Meathead, Part I

There’s something truly awful about going to the gym: the other people. I think it must be equally as bad for both sexes. Girls have to deal with skinny minnies parading around in tight leggings and needlessly flattening needlessly flat stomachs, while working up an unwomanly sweat in many a jiggling contraption. For the boys, it’s not much better. Chaps generally tend to go to the gym in order to get muscles. But then each gym is filled with characters so huge that intimidation is difficult to avoid. We skinny folk cower in the corner, while the fat lads get lost somewhere in between, neither group getting anywhere while the perennially muscular buffen up further still.

Nevertheless, I still occasionally get in from work, eat something disgusting and cheap, pull on a tracksuit and head out to the local gym round the corner from the flat. I’ll never be one of those monsters but it’s nice to blast away the cobwebs and manufacture some endorphins to see one through the rest of the week.

One of the things I hate the most is the bench press. This is where you lie down on your back on a bench and repeated lift a loaded bar above your chest. It’s difficult, everyone looks to see how much you are lifting and, in my particular gym, it is situated right in the middle of the floor. So while I quite like to slip in and work out inconspicuously, plucking up the mood to get on this device requires striding over to it as if declaring “Come and see how much I can lift!”

How much I can lift is, of course, not very much. It doesn’t help matters that my inherent dislike of intensive physical labour makes it difficult for me to bother to push myself enough to make any real progress. And before this descends into the vacuous bile that is weight-training discussion, I hasten to add that this is heading somewhere typically ridiculous.

It was a Monday, not long ago, and I was in the midst of being very disciplined about going to the gym. I approached the dreaded bench press with dignity and pride and proceeded to load up and get repping. I was determined to push myself and did more sets than normal. In addition, I was aware of one of the regulars ‘observing’ me via one of the mirrors. This was mildly offputting: people should be focussing on themselves as far as I’m concerned. Nevertheless, I pressed on, quite literally.

At the end of each set, the bar needs to be placed back on its rack. There are hooks to rest it on and the bar has to be lifted over and on to these. Whatever happens, you need to make sure you have enough strength left in you to do this because, if you can’t, there is nowhere else for the bar to go...

Holding the bar in its highest position at the end of the set, I decided I could squeeze out one more repetition, just to push myself that bit further. As I brought the bar down, I realised this was a terrible idea, akin to crossing the road without looking or opting to take a first job in the headhunting industry. Panic set in somewhere in my mind and my arms rushed to bring the bar back up before everything gave way and collapsed onto me. I managed to get the bar back up, feeling the muscles in my arms scream in protest.

But there was an unusual clunk as I realised I had pushed the bar up into the underside of the hooks instead of bringing it to rest on top of them. The last ounce of strength had accelerated the bar up into this underside with such force that it practically bounced off the hooks and began its descent towards me. My arms were again called to come to the rescue but they gave out almost immediately. They strained in vain, making little to no difference as I realised that a considerable number of kilograms of metal were hurtling towards my face. By considerable, I simply mean that it is more than anyone would want to catch with their head, not that I was shifting huge amounts.

I thought to roll the bar down my chest but as I went to move the bar, I realised it was heading for my neck and would only garotte me. Time slowed down, or at least my thoughts accelerated. Was I going to die? What would my skull look like crushed? Would it be embarrassing? I felt my eyes bulging in surprise as the one catastrophe I had always been determined to avoid was all set to befall me. From the depths, it occurred to me to turn my face. If I were to survive, I did not want a wonky nose.

This meant I was able to glimpse the unfolding of this cruel disaster in one of the gym’s distant mirrors. They come in handy for vain people wanting to admire their own gurning faces as they pump iron so there was no reason why they couldn’t serve to allow me to witness my own embarrassing death.

As the bar struck my cheek, I felt my legs sort of jolt up. I heard a slight crunch and detected a small seismic shift in the plates of bone forming my skull. The bar and its weights bounced up again as the atmosphere in the gym turned to one of emergency. I felt people’s attention drawn immediately. My arms worked to catch the weight and prevent it landing for a second time on my face. All the while I was staggered that my head had not exploded on impact like a smashed egg.

But the weight had been caught by something else. I became aware of the character who had been paying a bit too much attention previously. He had dashed over from his bench and grabbed onto one end of the bar, holding its weight off of me. Meanwhile, another regular, a ratty man with a pony tail and short shorts, had taken up the other side. Together they hoisted it off me.

I sat up, a bit dazed. Everyone was looking and I detected chuckles. It was indeed funny. Mostly because I wasn’t decapitated. Had I been, maybe the chortles would have been altogether less hardy.

I immediately thanked my two rescuers as sincerely as I could, trying to laugh things off in the process, which was challenging given the pounding sensation in the side of my face. “If you want someone to spot you,” one said, “you should just ask.”

“I’m think I’m done with that for now,” I explained.

They went off and I stood there, dazed, drinking in the mortification as people lost interest. Was I concussed? Was I in shock? I felt like there was a lot of adrenaline coursing through me. It was like falling off a horse: I wanted to flee the scene but I knew I had to get back on. It probably wasn’t the smartest idea as I really had no idea what was what or potentially who I was.

Later on that evening, I decided to go up to one of the rescuers who was still around and thank him again. Sort of addressing the embarrassment head on so it wouldn’t become an issue. Or something. I played the angle that I was sorry for taking such a risk in the first place.

He looked down at me. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I did the same thing when I was eighteen.”

I failed to mention that I was actually twenty-three.