1) I am not going to complain today.
2) Oh Christ, what if he wants to do more than 10 minutes.

I bit my lip, stare ahead and try to blot out the second thought in my mind by pretending I'm a recruit in Shaka Zulu's army. Shaka, for those of you who don't know, was a charismatic psychopath who ruled over the Zulu nation in the Victorian era. If you were around at the time and over seventeen years of age, you were immediately conscripted into his massive army, and were made to do practice drills that would have most members of the US Marine Corp writing strong letters to their Member Of Congress. I don't care how tough Marine Bootcamp is; I doubt any drill sergeant has made a batallion take off their shoes and then jump up and down on thorns until they're reduced to powder. And even if he has, I doubt he has clubbed to death anyone who cried out in pain.

I don't believe The Beast will do this either, although, by God by the end I start to wish he would. We begin by running at a brisk pace (read: 10 on the treadmill) for 10 minutes. Then we head over to the chairs of doom for leg extensions and leg abductions (yes, that's an exercise) to do 25 leg extensions, then 25 leg abductions, then 25 leg extensions, then 25 leg abductions, then 25 leg extensions, then 25 leg abductions - WITHOUT A FUCKING BREAK.

Then its back over to the treadmill to do another 10 minutes broken into two parts. We begin by walking up a steep incline at a brisk pace (incline: 9, pace: 6.0) for five minutes, and then the incline comes off and we sprint for 5 minutes. Then it's back over to the mats for 15 crunches. Then 20 crunches. Then 25 crunches. Then (yes, you guessed it) 30 crunches. Then (can you wait?) 35 crunches.

Back over to the treadmills. Sprint for 5 minutes. Raise the incline to nine and walk at a brisk pace as before for 5 minutes. Are we done yet? Body says yes. The Beast says no. Back over to the mats for 4 sets of 15 leg lifts. By this stage The Beast is breathing heavily, and I look like my heart burst in my chest.

"I read that you've been out of the gym for a bit, so I thought I'd get you back into it with something easy," says The Beast. And then he laughs maniacally.

I nod, and this seems to perplex him. Then he pays me the first compliment I think I've received since this whole thing began.

"Congratulations on not whining like a little bitch like you normally do. Hit the showers, killer."

I stumble down stairs, suppressing the urge to just hurl myself down them. I don't care if it's dangerous, or if the fall would hurt - right now my legs hurt a lot more! I feel so horrible. My head feels clogged, my legs are throbbing and the music in the gym, if anything, is even worse than before. Welcome back, idiot. The pain palace has missed you.

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(It must be - the papers were saying we'd all die from lack of water, if the heat didn't give us cancer first. And even if we avoided cancer, we'd probably get swine flu, they said. And even if we avoided that, we'd still have to live in a world where the financial markets are crashing, schools are failing and Peter and Jordan were getting a divorce - oh the humanity! Sometimes I really fucking hate the The Fourth Estate, I really fucking do!)

Anyway, the weather was nice and I was fucked if I was spending summer in the gym, eating tofu, farting like a racehorse and generally being miserable while my friends cleverly got smashed, sunburned and stuffed their faces with bbq meats. Then there was the fact that this last couple of months I have been to the States several times - twice on business and once for my holiday. I wisely chose Las Vegas as my holiday destination. Being a Brit, and thus a drunkard, it makes sense to holiday in probably the only city in the world where the authorities allow you to waltz down the street clutching a cocktail the size of your left leg without trying to slam your head off the bonnet of a prowler.

The strippers and gambling didn't hurt. Neither did the incredibly bling shirts, the gangsta wine bottles and the hotel we stayed in that looked like three massive memory sticks glued together in front of some lions and fountains.

That is all over and done with now, as I have returned to Blighty broke, sullen and more than a little portly. I haven't returned to the enormous 108 kilos (17 stone) I was at the beginning of the year. But I am hovering around 100 kilos (just under 16 stone) and this shit stops now. I have been to the gym three out of the last four days and am thus filled with righteousness. The Beast is training me again tomorrow, and this time we go all out. I fully expect to puke, shit or at least burst into tears in the gym when he brings the pain for the first time in months - anything less and I'll be wildly disappointed!

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In the interests of variety, I shall be introducing some new things to this blog. All The Love, All The Hate starts very shortly. It shall be a series of posts in which I will occasionally attempt to cling to the dust particles of hope in this cruel, scum infested junkheap of a world, but mostly it will involve thinking up things that aren't connected to the gym in any way, in order to make myself more miserable. What japes!

Stay tuned.

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"This is my brother. He can have a free towel, but only if he smiles nicely!"

They all then look up at my face expectantly. I crack a sheepish grim and hilarity ensues. Not content with turning me the colour of puce and making me collapse in a sweaty, smelly heap, The Beast has decided to turn me into a regular source of amusement for his colleagues. What japes! I suppose I should be grateful - he could have written a message saying that I only get a towel if I [DELETED IN CASE THE BEAST READS THIS AND WRITES JUST THAT - AND HE WOULD, THE LOUSY SOD!].

