The Room I Nearly Didn’t Enter

I joined the gym for the exercise. It took being away from it to notice what else I had found there.

I joined the gym for the exercise. Claire had started before me, got very fit and lost enough weight to make it increasingly difficult for me to remain on the sofa. I followed her food programme, lost weight myself and returned to running. The gym seemed the obvious next step. It was only when I had to stop going that I realised the exercise was not all I had found there.

Just inside the door, there are usually coats hanging from the spin bikes. The bikes are used properly in the morning and again later in the evening, when braver people climb aboard and pedal furiously without travelling an inch. I find the ordinary gym challenging enough. Spin appears to involve loud music, standing up when any sensible person would remain seated and discovering new ways to breathe badly. I am happy with the arrangement I already have with the bikes: I arrive, they take my coat, and neither of us asks anything more of the other. I pass through the double doors with my water bottle, having completed the one part of the class I know I can manage.

The gym itself is not large. Black mats cover the floor, and a window looks out onto the street. If Chris spots someone he knows passing, he opens it, gives a wolf whistle and roars, “God, they’re a great pair of sexy legs!” The legs may belong to some poor man in shorts for the first time that summer, with white hairy legs and equally white socks. He ought to be embarrassed, but he knows Chris, so he fires something back through the window and carries on. Inside, we all laugh and enjoy a moment’s respite. Then Chris closes the window, forgets he ever opened it and we are back at it again.

Dumbbells are lined up on a stand nearby, with kettlebells and circular weights. Two large pieces of equipment sit in opposite corners, one to the left of the double doors and the other to the right of the window. I still do not know the name of either. One holds barbells and has a chin-up bar, which I regard as decorative. The other has cables that Chris moves around according to which part of us has not hurt recently. Between them are two benches, an exercise bike and motivational words on the walls, none of which is much comfort when you are waiting to hear ‘right take 30 seconds break‘.

Before long, you know where to leave your coat, where to stand and what to do when Chris points. The names of things do not matter. You begin to recognise the voices before you even pass through the double doors. You know who will answer Chris back and who will join in once the slagging begins. Somewhere in the middle of it, Chris forgets that he is supposed to be counting. When he asks what number we were on, we suggest eleven. He says four, and we start again.

None of this was familiar on my first visit. I had never been inside a gym and knew Chris only from the nod exchanged by people who recognise one another but have never stopped to talk. I assumed everyone would know at once that I did not belong. They would have the right clothes, know the names of things and understand where to stand. I would be studying the equipment, trying to decide whether it was for sitting on, lifting or keeping well away from.

I had always thought I was well coordinated. Two minutes into the class, that belief was gone. Chris called out an instruction, everyone moved together and I followed half a second later, facing the wrong way. My arms attempted one exercise while my legs chose another. It was like learning another language, except that none of my limbs appeared to be in the same class. At one point, I looked around and realised that I was the only person still doing whatever we had been doing before.

Chris gave me little time to worry about it. He filled the room from the moment the class began. He was exceptionally fit, funny, charismatic and loud enough to make any formal introduction unnecessary. Before I had worked out which direction the rest of the class was facing—he was talking and we were moving again. There was usually an update on his health as well. Chris may look like a man in peak physical condition, but to hear him tell it, he is rarely more than a few days from a serious diagnosis. Every ache is reported to the class. We listen carefully and give it the sympathy it deserves, which is usually none.

Then there is the slagging and good – humoured banter , most of it supplied by Chris. Chris knows who will give it back and who would prefer to complete an entire class without being mentioned. The line is not in the same place for everyone, and he seems to have measured it. He also misses very little. He sees the hand moving towards the lighter dumbbells while the eyes check whether he is looking. He knows who genuinely needs a rest and who has simply decided, as I often have, that eight reps is a perfectly respectable substitute for twelve. He started me gently, but that lasted only until he realised how easily I could be managed with praise. He would tell me I was doing brilliantly, give me just enough time to believe him and then replace my weights with heavier ones.

