“You know that the pool is closed?” Was the question that greeted me this morning as I waited to get into the centre just before 8 am. Yes, indeed I did know that the pool was closed and I was about to begin my via dolorosa of gym use for the next three weeks.
As I went through my selected series of exercises, I was interrupted by a number of acquaintances who questioned my presence, with a smile it must be added. And they sympathised with me as I explained the extra time that the gym would be closed. And if anything their smiles grew wider.
The interesting thing is why I am bothering to go to the gym. The choice is mine after all. I can choose to do something else for the next few weeks and not moan about doing something for which I have, to put it mildly, little enthusiasm.
Why I do it is all down to self-knowledge. I enjoy swimming. I like the difference that water gives, it is a different element, and moving through water is not the same a moving through air. When you have suspect knees then the support that water gives allows you to glide – an experience that is unique to the element. I am also able to do my exercises that are supposed to strengthen my knees and the muscles that support my new bits!
There are some that enjoy hard physical exercise and thrive on the pain that comes with pushing oneself to the limits of physical endurance. I am not one of those people, and I look for an easy life. Generally. So, left to my own devices I would probably let exercise slide and do my mental exercises inside the pages of a good book.
Having an early morning swim, getting up at 5.45 am, takes effort. If that effort can be integrated into a regime then all the better, habits are difficult to shake off, the trick is doing something enough (if it is an effort) to make it into a habit.
When I played squash I was a member of a squash league at my local leisure centre, that meant that I ‘had’ to play a certain number of games each month or I would be relegated. It is the same methodology that keeps me doing a Duolingo exercise each day as I do not want to be relegated from the arbitrary league that the program has placed me in, and which encourages me to participate offering electronic digital inducements to keep myself applied. We all need those incentives to keep us in line, because so few of us are real self-motivators.
When I was in Cardiff, I used to swim early morning and after school. After a day in work, virtually the last thing on my mind was calling into the David Lloyd Centre on my way home for a swim, and I spent the greater part of the journey home debating whether or not I really wanted to go for a swim. Often that question was answered by the fact that I ‘found’ myself in the David Lloyd car park, while my internal debate was still going on. Location trumping questioning!
In a similar way, I go for a swim ‘most days a week’, it is a habit and I wake up at the appropriate time and get ready before I am fully awake! It is built into the system that is me. But, I also know that were I to break that system then the whole edifice of exercise will come tumbling down. So, just because the pool is closed (other pools, and the sea are available) I know that I have to keep up the routine, even if it means going to the gym.
One problem of gym going, as I found this morning, is that there is a different list of things that you must take to make the experience enjoyable and hygienic. I forgot to pack another shirt ,and so I had to wear the soiled garment in which I exercised when I went for my cup of tea – luckily outside!
And I learned my lesson. Even though I liberally dowsed myself in Citronella, my sweat infused T-shirt attracted more than the usual tribe of blood sucking mozzies as punishment for my lack of preparedness.
Tomorrow (Day 2 – only 20 to go, sigh!) I Will Be Prepared, and I will take a more potent repellent for fight off the desperation of the latter-part-of-the-summer insect life.
