Spirit and Story Archive
Welcome to Spirit and Story, where you can find the latest thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on the contours of our contemporary spiritual journeys.
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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.
