a day ago
The shame of a middle-aged gym-goer
We are told being non-judgemental is a virtue, that discrimination is a vice, and that the avoidance of prejudice is not merely possible but laudable. Perhaps the quickest way to give the lie to these statements is to reveal to you that I am a 53-year-old man who regularly goes to the gym. What are we to make of someone of advanced middle age who nevertheless spends some of his few remaining hours lifting bits of metal up and putting them down again? Prejudice, I fear, suggests the worst.
In the gyms I attend, the mirrors show a mix of the youthful and good-looking, the muscled and toned. Then there are the very fat, with their looks of wild hope or sinking doubt, the smattering of the ordinary and eccentric. And in among all these figures, lightly paunched and wearing a threadbare T-shirt that my wife would throw away if she could get her hands on it, is me.
On the upside, I can report that those who know me have commented occasionally on the amount I eat. 'Where does it go?' has been asked more than once. I am in shape. The shape in question is ovoid, but without the gym it might be triangular.
In youth, one comes into the inheritance of one's body. It can be intoxicating. Young men show the same sense when newly behind the wheel – they act like the car is an extension of their body and the thrill of it goes to their heads. When the world still has dew on it, a great deal does.
Back in the day I would put the hours in and my metrics – my weights, my speeds – would inexorably improve. No longer. Slowing my decline has become the only game I play. These days my left knee is not so good. Forgetting my greying hair, I sometimes wonder what a joint like that is doing in a kid like me. But perhaps never having had any great athletic talent makes it easier for me to continue to enjoy what little is left; I have no glory days to mourn.
I am in shape. The shape in question is ovoid, but without the gym it might be triangular
'In the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there crept a look of furtive shame,' wrote P. G. Wodehouse, 'the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French.' Such should be the look of a man of 53 about to lift heavy weights – which I happily no longer do. Powerlifting should, like ponytails and the use of emojis, be limited to the under-thirties. There are Americans who believe Robert F. Kennedy Jr's muscles make him fit to be Secretary of Health; my own presumption (I am suspicious of any attempt to hold onto youth pursued too long, or too single-mindedly) is that it suggests him to be dangerously vain.
Learning to love exertion is no bad thing, however – and keeping it is potentially honourable. For my part, I wish to keep the spring in my step and the sprezzatura in my appetite for as long as possible, and I enjoy retaining my taste for labour. 'Happiness,' said David Grayson, in his wonderful old book Adventures in Contentment, 'is ever a by-product; it is the half-conscious expression of a man greatly engaged in some other undertaking; it is the song of one working.' I am a 53-year-old man who can still get enthused about press-ups. I fear I deserve to be judged.