My other problem in the gym is that I've finally realised that The Genius function on an Apple iPod is anything but! For those that don't know, (so-called) Genius is a mode on iTunes which you can put on your iPod to make spontaneous playlists. You press play, activate Genius and then it look through your library and compiles a playlist based on what your listening to. In theory this means that if I select a nasty, horrible heavy metal track to scream at me through my headphones to take my mind off my lungs imploding, Genius will then follow that track with a barrage of aural viciousness. In practice, what Genius does, is select one more shouty track and then fills up the rest of the list with randomly picked tunes from my library. At least, that's what it fucking sounds like. How else do you explain it following "Spit It Out" by Slipknot with "The First Day Of My Life" by Bright Eyes?

For those of you who aren't familiar with these two songs, this is Bright Eyes:

And this is Slipknot:

Now imagine you're running along a treadmill listening to the latter. You're breathing heavily. Your internal organs are heaving. Your lungs are burning. Sweat is running off you in rivers. The stitch in your side feels like someone is trying to insert a rusty scalpel into your hip. Even if you don't like Slipknot, you can't argue that it won't keep you at least alive until the next song. Following that aural nightmare with the Bright Eyes however, is - I'm sure you'll agree - a bit if a gear change.

Actually fuck that! It's potentially life-threatening. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with Bright Eyes - after all, the doe-eyed little sod's music is on my iPod - but listening to him in full bloody flight on the cardio machines of death is like employing Nick Drake as a drill instructor for the US Marine Corp. It just doesn't work. And following Slipknot with Bright Eyes is like jumping a skateboard down a flight of stairs, only to have it stop suddenly against a loose brick in the landing zone which sends you flying face first into tarmac.

I couldn't find a clip to represent this, so here's one of the worst skateboarding accidents I have ever seen.

I love YouTube.

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All this year he's witheld this precious gift for a couple of reasons:

1) In the past, I'd ask him for a program, he'd give me one, and I'd do about two days of the program and then complain (The Beast was tired of me complaining).
2) I'd then ask for a new program and repeat step 1) (The Beast was tired of writing programs that never got used).
3) I'd then complain that I was fat and then proceed to step 2) and then step 1) (The Beast was tired of me being useless).

But now my dedication and self-flagellation seems to have paid off. The Beast has issued a program - a 24-page monster with exercises written on it like "Romanian Dead Lift" and "Dumbbell Squat" (which aren't as frightening as they would've been three months ago) and reps of 40 - 50 at a time (which fucking are). Yes, you read that right; 40 repititions of picking up weights in the gym. Suffice to say after the first week of this shit, my arms feel like rubber and the pain in my legs makes standing up and sitting down a planned activity.

However, there is an upside; the first week has gotten me some strange looks from some of my fellow gym-goers. It's hard to describe but it seems to be a mixture of "that guy's insane, he's going to kill himself" mixed with "I can't believe it, that guy hasn't killed himself". Yeah, it's not that much of an upside, but at least it beats the "what the fuck is that fat bastard doing in here" look I've gotten up until now.

I have also managed to fuck up my right leg. I initially thought my problem was with my knee, however, after complaining about the pain to The Beast during one of our murder sessions, his eyes narrowed and he placed his thumb and fore-finger around the top of my knee in a pincer movement.

"Does this hurt?" he asked.
I screamed in reply.
"Hmmm. How about this?" he said, pressing his thumb into my calf.
"Aaaaargh!!! Fuck off!!"
"Stop being such a girl! Focus on the pain!”
"I AM focusing on the pain, you bastard,” I yelled, “it’s not like there’s much else to fucking focus on!!"
"Good, then pay attention! And I need a description. And ‘ow, I’m a girl!!’” is not an adequate description."

As he pressed, the pain under his thumb subsided a little – just little – and slowly started to spread down the side of my leg and curled under my knee. When I told him this, he nodded.

"It’s your Iliotibial Band."
"My whatty-what?"

The Beast describes it thus: Imagine a leather strap that runs down the side of your leg under the skin. It connects to the knee. Excessive running on – as he calls it – “bow-legged limbs brought on through pie-eating and bad posture” can cause it to tighten and strain.

"So this was brought on through cardio."
"Yes."
"So I better not do anymore cardio then!"
"Nice try, sonny," said The Beast. And then he said something I've dreaded since this entire horrible experience of being a gym regular began.

"You are on the rowing machine until further notice!"

Oh no. NO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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My knee started hurting last week Wednesday when I burned 800 calories - my new target as dictated by The Beast - on a treadmill, cross trainer and cycle, after which I looked like the slightly tubby result of a genetic cross breeding experiment involving a human and a radish. The knee ached slightly when I sat down and I ignored it for most of the day. When I tried standing up it felt like someone had whacked me in the side of my leg with a ballpeen hammer. I spent most of the week limping around like an unconvincing Bond villain. I'd love to be able to blame it all on The Beast, but unfortunately I did this to myself.

