Old people in the gym

At the start of the year I made the very silly decision to join a gym. I have been a member of gyms before, and each time I have absolutely loathed it. I’m not one of the people who naturally “gets a kick” out of working out, and the theory that the more you exercise, the more you learn to enjoy it does not in any way apply to me. Every minute spent at the gym is essentially a minute spent desperately looking forward to going home.

Yet against my better judgement, I decided this was the year it was all going to change. I had a minor pre-quarter-life crisis when I turned 21, realising that the hyper-speed metabolism of my youth was in its twilight years, if not months. In a desperate bid to stave off impending obesity, I joined David Lloyd.

After two weeks of deluding myself into believing I was actually enjoying my new, healthy lifestyle, the enthusiasm dropped significantly. With my current attendance rates, I’m getting better value for money paying international fees for a Politics degree.

However, during one of my bi-monthly visits, I discovered something of grave concern. In the toilet, while trying to motivate myself for a 10-minute treadmill run and 7 sit-ups, a middle-aged woman walked past me. Together with her spandex Capri tights and matching crop-top, she was sporting the most disturbing of physical accessories – people, she had a six-pack.

A SIX-PACK.

I KNOW. I know.

And the worst part? She’s not even an anomaly – a strange, but nonetheless expected outlier. No, she is merely a foot soldier in the exponentially expending army of old people in the gym.

They’re everywhere. Want to go for a light jog? There’s a 67 year-old silver fox Usain Bolt-ing it up next to you. Want to try a spot of resistance? There’s a mother benching the combined weight of her four children a few rows down. Maybe just do a stretch and call it a day? Nope, there’s the old lady you helped over the road earlier, doing core-exercises that would fracture YOUR hipbone if you so much as though about trying them.

Everywhere, there are old people in better shape than I am now, ever have been or ever will be. That’s not really fair, is it? We’re students. We’re in our early twenties. Physically, this is supposed to be as good as it’s going to get. But now, not only do we have to compete with each other based on unrealistic examples of youth and beauty sold to us as perfectly achievable by HOLLYWOOD and MUSIC VIDEOS and TWITTER and THE ENTIRITY OF THE DAILY MAILY FEMAIL SECTION. No – we now also have to compete with 49-year-old executives with company-sponsored gym memberships.

Worse still, they’ve successfully taken away the one thing remotely appealing about growing up. They’ve ruined the one thing somewhat dulling my crippling fears of getting old. They’ve crushed the very idea that when you’re an adult, you can stop giving a shit.

I can accept that in our vain and youth-obsessed culture, for a period of our lives, we all have to go through rigorous beauty and health rituals not to be shunned by greater society. Fine. But I was labouring under the impression that there was a trade-off. A deal. A higher plan and purpose, if you will.

During the next ten years or so, you maintain a certain physical level to find someone who deems you all-around attractive enough to commit to you for the unforeseeable future. Then you coast along for a few years, find a job, have babies, go travelling, buy a boat, grow a herb garden. Whatever you need to do to make people around you just a little bit jealous of your life. But then, that’s it. You can stop caring. You can let yourself go together. Grow old and grey and obese together. I THOUGHT THAT WAS THE DEAL.

Apparently not. Apparently it wasn’t enough for the older generations to leave us with a dying planet and a financial system no one understands. They also had to make yummy mummy Yogilates and OAP fitness regimes the norm.

Who’s to blame for this? George Clooney and Demi Moore and Desperate Housewives and Take That, for giving old people unrealistic expectations as to what they should look like? Old people, who really should know better, for buying into it?

I don’t know. But since you’re not sticking to the plan, neither will I. I’m off to watch Antiques Roadshow and finish off a bottle of red and a pack of crumpets, or whatever else it is old grown-ups are supposed to do to unwind. Two can play at this game, oldies.