Gym Membership-Stretch the Budget for Fitness Use gym membership to battle the financial downturn.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/outdoors/4931912/Gym-membership-stretch-the-budget-for-fitness.html By Tarquin
Cooper
Pressing times: Tarquin Cooper uses gym membership to stave off the recession Photo: MARTIN POPE Gym membership is often the first thing to go when times are hard. Who needs the outlay? As it turns out, I do, for one. I thought I kept in good shape by just running, until I had a training session at my local club. I should explain that my local club isn't your average health centre. It happens to be the newly refurbished health club of the Chelsea Football Club. Chelsea is the only top team to have its own, separate club for the public. The players may train in private in Surrey but this is where the WAGs come to get into shape. So it is in the slender shadow of Carly Zucker (the fiancee of midfield player Joe Cole), on a nearby treadmill, that I go to be stretched, pulled and pushed via an assortment of contraptions that I hadn't previously known existed. Alarm bells instantly ring when the club's fitness manager Darren Garrett tells me he puts Abramovich's bodyguards through their paces. We start with a gentle warm up on the club's unique outdoor running track. This is on a balcony and gives amazing views across Brompton Cemetery. But I'm soon brought down to earth as I turn the corner to find Garrett waiting with a Dyna Band. This is a kind of giant elastic band which he loops around me. "This is one I do with the players," he says. "When I say 'go', I want you to run as fast as you can. I'm going to try and stop you." I put my head down and, with the Dyna Band around my stomach and Garrett digging his heels in behind me, launch myself forward. My legs move but I don't, until suddenly I get some traction and start dragging Garrett behind me. Once is tough, twice is painful. By the fifth sprint I'm gasping and hoping the Swiss ball will offer some salvation. It does not. I struggle with a series of yogic contortions until I end up flat on my face. The exercises are designed to work the abdominal muscles and strengthen core stability (the current buzz word of every personal trainer). The muscles down the front hold everything in place, apparently, and ar essential for balance and posture. But Garrett confesses he has an ulterior motive. "I'm discovering your weaknesses," he says. "Then we can work on them." So far he's doing a pretty good job. I perk up when he asks if I can do a pull up, until he produces that wretched ball again. I have to do the pull up with the ball resting between my chest and the wall to prevent swinging, which would make the move easier. After three attempts, I'm cursing. Why couldn't the Swiss stick to cuckoo clocks and chocolate? But at least they didn't design the Kinesis machine. "It's Greek for movement," explains Garrett. "It's about functional fitness, about how your body is meant to work out." Unlike traditional weight machines, that confine the muscles to a specific movement out and back, the Kinesis is freestyle. Other muscles are required to hold it all in place – to be precise, those now very sore core-stability muscles again. I am told to balance on one leg on a wobbly semicircular ball and perform a chest press. I half expect to be asked next to bark like a seal. But it's all for a good cause. The gym is the only place where I have a chance of getting my sloping shoulders, rounded from too many hours crouched in front of a computer, back to square again. Finally, Garrett puts me in a posterior stretch machine, which is a cross between a torturer's rack and a birthing chair. My leg is raised until my hamstring feels like it's going to snap and then locked in place until the egg-timer rings a minute later. It is torture but, if I want to improve my running, this is where I need to spend some time. As Garrett says: "You're only as good as your weakest muscles."
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