I go to the gym about five times a week, and the same thing happens every time I go.
I walk in the front door and go over to the desk to check in. I hand the employee my membership card, which she scans. And when she hands it back to me, she always says the same thing.
“Enjoy your workout!”
Enjoy my workout? Who are they kidding? You mean, there are people who actually enjoy this daily torture?
What’s next? Maybe the friendly IRS agent will tell you, “Enjoy your tax audit.” Or your doctor will say, “Enjoy your prostate exam.”
There are plenty of things I enjoy.
I enjoy a rainy afternoon when I can curl up on the sofa and read a good book, or watch a great movie.
I enjoy an afternoon on the lake.
I enjoy playing with Milly, the liver and white springer spaniel that lives at my house.
I enjoy going out with my friends for a great dinner.
I enjoy a well-made Manhattan.
I enjoy being in Athens in the fall, tailgating with my friends and cheering my beloved Georgia Bulldogs to victory, which I’ll get to do in another month.
I even enjoy the results I’ve gotten from actually going to the gym and working out. I’ve lost 53 pounds and six inches off my waist. My blood pressure and cholesterol, once inching into dangerous territory, are now at completely healthy levels.
But I do not enjoy working out. The truth is, I hate it. Why am I supposed to enjoy lifting heavy weights and walking four miles on a treadmill at a 15 percent incline? Why am I supposed to like sweating so much that my clothes look like I wore them into the pool?
I do know people who like to work out, though. My amazing trainer, Chelsea, is one of them. Of course, as a world-class athlete, she probably doesn’t remember a time when she didn’t work out, and she probably doesn’t realize that sitting on the sofa with a pint of Haagen-Dazs watching reruns of “The West Wing” is a lot more fun.
On the other hand, Chelsea is the one who convinced me, after four months on in-home workouts, that I had advanced to the point I needed to join a gym. And now I’ve been going for nearly three months.
So three times a week, I get up before 6 a.m. and go to the gym to do the workouts she developed for me. “Instruments of torture,” I call them.
For just over a half hour, I do resistance training and I lift weights. Then I do about 40 minutes on the treadmill or the elliptical. Chelsea loves the elliptical. I think she’s trying to kill me with the elliptical. I get sweaty and gross and out of breath. This, friends, is not enjoyable.
But there’s method to Chelsea’s madness. It’s something she’s preached since the first day we started working together.
“Exercise is medicine, and I’ll preach it until I die,” she says.
And I believe it. I’ve got the results to show it.
But danged if I’m going to enjoy it.
