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In Search of the Perfect Health Club

 

By Shari Cohen 

It is 5:00 pm on a Sunday.  I should be at the gym.  Another year is about up, health clubs are doing their new year’s resolution sales, and I need to decide whether to rejoin the club on the 43rd floor of my building.  Here’s the catch: I almost never go.  In fact, I can't bear to think how much each of the handful of times I have used the upstairs club with its spectacular view of the Hudson and beyond, with its pool that opens to the sky in summer, with its relative serenity, has cost.   

For the last three years, I have felt so ashamed that I couldn't regularly make it upstairs –"I'm lacking in discipline," I told myself, guiltily -- that I never allowed myself to investigate other clubs.  But in the last weeks, I embarked on a health club search that took me from the New York Sports Club empire to the new Jewish Community Center on the Upper West Side.   

To my surprise, this relatively mundane adventure in comparison shopping revealed that deciding where to sweat, stretch and swim involves fundamental trade-offs that can be paralyzing (at least that is what I am telling myself now, as I write this piece rather than swimming laps).  Where, after all, do we find self-discipline in a world of ultimate choice?  What kinds of personal rituals can we invent for ourselves to make ourselves feel commanded?  How do we weigh convenience against community or social benefit?  To what extent do we buck the trend toward a commercialization that segments our lives into pieces?   

The club in my building seemed to have it all – a pool, a sauna, a perfectly adequate array of exercise machines and a great view.  And yet…. 

Just what exactly was lacking upstairs on the 43rd floor?  Was it the fact that the club was usually empty and, as a result, there was no one around to motivate me?  Was it the fact that the people in the next lane of the pool or on the treadmills were nearly twice my age?     

My first stop was the New York Sports Club at 23rd Street and Park Avenue South, a few blocks away from work. I sat down with the efficient and perky saleswoman to go over the details of what the club has to offer.  Our encounter reminded me of buying cosmetics: part of the somewhat intrusive sales pitch is flattery and attention while invoking a sense of guilt and vanity.   (What are your workout goals? she asked me.   My goals, I thought?  Why do I need to tell her my goals?)  

New York Sports Club is a citywide empire.  Three clubs are within ten blocks of my office and there is one right across the street from where I live.  Perfect, no?   I could slip out of work at my preferred workout time -- late afternoon -- and come back rejuvenated.  Timing might, after all, be the root of the problem, I have said to myself.  I suspect that this might explain why my idea of tricking myself into going directly from work to my building’s health club, without stopping at my apartment, has never worked.   

The NYSC epitomizes the large, anonymous club: rows and rows of the most modern aerobic machines, now with elaborate entertainment systems which allow you to bring headphones and plug right in; weight rooms, spin classes, personal training, massage, yoga.  People stuffed into the rows -- huffing, puffing, grunting and sweating -- in an atmosphere that strangely motivates: the alienation of individual exertion is somehow balanced by the peculiar intimacy of bodily exposure and by the common overcoming of lethargy and stress.  There was a problem though: no pool. 

My whirlwind tour continued on the Upper West Side at another NYSC, this time across the street from home, at 62nd and Broadway.  Another perky saleswoman.  More rows of machines, a squash court, yoga classes.  A great introductory deal.   

On to the new JCC on the Upper West Side.  I arrived at the not-yet-completed building to find the lobby full of excited people milling among information tables. It was hard not to be impressed by this new enterprise and its immediate popularity.  I was just in time for the 4:00 pm tour of the health club and pool.  The twenty of us followed our guide to our first stop: the luxurious Olympic sized pool.  Tall windows that provided a great view of the neighborhood surrounded the pool, which was already full of kids and lap swimmers.  (“Great hours; no lane sign-ups,” I noted to myself).   

The guide led us next to the locker room and the club.  The place was so new that the JCC stickers on the barely used shampoo and conditioner dispensers were still intact.  There were unlimited towels, gleaming new blow driers.  And the gym had workout machines that could compete with any commercial club. 

No sauna though.  "That could break the deal," I said to myself, as I tried to imagine taking the detour to 76th and Amsterdam on my way home from work. 

I also reflected that a health club that is part of a larger community center holds a certain attraction for me.  In my comings and goings from the gym, I could accidentally bump into people who are coming from the library or from an art class. At least I could spare myself the socially disembodied feeling of the exclusive and excessive focus on the body that one finds in places like the New York Sports Club.  

But my general tendency not to go with the crowd and my suspicion that I might never find my way to a club that was far from both work and home made me rank the JCC lower in my mind.   

Looking back at this endeavor to find the perfect health club, I must ask myself whether it was all just a game I was playing with myself, all a series of rationalizations to distract myself from my basic inertia? 

I have to admit that I have never been terribly disciplined about working out, never been one of those people who feels compelled to engage in the daily practice (even though I regularly imagine myself getting up at 6:00 am to swim).  Sure, I have experienced the rush one gets after 45 minutes of cardiovascular exertion and the pleasure of seeing muscle tone slowly emerge.  I also understand that getting to the gym is the real struggle and that if you make it as far as pulling on your swimsuit and shorts you have already traversed the small but critical psychological precipice that allows you to sail effortlessly into your exercise routine. 

As I walked home, I passed Central Park and could see the runners and bikers who are miraculously committed to their sports even when the temperature dips below zero.   This reminded me that my real preference would be not to have to make time for exercise at all, but to have it seamlessly integrated into my daily life.  However, I am unlikely to engage in manual labor at any time soon or even to ride my bike to work.  I am, for the moment, bound by an urban life and a sedentary office job.  If I am going to take care of my body, it is going to have to be in the unnatural and somewhat monotonous form of swimming laps.  And I am more likely to engage in simulated climbing on a stair-master than to climb the twenty-eight flights of stairs to reach my apartment. 

I arrived home just around five o’clock, and had planned to go right upstairs to the gym.  Instead, I began to write this piece.  I don't know if a day goes by without thinking about my desire to exercise.  But thinking about it or writing about it is not the same as doing it. As I put the finishing touches on this essay, I get a phone call from one of the saleswomen at New York Sports Club.  "Where are you?" she says.  "I just want to let you know that, as of today, we're having a closeout deal." 

To read additional articles by Shari Cohen, click here.

    

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