I began to know the people in the room. I knew who would answer Chris back, who preferred to be left alone and who might arrive looking as though the day had beaten them, then be laughing ten minutes later. For a while, I was in better shape than I had ever been. I would catch sight of myself in the mirror and look again to make sure Chris had not placed a fitter man behind me. Somehow, I had become toned in my fifties while remaining unable to name much of the equipment that had done it. Keeping that body has proved more difficult. I still eat better because of the gym. Giving up alcohol would probably help as well, but there is a limit to how much good behaviour should be expected from one person.

I went most Tuesdays and Thursdays until last June, after work. On some evenings, I spent the drive home building a very strong case for the sofa. Yet I cannot remember ever being sorry that I went to the gym instead. An hour later, I would leave tired, sweaty and in much better form.

By then, Chris knew me well. Or at least I thought he did. “Kieran, you’re a very nice man,” he said one day. “I used to be intimidated by you.”

I was not expecting that. I had spent my first few classes intimidated by Chris, the weights and most of the room. I was certain he would take one look at me and recognise a man who had avoided gyms for fifty-three years and had now wandered into one without knowing the name of anything. Meanwhile, Chris had been wary of me. Perhaps it was my height. Perhaps it was the former principal in me, or the expression I wear when I think I am simply standing quietly. Whatever he had seen, it was not the man inside trying to work out whether a chin-up bar was compulsory.

I had misread him too. Chris was loud, fit and completely at home in the room. He could move his own body over a bar while talking, something I could not have managed even with silence, assistance and several weeks’ notice. I assumed that a man who carried himself like that could not possibly doubt himself

Once I knew Chris better, I stopped assuming that all his confidence came easily. In school, I saw teachers arrive after a sleepless night, worried about a child, a parent or something at home. Then the bell rang and they went into their classrooms. Whatever they were carrying had to wait because thirty children needed their teacher.

Chris has spoken openly about his own anxiety and insecurities. There must be days when he has very little to give, but once the class begins, he gives it. He changes cables, corrects someone’s position, reports a fresh medical concern and keeps everybody moving. The people in the gym are fond of him. If he needs a bit of looking after himself, it is generally done through slagging. Anything more solemn would embarrass all concerned.

It would be easy to miss how closely he watches people. He knows who needs encouragement, who can manage more and who has genuinely had enough. He notices when someone is quieter than usual, or when they have not come through the doors at all.

I stopped going last June. The hernia was becoming harder to ignore, and lifting heavier weights in the hope that it might improve by itself seemed unwise, even by my standards. I am due to have surgery on the 7th of September. It will probably be after Christmas before I can return. I miss the strength I had built. I have since developed a problem around my rotator cuff, and the doctor says I need to strengthen my back. Back exercises were always the ones I disliked most. I had hoped that years of avoiding them might eventually be recognised as a form of treatment.

Apparently not.

Once Chris hears the doctor’s view, neither the shoulder nor the hernia will be much use as an excuse. I may have to develop something else. But the exercise is not what I miss most.

For most of my adult life, school placed me among people every day. Someone was always coming through the office door with a question, a story or a problem. There was laughter, interruption and nearly always somebody looking for something they had left somewhere. I never sought company. I went to work and there it was. Retirement has changed that. The freedom is wonderful, but people no longer arrive with the day.

That is why Tuesday and Thursday evenings may matter more when I return. I will have somewhere to go and people who know me when I get there. I joined because I wanted to get fit. I did not expect a gym to give shape to my week, or to miss the people inside it.

For now, the class carries on without me. Chris brings his usual energy through the double doors, the music begins and Tuesday and Thursday evenings come and go. When I was still attending, I thought of them simply as gym nights. Only in their absence have I noticed how much had gathered around those two small appointments in the week: familiar faces, a voice calling my name, the encouragement to do a little more and the comfort of being known without having to explain myself. Routine can look like repetition until it is interrupted. Then you see the companionship it was carrying.

After Christmas, I hope to pass through the double doors again. My coat will go onto a spin bike. Chris will already be moving around the room, bringing enough energy for those of us who have arrived with less, and someone will look up and see that I am back. There will be no need to make much of it. I will take my place, lift whatever Chris puts in front of me and hear the familiar voices around me. Tuesday evening will be Tuesday evening again.

Stay a Little Longer

Heron & Moss is a collection of stories about people, places and the ordinary things that quietly become part of our lives.