So, I go to the gym on a regular basis here (when I’m not sick that is). The gym set up here is like this: There are two weight rooms and two yoga rooms. Where we live in the guest house is at the halfway point between the two gyms, so I can walk to either in about the same amount of time.
The gyms are open in the morning and at night. In the morning they are open from 6:10 am to 9:00 am. At night it is open from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm. Because of the hour long commute to work I have to leave for work by no later than 7:30, this makes going to the gym in the morning almost impossible. Also, I don’t like working out before eating and breakfast doesn’t start in the cafeteria until 7:00 am. So I don’t work out in the morning.
I try to go to the gym six days a week. Three of those days I do weights and the other three I do aerobics (mainly treadmill running). The problem with the aerobics here is that in the Tower 17 gym you are only allowed to stay on the treadmills for 10 minutes at a time; more on this later. In the Arena gym, you can stay on the treadmill for 20 minutes at a time. So, on aerobics days I go over there, cause even though 20 minutes isn’t enough, its twice as much as 10 minutes. To supplement the 20 minutes, I do jumping jacks and other forms of aerobics after I finish running. That way I get a full workout.
Now, as to the time limit on treadmills, it was put there because of the severe overcrowding of the gym and the shortage of treadmills. It is true that the gym is always busy, but these crazy people here think that ten minutes on a treadmill is enough to do you some real good. It boggles my mind when I think about it. I have seen Indians come into the gym, get on the treadmill for ten minutes and then leave. Obviously ten minutes is better than zero exercise but these people aren’t in great shape as it is and they are trying to lose weight (usually, from what I can tell by looking at them) so someone should wake them up to the fact that ten minutes is not doing squat.
The funniest part is that these people are some of the smartest people I have met. They all have very technical jobs that require tons of brain power to be successful. Yet, here we are with this ridiculous gym situation.
As I stated before the gym is very overcrowded. Around 14,000 people work on this Wipro campus and there are two gyms each with a maximum capacity of 50 people tops. If you add in the yoga, there can be about 200 people in the gym at any given time. That is just woefully deficient. So from 6 pm to around 8 pm the gym is super crowded. There is a bus that leaves campus around 8:30 pm so the gym clears out around 8 pm because people are trying to catch that bus. The gym is still busy after that time though since so many people work nights and go to the gym before work or live here.
The really funny part is how the way Keith and I work out differs from the Indian workout. Keith is my only American co-worker who goes to the weight room on a regular basis. The Indians follow the “Low weight, many reps” work out plan. Keith and I are on the “High weight, less reps” work out plan. So, when Keith and I do bench press, it is pretty funny to watch. Since we do quite a bit of weight, we literally have nearly every weight plate in the gym on the bar at one time. There are about 12 weight plates in the entire room and we put 8 of them on the bar so that we can have enough weight to do bench. Everyone in the gym stares at us funny as we lift that much weight and do not just one or two reps but a full set worth of reps using that weight. They look at us, and we are not too much bigger than the largest of them but we are doing a ton more weight.
Anyway, I’m pretty sore today after the workout yesterday, but it’s a good sore.
No comments:
Post a Comment