Fitness & Me

I was never a fat guy-thanks to my genes and also to my "healthy" vegetarian lifestyle. But I was nowhere close to be declared fit. My over enthusiastic efforts to lift and arrange everything myself with the added bad posture during my teens and the twenties had landed me with a slip disc. The situation became worse with time and I was once in a position where the Hunchback of Notre dame would have appeared more straight than me. I was in constant back pain for 15 years and a simple and insignificant task like getting up from the bed was a challenge for me. Strangely, I got so used to living with the pain that it didn't strike me as bothersome. I was used to having it like a nails on the fingers and hair on the scalp.  

I have never entered a gym with the idea of working out and never have I bothered to even know what exactly goes on there. It was always a place where people who are fat or too ambitious about getting the right curves visited… not a place for me…. who defined fitness simply as not being sick. 

I guess the ambience has a lot to do with fitness. I had been to a couple of gyms earlier during my med school days in India as a lame accomplice of my fitness enthusiastic friends . And the memory I have of the so called gymnasiums in India is a crowded small room with the nauseating stench of sweat and loads of shapeless men experimenting  with a few broken fitness equipments, a much garlanded picture of Hanuman (Indian God of Strength), and the only thing that could be called fit in the whole set up were the men in the cheap glossy posters flexing their muscles.My opinion however changed in Brunei. I actually visited the gym because there is not much to do in Brunei after work (thats another reason I took to braying on a blog).This may sound like an advertisement for the gym that I work out in, but I need to hand it out to those guys because the gym has played an important role in getting me out of inertia and setting the ball rolling for me towards getting a fitter physique. A four storeyed building with every imaginable fitness equipments,rock climbing wall, swimming pool, volleyball and badminton courts with instructors parading around in their smart uniforms and cool tapping music in the background - it had all the right ingredients and beckoned me to take a plunge into an aspect of life which I never really cared about until now.

 So finally I made up my mind to add the word fitness and gym into my daily schedule and paid the membership fee. As I moved out, I was pretty sure that like many of my new year resolutions, this idea of fitness will also die a sudden death soon and I will back to being a couch potato. Nevertheless,I would at least make a few visits to this happening place just to have some change from the ordinary.

T he golden rule about doing anything sporty is  -no matter what you do about the activity per se is to make sure you are in the right gear.So I got myself into the fitness gear. I was totally lost on the first day like a fish out of water not knowing how to go about starting the treadmill to begin with. Call me too shy or too proud to ask someone to help me  (this trait is mostly true for all males in my opinion whenever we need some help). The last mill I had a close encounter with was the wind mill in my kindergarten book. I almost fell and dropped trying to walk on the treadmill before I got the rythm and somehow managed to save myself from making a fool. Day one made me realise that my dream of looking fitter would  be impossible to realize without a guide. My knowledge of muscles and movements was restricted only to the anatomy of it till now and to shed the tires on my waist would need help from a trainer. After a long debate over the expenses, I finally decided to hire a trainer. In case you didnt know- indians by nature have to convince themselves that the investment of any kind is profitable ,before they think of parting with their bills... so mentally going through this grill of convincing myself to invest in hiring a trainer was like a genetic exercise which I went through unconsciously. 

And thus happened Lito - my trainer- a happy go lucky philipino who was not the best in the business probably, but surely good enough for an out of shape man to make a beginning. You need a good company and someone with a positive vibe for you to be able to go back and do things which you never really are interested in to begin with. And Lito provided that impetus. Slowly over a period of days, weeks and months, the machines started unravelling their mystery to me. The clanking of steel made more sense and beckoned me to get back to it as soon as I was done with the mundane affairs of the day.  Lito had to move back home to the Philippines for a while but he made sure I was not left in lurch. He transferred my training to Eddie's hands.  Eddie came in as a blessing in disguise. A Bruneian with malaysian origin and Chinese roots, Eddie was Mr.Muscles come to life.. Eddie was into fitness for 9 years and at 32 he was Adonis in flesh and blood. Bulging with all the right curves and an 8 pack abs, we looked David and Goliath every time we got together during the training sessions.I guess I brushed some good charm on him too because he went on to win a couple of body building competitions and was crowned Mr. Malaysia 2013 after taking me under his training.  

Eight months  have passed, I have lost a lot of flab, my back has come back to life and the muscles now say "Hey there! We are here". Gymming is now a routine and  an essential daily activity close to the verge of being labeled as an addiction and obsession.And who in the wildest dreams would have thought that a person like me would get interested into fitness and obsess about it. Such is the way of life….always the unpredictable waiting to happen. As long as its got some good in it, no one's complaining…. :)_ Cheers!