How Your First Gym Experience Could Go Wrong

After seeing all those inspiring Instagram posts and Snapchat stories of fitness junkies and deep captions like "fitness = happiness," I decided to join the club to shed the extra pounds off my overweight body.

Reality came crashing down on me on my first day.

Having paid the membership fee and collected the ID card, I walked into the gym with a mind racing with excitement and a body that was raring to go. The instructor guided me to the treadmill and I hopped on it immediately. I stood there for a while, rooted to the spot, before I realised I had no clue how to operate the machine. So I asked the instructor for help and he complied, showing me which buttons to press. I, being the gym noob I am, was standing on the running belt all the time and was all of a sudden in motion. I jumped out just in time before falling face first to the ground.

Having worn myself out after 5 minutes on the treadmill and a few crunches, I decided that was enough cardio for the day, much to the amusement of my instructor. But the "today is my first day, I'll pick up with time" excuse was always there. So I sat there panting, exhausted, and took a break. I spent twice the time on resting than I did on working out. I looked around for a while and saw this guy with a well-toned figure and ripped muscles lifting a huge pair of dumb bells with relative ease. I kept watching as he kept on lifting it, until he finally stopped. It looked really cool so I thought about giving it a try. I mean how hard could it possibly be? He's a human just like me, so why couldn't I do it?

So I picked up a dumb bell in each hand, took a look at my reflection in the mirror and felt ripped already before starting to lift the one on my right hand. A searing pain tore into my muscles, but that wasn't enough to stop me. I had 'no pain, no gain' in my head so I went on and put all my strength into completely lifting the 40 kg beast, until it slipped off my hand and crashed into the ground just a millimetre ahead of my right foot. THUD! Everyone was knocked off their perch and stopped with their exercise to have a look at the source of the sound. I was at the centre of their attention. To complete my humiliation, the gym instructor walked up to me to tell me I wasn't ready yet and what I did could have been dangerous.

I decided to call it a day since I had enough and got prepared to leave with the thought of coming back the next day. To sum up the day, I inadvertently walked into the ladies washroom just before leaving much to the amusement and laughter of some of the gym users. Moral of the story: Always listen to your instructor on your first day at the gym.

Tahmeed Chaudhury is a diehard Liverpool fan and procrastinator who is finding it hard to come up with a catchy blurb. Send him ideas at tahmeed789@gmail.com