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Tom Stafford
Gyms are to exercise what
masturbation is to sex. Solitary, indulgent, and a tragic
waste when you could be having fun with someone else. Even
better, a no-strings game of badminton is easier to arrange
than a no-strings shag. When did exercise become a duty? Why
is everyone suddenly going to the gym like it is some kind
of curse, and lamenting when they miss it like they've failed
in some sacred duty. If you don't want to go, don't go. Why
the hell should you do anything you don't want to in your
free time? Here's the news guys and gals - exercise should
be fun. Bodies are for feeling with and enjoying, not for
torturing. You're young, you're supposed to run around and
jump and scream with your friends, to feel the exhilaration
of movement and effort. You're not supposed to spend hours
using single muscles moving strange metal contraptions in
time to bad house music. If you want to get some exercise,
go and play some kind of sport.
Gyms are a rip-off. The best exersises require no fancy equipment.
The duty ethic of gyms is a twisted reflection
of our atomised culture; a culture worshipping a false ideal
of every person self-sufficient in their needs and every need
requiring hard cash to satisfy. Gyms promise impossible compensation
for the costs of leading an inactive, pre-package, over-processed
life. Rather than being able to combine fun and exercise,
exercise becomes another chore that we have to perform, eating
away at the time when we could be having fun. Just like eating
becomes a chore that we carry out alone, on the way to something
else, getting it over as quickly as possible, rather than
taking time to cook and eat with other people.
The gym obsession leads us into an endless chase
after physical perfection. You can never be fit enough, you
can always do more reps, run further, always weigh just a
little less, maybe? This is a sickness. If you feel good,
then you are healthy and damn the scales and the number of
sit-ups you can do. Rather than torture yourself you could
be enjoying a human-scale sport; orienteering or walking in
the peaks, rugby, climbing, dancing, anything.
Gym's are a rip off. The best exercises are
ones which require no fancy equipment. Press-ups, sit-ups,
running, cycling. These are all things you can do outside
of a gym, they involve training your body to move it's own
weight. Any exercise you do should be done in terms of your
own body, aimed at moving and co-ordinating your body weight.
Your can't train strength in abstract. Training a single muscle
to lift expensive bits of metal is an utterly contrived situation
producing a useless skill. Outside of the gym you have to
use all your body in co-ordination. If you want to be strong,
you need to learn to use your strength as well as develop
it. Take up climbing, or juggling or something that uses weights
in proportion to your own body and develop natural, multi-muscle,
movements. And don't even get me started about people who
drive to the gym to use an exercise bike!
Gyms are an expensive distraction from
the proper enjoyment of our bodies and the symptom of a narcissistic
culture which values how things look over how they feel. Boycott
the gym. I'll meet you in the pub or the park instead.
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