I walk in and count muchachos, one here, two over there, two more up in the mezzanine, not too many.
There are three differences between me and the other users of this gym—sex, age, and nationality—an aging American woman lifting, sweating, and breathing heavily among young Mexican men lifting, sweating, and breathing heavily.
(Occasionally a muchacha shows up, usually for a short time and usually to work on her abs and legs, whereas my exercises are for the upper body.)
Fewer muchachos means feeling less outnumbered and not having to compete for a particular barbell.
But having no one there is not so good either, for their serious intensity is a welcome accompaniament and an incentive, and besides, I need help getting down the barbell that’s usually at the top of the rack, not that it’s too heavy but that it’s too high for me to reach.
I started out a couple of years ago at Pablo’s Gym, in the former train station, at that time the only gym I knew existed in Guanajuato, an enormous, dark space with aging equipment. I had worked out with weights off and on at home in New York (where going to a gym was unthinkably expensive), at different times using two different books on weight training for women. But here I was, doing up to 15 repetitions instead of 12, three sets of reps instead of two, exercises I had never done before, at the end of the first session I felt that I was about to collapse on the sidewalk, urgently had to find a place to sit down. But I kept going, though there was no place to change clothes so I wore my tights under my jeans, and the bathroom there was unthinkable.
Eventually I learned of the Boss Gym, then on Calle Alhóndiga, because its owner started writing a column for the Chopper, our weekly magazine. It was smaller but with more light and newer equipment and a decent bathroom for changing in. Raúl listened to my story of back pain, probably related to doing situps on a slant board (exhilerating but very stressful), said we would work on my back, and gave me an adaptation of a list of exercises he had prepared—back first, then shoulders, then biceps and triceps, finally chest; for the abdomen he showed me exercises that I did at home because no equipment was involved, although later I discovered that little swiveling circular platform with the hand grip and started doing the fun exercise for the waist on it.
At first I decided I didn’t need to work on my legs, with all the walking I did and living up 75 steps; later on I had a bone-density test, which reminded me of my osteoporosis and made me think I should do exercise implicating the hips, so for a while I did deep-knee bends with a bar on my shoulder and an exercise on a machine. Then it turned out that strengthening my legs was interfering with my yoga—strengthening a muscle shortens it, whereas yoga is all about stretching muscles—so yoga, my first love, won out.
Then there was a crisis with the Boss Gym, when the rent was raised and Raúl was losing money, the solution to which was to empty the living room and dining room of his house and put the equipment, what would fit of it, there. His house was cute but really small; as a private gym for one person the space was adequate, but with one or two others it became quite crowded, and if I walked in and there were three muchachos working out, I had to leave and come back later, a very unhappy state of events.
What saved the situation was another bout of back pain, for which thanks to a Mexican friend I learned of a doctor who was a sports-medicine specialist, one of two who worked half days at the gym of the University of Guanajuato. Aside from an instant cure effected by an instructor brought over by the doctor who gave me the most intense back massage imaginable, I discovered the fact of this gorgeous new gym, an enormous women’s bathroom with lockers and showers, and began to maneuver the bureaucratic labyrinth to be able to use it as an outsider. (“You know,” Elsa warned me as she registered me, “there will be muchachos in the gym.” Yes, I knew.)
There have been complications—the gym closes according to the University calendar, and a few months after I started using it the building with the weights was closed for renovation for a couple of months. After some false starts (going back to Pablo’s Gym only to find that the city had taken over the building, spending a high monthly fee to go only twice to a gym with a very limited schedule that totally conflicted with my schedule for living) I found the New Body Gym, much nearer my house than the University gym but inferior in being smaller and dingy, and the muchachos there tend to stand around and shoot the breeze, a distraction, whereas the muchachos at the University gym come, do their routine, and leave. But I go there and pay by the visit when the University gym is closed—I know from my travels that discontinuing working out and then going back to it can be a difficult experience.
All of the gyms here are designed for men, not women, much less elderly women. This means that a given barbell or dumbbell may become too light to be useful but that the next heavier one may be too heavy to lift. This then means a not-very-happy transition in which I struggle to lift the heavier weight two or three times and then continue the set with the lighter weight, until eventually, much to my relief, I can do a decent number of repetitions with the heavier.
Because of my experience with back pain, after getting my curative massage I discontinued one of the three back exercises I used to do, having found a website that told me it was quite stressful, especially for older folks. But I spend 55 minutes to an hour doing a dozen exercises, mostly three times, the ones for biceps and triceps four, with a number of repetitions that I find frequently decreases after the first set.
Lifting weights can be painful but it is always intense, and somehow the intensity is an attraction and outweighs the pain. And being stronger can be quite convenient; when I first moved to my house up one hill to get there and then steps climbing up another hill that it’s perched on, I would drift down toward town and then take the bus back with my groceries. After a spell of weight-lifting I found myself trudging up the hill with my groceries on my back (I have a large tote bag that converts to a backpack), at times panting and sweating but feeling relief to get away from the buses crammed with schoolkids at the early-afternoon hour when I run my errands. I have yet to fulfill what I told Pablo at the outset was my goal, to be able easily to lift a garrafón full of water (19 liters and a lot of pounds), but at least bringing one in from the patio de servicio to the kitchen is not the torture it used to be.
