failed (my body had water retention, I wasn’t sleeping, and other such lame excuses while the real problem was that my exercise regime was not suiting me at all), they asked me negative questions and kept saying I was going to bounce back to my earlier weight. I didn’t. I just quit the gym. If you’re not going to be nice to me, I won’t pay you. That’s my simple mantra.
3. Realistic goals: As I said earlier, I had two gyms close to me. One of those was Mickey Mehta’s 360. Here I was told I am ‘heavy weight’ when I am just 3 kilos away from my target weight. I was told I ‘NEED’ a diet, when I specifically said that I was looking to tone up and weight loss was not my agenda. I don’t want gyaan patti, I just want what I want. If your goal is to create Miss India type bodies, great. It’s not my aim and please respect that. I opted out. I anyway suffer from the ‘am I fat?’ syndrome. I don’t need a gym to reinforce that!
4. Solitude: Another reason why I wouldn’t go to Talwalkar’s is that it is maha crowded. During peak hours, it feels like a social club and you have to wait loads before your turn on the machines. I don’t like to be preoccupied with the thought of peckdeck getting free by the time I finish my benchpress. I want to have a good time exercising. Btw, why do men make weird sex sounds while pumping the iron? Weird, eh?
These things are, of course over and above the regular stuff like well trained staff, stat of the art facilities and hygiene. Too much to ask? I don’t think so! It’s our body, its our time and its our money, we might as well make sure we get the best there is!
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