The new office complex has a gym. It also has a largely decent cafeteria, but that's not for today's column.
The gym is of a decent size, has what I think of as a large selection of equipment, and also has a pool, basketball court, and rock wall. They also have classes there, of various sorts. Initially, I only cared about the rock wall. It just seems like a fun thing to do. Climbing rock walls, I mean. Fun, and potentially useful if I'm ever kidnapped and taken to a remote canyon. Survival skills would also come in handy, but let's take one skill at a time.
But once I signed up for the gym (a prerequisite for using said wall of fake rock), I was subjected to invitations to receive a fitness screening (as if I had any questions about that one), postural assessment (ditto), and/or a general introduction to using the machines.
Ah, now that one was tempting. I've never used exercise machines, you see. And not knowing how to use the machines, I could only imagine myself going into a gym, staring blankly at the incoherent instructions on said machines, and then flailing like an idiot while everyone else in the gym pointed and laughed.
Oh, right: The other big, appealing factor of this gym is that it's not very crowded. Which was the appeal of the shovelglove thing (home, early morning = no one awake to mock me), but I haven't found the time to do that regularly in over a year.
So I went in and got the various assessments. Turns out that my posture isn't terrible, but could definitely use improvement. And my right arm and leg are larger than their left-side counterparts. Oh, and I am impressively non-flexible. Odd, because back in high school it seemed so much easier…
Then the trainer showed me how to use a handful of the machines, and set up a basic exercise schedule. So now I know how, and how many. This is vital, because before now I've had no clue whatsoever.
My previous employer, Oracle (*spit*), has a gym on the campus. But there was no particular encouragement to use it, and the people who did use it seemed to know what they were doing. I didn't even know how the towel system worked (turns out that the gym supplies you with them; who knew?).
My exercise routine/schedule/whateverthehell is just a light thirty minutes of some leg stuff and some arm/back stuff.
Right now, I am weak, and kitten-like. In a few months, though, I will be slightly less weak, and maybe raise myself to the level of a youthful cat, or perhaps a puppy. I'm really looking to prevent my body from caving into itself over my computer, and to prevent the onset of morbid obesity. Which, fortunately, is still a ways off, but, as an American, I can't rule out the possibility of that happening spontaneously at any moment. Oh, sure, my body fat percentage places me in the "Fair" category, and not the "Needs Work" category. "Needs Work" is apparently a euphemism for "Holy crap! How did you manage to drag your fat ass in here? Did it involve a crane?"
The downside to the gym, I discovered, is not only that the locker room is a bit cramped, and full of variously undressed men, but that some of those men are a somewhat too enthusiastic in their use of cologne. The person who was getting dressed a few feet away from me, for example. I don't wear cologne, and I don't like the vast majority of cologne fragrances, so I'm not very happy about having even a bit of that stuff on my shirt. I'm going to have to work on developing ninja-like dressing abilities. Or just ninja abilities in general.
Slow, weak, ninja abilities.