Once or twice a week I change into leggings, trainers and a T-shirt, and head to the gym. That’s what the sum I’m paid for this column goes towards. To be precise, it pays my personal trainer. The gym where I work out is nowhere near my benefice. Nobody yet has seen me pump iron.
When I began this particular training regime, I’d lost weight and was coming to the end of one job and about to begin another. A friend gave me the card of his trainer. Working out with a coach is not like PE at school, the difference being that your trainer is there to make sure your technique is correct and to encourage you. I was hopeless at all games in my youth, especially those that involved acrobatics, running, swimming or balls of any size, shape or composition, so the encouragement came as a pleasant surprise, and still does. There’s someone here who knows more about this and is cheering me on.
The weights room in my old high school was off a basement corridor. It was windowless and it stank. But if I lifted weights, I could get off games, and this was not to be sneezed at. The room was mine to use when it wasn’t needed by the wrestlers or the hockey players. So I discovered a physical activity that I could do. In those days I didn’t know a thing about muscle groups, and felt only vaguely guilty that there was nobody to spot me when I did bench-presses. Unlike my friends I wasn’t expecting to develop muscles like the young Arnold Schwarzenegger, then in the prime of his posing years. As you might expect though, I still posed: the front double biceps pose you see everywhere, in front of the narrow, full-length mirror with my frown in profile. I was 17 and I wanted to be strong.
Starting again at 50, there was more to play for than hard muscles. I had two bad knees, old soft-tissue injuries that somehow morphed into the grinding agony of post-traumatic arthritis. Moving slowly up the list for surgery on the NHS doesn’t provide the usual satisfaction of realising that you’re getting towards the front of the queue. You can’t see the front of the queue. You don’t know where you are on the list. And even when you get to the top and have your pre-op appointment and a date for surgery, there’s always a chance that you might get bumped off the calendar.
At the same time, unless you’re a saint, you are taking the maximum daily dose of codeine and paracetamol and getting bad-tempered at every evening meeting. I couldn’t kneel anymore. I couldn’t walk upstairs in the normal way: every step involved one foot, then the other on the same stair, and both hands on the banister. What kept me going was working out. While I waited for surgery, I’d strengthen all the muscles I’d need to recover quickly afterwards. Quads! Glutes! Hamstrings! Core! ”Wait,” I asked, “What do my abs have to do with my knees?” “It’s all connected,” I was told. And so, I did the Bulgarian split squats, the Romanian deadlift (which targets the hamstrings), the Russian twists and, it seemed, exercises from all over eastern Europe. Lunges are very like genuflection on the move. I worked on balance and strength. Not only did I climb stairs—I climbed them holding kettlebells. Eventually I reached the top of the queue and had the first knee replacement. The surgeon kindly made his incision off-centre so that I wouldn’t be kneeling on it.
After the surgery, there was the rehab. It didn’t feel like I was flying through physio, but every week I could move the new knee a little more. Eventually I was back in the gym, strengthening one knee and preparing for the second one to go under the knife. That was six years ago. Since that time, we’ve had a lockdown, with my training taking place on Zoom in my living room with hand weights, a kettlebell and a giant pink elastic band. In 2022 I reached the top of the list for my left knee. But between the pre-op and the op, I noticed something weird about one of my breasts. This turned out to be cancer. So, more surgery: a mastectomy, and the knee op postponed. In between, I went back to the gym. There were more muscles to be activated, and I was desperate to avoid osteoporosis if I could.
This kind of weight training doesn’t keep you from getting old. That’s not what it’s for. It’s for the moment when the pastoral assistant wonders how I can carry folding tables without trouble, or when the other half of the church door needs to be opened for the bride. Knees done. Breast off. I was deadlifting 65 kilos before the next thing: a non-fatal and non-contagious lung ailment that left me gasping. That’s where I am now, but we’re still in eschatological territory: there are things that can be done before the end. Lifting, or even tipping over, tables. Opening doors.
