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highlyeccentricI don't know if I said on here, but when I moved back in 2020 I had the medium term goal of, once my moving costs were defrayed, joining a gym and paying for personal training in order to learn how to safely Do Weight Training. I do not think I am LIKELY to Become Swole, because I am starting from such a low baseline (and indeed worse now than it was in early 2020), but I would kind of like to Become Swole, honestly.
I had got as far as realising, in early March 2020, that the 24/7 gym chain I used in Geneva only serves Suisse Romande, and that the only chain which crosses the Rostigraben is the Migros gym - which didn't have a branch convenient to either the university or my house. So my hope of joining a chain, and travelling to a Francophone site for introductory instruction, tanked. And then COVID happened, tanking ALL my plans. And tanking my overall fitness.
(Sidebar: who know how much 'just walking around the office and stuff' was maintaining my fitness? Aside from minor exercise benefits, without wearing shoes and walking around corridors my feet have become IMPOSSIBLE. If I wear anything other than runners or my sketchers sandals outside I get excruciating foot cramps - and today, when I had been wearing NEW runners for a few days, then switched back to the old ones for the gym, taking the insole with me: foot cramps again! I can't wear my fabulous collection of Docs anymore. I have to take preventative naproxen to wear the heels that I wore all day five days a week in Japan.)
Now, double-vaxxed, and masked despite the fact that gyms are now exempt from the mask mandate (why, Switzerland, why), I have joined an Aggressively Feminine Gym. It is very pink. It is called, I kid you not, "Mrs Sporty". Turns out it's a German chain. I had an intake session with the franchise owner and she assured me they would preserve my 'weiblich' figure.
Me: das ist nicht wichtig für mich
Her: Wir sind ein FRAUENfitness!
Nevertheless, I have signed a year contract with them. Why? Because the women's gym, unlike either the cheap mixed gym or the Very Serious Gyms, offer extremely entry-level services as part of the package. What do men who don't know a barbell from a beardtrimmer do? What to men whose knees turn in and who cannot stand on one leg do, curl up and die in shame? The only men I've ever seen talking about starting from sub-zero with weight training were able to afford a one-on-one ongoing personal trainer.
Dealing with the gym owner gives me The Genders, but my plan was and is to let the very pink gym have their best shot at *finding* my feminine figure (I am increasingly shaped like Grimace), while I learn both the vocab and the entry-level skills. Seriously, my assigned trainer (more on her in a mo) had to give up and reach around and adjust my wrists (despite the no-contact COVID rules) holding the dumbell (a one-armed bicep curl to overhead press, if I understand Weights Internet correctly) because I just cannot interpret the visual guide correctly or follow her (in English!) corrections. I know enough from doing physio and yoga to know that I would be at less risk of injury with a weight machine BUT that I should not use them, because my stabiliser muscles are my weakest, and with freeweights you work those while you're working the major muscle groups.
So, the Pink Gym Ladies are here to correct me. I grit my teefs through the BMI talk (seriously, you're a LADIES GYM, and both boobs and muscle skew BMI). I was given a simple diet tips worksheet, which was amusing because it was very Germanic - advised three serves of dairy per day, and only on the yoghurt suggestion did they specify low-fat.
Very Good Things About The Aggressively Feminine Gym
The trainer I've been working with - the starter pack gets you three personal training sessions before you're set loose with the regular subscription, and you get three-to-six weekly workout revision sessions - is lovely. Quiet but significant dyke energy. *She* didn't assure me that I wouldn't get unsightly muscles.
The main daytime clientele are older ladies. Difficult to be intimidated when the person next to you is using the 1kg dumbbells off the special rack.
They've invested heavily in workout guidance tech, rather than machines. There are these stations like a 5ft 6 tablet: you QR code check in, and it has your routine logged. The bottom half of the screen shows you a demo video of someone performing each move, and the upper half videos you and has little circles and arrows showing you where you need to move the weight or move your body. At the moment I'm struggling to keep up with the demo speed, but I can see the pacing element being very important - due to the lack of stabiliser muscles when I CAN do something I tend to jerk it, which is Bad, Actually. And due to the ADHD I get bored doing things slowly.
