In Praise of Exercise

I've always been a regular exerciser, me.  Well, 'always' in this case meaning ever since I was about fourteen, which by now definitely covers the last twenty years or so (!)

I remember what motivated me at the time...a family member coming in to the kitchen while I was doing the washing-up.  Standing in the doorway for a moment, she regarded me closely and said "You look pregnant".


Now, it must be said that I come from a family in which both sides are a little bit obsessed with weight.  I probably only looked pregnant because I was hunched over the sink, but even so - as an awkward teenager that comment was enough to make me want to do something.  That something consisted of my going out the next day and buying a copy of a teen-magazine called 'Number One', with which came four - FREE! - exercise cards.

Accompanying these cards, which contained popular exercises and how to perform them, was a little quiz presumably designed to check just how much in need you were of exercise in the first place.  The first question was: "Who do you see when you look in the mirror - Rachel Friend or Turbo B?"  For the uninitiated, Rachel Friend is the slim blonde Aussie actress who played Bronwyn in 'Neighbours', and Turbo B the cuddly Snap rapper who came up with the best line in rap, ever ("I'm serious as cancer when I say rhythm is a dancer" - isn't that just utterly fantastic!?  Shame it doesn't work when said in an English accent, but then what sort of rap actually worth its salt does?)

The process of adding these pictures here has just made me laugh all over again.  Even at the relatively unknowledgeable age of fourteen I was baffled by that quiz question.  I didn't have a clue what to tick.  I knew I looked nothing like the gorgeous Rachel, but did that mean I was a Turbo B-alike by default?  The quiz writers seemed to be saying that with a couple of days' exercise a week you could turn yourself from Turbo to Rachel, which just seemed...well, a tiny bit over-aspirational in my limited viewpoint.  But I was still prepared to give it a go.

The exercise cards had a helpful little section on the back that told you what tracks to play whilst doing them (e.g. Toning - Adamski 'Killer').  Pity my family, who then had to listen to these tracks every day while I perfected the Turbo-B suffocating moves in my bedroom.  And slowly but surely, exercise became a slight obsession.  I even studied to be a personal trainer, before I realised that what made me love exercise was the fact that it cleared my head and it was something I didn't have to think about.  Scrutinising other people's sweaty Russian Twists wasn't going to be my dream career choice; neither was going up to random people in gyms to tell them in a roundabout way that they looked like a mouldy old bag of spuds and that only I could turn them into a slimline oven chip.

And so I remain a solitary exerciser; even in 'group' classes like Zumba I'll zone almost completely out.   I didn't turn into Rachel Friend, but hopefully I'm even further away from Turbo B.  No offence to Mr. B, but he is male, after all.