One size fits all

which is an urban myth


Today I joined a gym and leisure centre. Yes I did.

Many years ago I joined a gym and every new member was entitled to an assessment by a personal trainer. ‘Hi there Jean’. He said. ‘Let’s fill out a form about yourself and your gym journey’. ‘Great’ sez I. ‘Ok’

Age, height, weight. Fitness background etc.

‘So’ he said….’Would I be right in saying you would like to lose some weight’.

‘Eh, no’ I said. ‘I’m perfectly happy with my weight’

Then followed a prolonged pause.

‘In fact’ I said. ‘I love my weight and everything about myself - I just want to get a bit fitter around the tennis court’.

Prolonged pause.
This was not going well for my personal trainer assessment.

‘Ok’ he said

(He was a young fellow and I didn’t want to embarrass him)

‘Can you show me how some of the machines work’ sez I.

So he showed me around but his own training had not prepared him to talk to anyone who didn’t take the gym journey too seriously.

Anyway, he showed me the running machine, the arm thing, the leg thing, the weights (and here I must give you my personal opinion about weight lifting) ….

‘Em’ I said to him. ‘Weight lifting is not for women, it’s for men’. It’s just not lady like’.

Another prolonged pause.

I’m going to stop now as the conversation went rapidly downhill.

Anyway as I was saying, I told the guy who signed me up today that I wanted to just use the swimming pool, sauna, do Pilates and sit around in the lounge having coffee. I didn’t want to do the leg thing, the arm thing, the weight thing - I just wanted to watch the tennis on the big screen. And he smiled, I smiled. It was a good encounter

But ladies and gentlemen

One size does not fit all.