Alongside that, the whole room is set up for interval training. There's an overhead 'move to the next station now' three minute timer, and one is supposed to alternate between the tablet with your set routine and a variety of other activities - cardio (jogging on the spot on a slightly soft surface, a step block), balance work (wobble board: i am bad at it) and there's a screen demonstrating assorted bodyweight exercises one could do. Plenty of those stretchy rubber resistance bands, broomsticks, and weighted basketballs, for whatever it is one uses those for.
And, greatest wonder of all:
There are no open changing spaces. Despite being a "women's gym", they have three individual changing cubicles, with heavy curtains. Each has a chair, a long mirror and a small shelf. There are IKEA Kallaxes to store your stuff in, but no locker-room benches. Two toilet cubicles, and the shower not only has a curtain but ALSO a locked changing cubicle.
My last gym didn't even have curtains on the showers, so, like: !!!. I probably won't shower at the gym, because I can just do so at home, but I would be much happier to do so in this environment. I'm just so struck by the fact that not only do they *have* changing cubicles, they've designed those to be standard - no 'here's the normal people space and here's the cubicle for the excessively shy' vibes.
I'd be really interested to know if other Mrs Sporty gyms are designed the same way. Even if not, it feels like the person who designed this one designed it this way not in spite of it being a "women's space" but because it is a women's space. Just. An awful lot of women do not enjoy changing in public, so why make them? (Why make anyone? But women are more likely to TALK about their self-consciousness, so I know it's a thing even for straight, cis, white, relatively thin women.) Something I think about a lot as the Bathroom Discourse inevitably comes around and around.
As for my fitness, I am bad at: interpreting physical instructions; standing on one leg; jumping sideways; lateral lunges or anything involving stretching sideways really; squats; having stable wrists for any dumbbell exercise; and co-ordinating my arms and my body movement when attempting to do the squat-with-arms-out thing. So, pretty much all the things you can be bad at. Also the vast disparateness between the two sides of my body shows up a lot, as does the fact that some of my major muscles do the work of their neighbours (the bicep curl to overhead press thing, for instance, I feel that in my back, not my arms. The weight is potentially too light for my arm strength while being a hard workout for my back).
Good news: I find it much easier to tolerate being bad at these things for half an hour than to slog through a 20 minute run - probably because the variety at least changes the WAY things are bad, so I'm not getting bored as well as failing at all the things.
Further bonuses: the Very Pink Gym is in my old neighbourhood, which is good for my ongoing access to the one coop supermarket that reliably has gluten-free pizza dough. Also the renovated bakery-café is next to the gym, and while it's the same chain as the one in the shopping centre near me now, the staff are nicer down there. Plus I can go check on my favourite local cats sometimes. A+
I had got as far as realising, in early March 2020, that the 24/7 gym chain I used in Geneva only serves Suisse Romande, and that the only chain which crosses the Rostigraben is the Migros gym - which didn't have a branch convenient to either the university or my house. So my hope of joining a chain, and travelling to a Francophone site for introductory instruction, tanked. And then COVID happened, tanking ALL my plans. And tanking my overall fitness.
(Sidebar: who know how much 'just walking around the office and stuff' was maintaining my fitness? Aside from minor exercise benefits, without wearing shoes and walking around corridors my feet have become IMPOSSIBLE. If I wear anything other than runners or my sketchers sandals outside I get excruciating foot cramps - and today, when I had been wearing NEW runners for a few days, then switched back to the old ones for the gym, taking the insole with me: foot cramps again! I can't wear my fabulous collection of Docs anymore. I have to take preventative naproxen to wear the heels that I wore all day five days a week in Japan.)
Now, double-vaxxed, and masked despite the fact that gyms are now exempt from the mask mandate (why, Switzerland, why), I have joined an Aggressively Feminine Gym. It is very pink. It is called, I kid you not, "Mrs Sporty". Turns out it's a German chain. I had an intake session with the franchise owner and she assured me they would preserve my 'weiblich' figure.
Me: das ist nicht wichtig für mich
Her: Wir sind ein FRAUENfitness!
Nevertheless, I have signed a year contract with them. Why? Because the women's gym, unlike either the cheap mixed gym or the Very Serious Gyms, offer extremely entry-level services as part of the package. What do men who don't know a barbell from a beardtrimmer do? What to men whose knees turn in and who cannot stand on one leg do, curl up and die in shame? The only men I've ever seen talking about starting from sub-zero with weight training were able to afford a one-on-one ongoing personal trainer.
Dealing with the gym owner gives me The Genders, but my plan was and is to let the very pink gym have their best shot at *finding* my feminine figure (I am increasingly shaped like Grimace), while I learn both the vocab and the entry-level skills. Seriously, my assigned trainer (more on her in a mo) had to give up and reach around and adjust my wrists (despite the no-contact COVID rules) holding the dumbell (a one-armed bicep curl to overhead press, if I understand Weights Internet correctly) because I just cannot interpret the visual guide correctly or follow her (in English!) corrections. I know enough from doing physio and yoga to know that I would be at less risk of injury with a weight machine BUT that I should not use them, because my stabiliser muscles are my weakest, and with freeweights you work those while you're working the major muscle groups.
So, the Pink Gym Ladies are here to correct me. I grit my teefs through the BMI talk (seriously, you're a LADIES GYM, and both boobs and muscle skew BMI). I was given a simple diet tips worksheet, which was amusing because it was very Germanic - advised three serves of dairy per day, and only on the yoghurt suggestion did they specify low-fat.
Very Good Things About The Aggressively Feminine Gym
Alongside that, the whole room is set up for interval training. There's an overhead 'move to the next station now' three minute timer, and one is supposed to alternate between the tablet with your set routine and a variety of other activities - cardio (jogging on the spot on a slightly soft surface, a step block), balance work (wobble board: i am bad at it) and there's a screen demonstrating assorted bodyweight exercises one could do. Plenty of those stretchy rubber resistance bands, broomsticks, and weighted basketballs, for whatever it is one uses those for.
And, greatest wonder of all:
My last gym didn't even have curtains on the showers, so, like: !!!. I probably won't shower at the gym, because I can just do so at home, but I would be much happier to do so in this environment. I'm just so struck by the fact that not only do they *have* changing cubicles, they've designed those to be standard - no 'here's the normal people space and here's the cubicle for the excessively shy' vibes.
I'd be really interested to know if other Mrs Sporty gyms are designed the same way. Even if not, it feels like the person who designed this one designed it this way not in spite of it being a "women's space" but because it is a women's space. Just. An awful lot of women do not enjoy changing in public, so why make them? (Why make anyone? But women are more likely to TALK about their self-consciousness, so I know it's a thing even for straight, cis, white, relatively thin women.) Something I think about a lot as the Bathroom Discourse inevitably comes around and around.
As for my fitness, I am bad at: interpreting physical instructions; standing on one leg; jumping sideways; lateral lunges or anything involving stretching sideways really; squats; having stable wrists for any dumbbell exercise; and co-ordinating my arms and my body movement when attempting to do the squat-with-arms-out thing. So, pretty much all the things you can be bad at. Also the vast disparateness between the two sides of my body shows up a lot, as does the fact that some of my major muscles do the work of their neighbours (the bicep curl to overhead press thing, for instance, I feel that in my back, not my arms. The weight is potentially too light for my arm strength while being a hard workout for my back).
Good news: I find it much easier to tolerate being bad at these things for half an hour than to slog through a 20 minute run - probably because the variety at least changes the WAY things are bad, so I'm not getting bored as well as failing at all the things.
Further bonuses: the Very Pink Gym is in my old neighbourhood, which is good for my ongoing access to the one coop supermarket that reliably has gluten-free pizza dough. Also the renovated bakery-café is next to the gym, and while it's the same chain as the one in the shopping centre near me now, the staff are nicer down there. Plus I can go check on my favourite local cats sometimes. A+