What I can lay at The Beast's door is a bout of projectile vomiting. I've never exercised so hard that it caused me throw out my lunch, but as I'm finding more and more in The Beast's company, there's a first time for everything. It happened after a particularly grueling cycling session with The Beast and X - the only other member of The Crazy Weights Club. X by the way, looked in about as much pain as me by the end, although in fairness, he'd only joined us expecting a quick cycle at the end of an hour-long workout.

We began with a 20 minutes of lightweight cycling - when I say lightweight we pedaled like buggery until we'd all burned 400 calories and the dashboards of our separate exercise bikes were soaked in sweat. As X tried to dismount, The Beast flicked him with a sweat-sodden towel.

"Where do you think you're going?"
"Oh come on," came the more than reasonable response.
"Come on, my arse! Back on the bike!" yelled The Beast.
"I'm tired," wailed X.
"You don't see this bitch complaining, do you?" said The Beast, jerking a thumb in my direction. "Right, off we go!"

We then proceed to do another 20 minutes, except this time we did 3 minutes on a normal setting and then 2 on the hardest setting available. During this time, FrankMusik's new number was blaring out of the gym's TV. To fully appreciate what we all went through, imagine pedaling up hill through quick-drying tar while listening to this:

At the end of this horrible, vile, disgusting and torturous escapade, we all flopped off the bikes, hit the showers and got dressed. It was only when I was leaving the gym I suddenly felt like Mt Krakatoa was erupting in my gullet. I barely made it into the men's room before a yellow stream of liquid ushered forth from my mouth and into the toilet, leaving the most bitter taste in my mouth I believe I've ever experienced. As I exited the cubicle I was accosted by a man who seemed equal parts muscle and hair wrapped in red spandex and a loose T-Shirt bearing the legend "I'm The Daddy!"

"Been working hard, eh?" he chuckled.
"Too hard, maybe," I gasped, wiping my mouth.
"Nonsense! I used to puke all the time when I first started working out!"
"Really, did you?" I thought, suddenly fearing for my life.
"In my old gym they didn't mind when I puked on the floor in the middle of workout," he said, staring wistfully off into the middle distance. "Of course, the wimps round here have a problem with that. They say it's unhygienic."
"Well, must be off!" I said.

I left the bathroom in search of The Beast? No matter what the side-o-beef with eyes in the loo had just told me, I was sure that puking in the gym couldn't be normal. I must have been pushed too hard. Upon finding that he'd already left, I furiously texted him.

JUST THRU UP! AND IT'S YOUR FAULT!

I nodded in satisfaction and put my phone away. As I made my way back onto the street and towards the tube, my phone beeped in reply. As I scrolled through the text from The Beast, my anger threatened to boil over.

JUST THINK HOW STRONG YOUR STOMACH MUSCLES WILL BE, NICOLA!
SEE THAT? SEE HOW I CALLED YOU GIRL'S NAME?
THAT'S BECAUSE YOU'RE BEHAVING LIKE ONE!

Mind you, what did I expect? In The Beast's view you can't make an omlette without breaking a few eggs and you can't slim a fatty without making him cry. At least he rang me out when he found out I was having trouble with leg.

"I was just calling to see how you're knee was doing," he said. "Any improvement since Wednesday?"
"Well, it seems to be okay. It feels..."
"Good, good," interrupted The Beast. "I've bought an Xbox 360."
"Oh?"
"Yes," he continued, "but it doesn't have any cables or a hard-drive. Now I know you have some spare so bring them to the gym tomorrow."
"Okay, are we training tomorrow?"
"Yes. A spare controller wouldn't be a bad idea, either."
"A what?"
"A controller, for my new Xbox 360. I know you've got a couple laying about. Bring me one."
"Right."
"Oh, and bring me some Xbox 360 games to play or your knee will be the least of your worries."

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Every Monday it was rammed with the Monday Night Crazy Weights Hollaback Squad. That wasn't what they called themselves. I called them that. And not to their faces. Because they were all built like Mack Trucks with arms and legs. What the Monday Night Crazy Weights Hollaback Squad used to do was this; they'd take over a bench press and then take it in turns bench-pressing weights of fucking eye-watering magnitude. One of them would lie on their back lifting a weight of around 1,000 kilos, with their face contorting into a mask of pain of such magnitude that it looked as though their eyes would either dissolve into pools of claret or be shot out of their sockets at Mach 3. The others would stand around the bench yelling expletive-ridden encouragement at their mate, who would proceed to do one repetition (with an admittedly colossal weight) and then leap from the bench to the cheers of the Monday Night Crazy Weights Hollaback Squad and say something like this:

(ahem)

"YEEEEEAAAAHH!!!!! YEEEEEAAAAHH!!!!! WOOOOOOOO!!!! YOU FUCKING LIKE THAT!!!!!! HUH!!!! YEEEEEAAAAHH!!!!! (etc)."

I only mentioning this because this Monday I was late for The Beast, and as is his wont, he decided to start training with another professional torturer/personal trainer by the time I arrived in the gym. I thought that this meant I would have to do cardio, which has now been upped from 650 calories to 700, and reflect on how precious The Beast's time is, and why I should make every endeavor to be punctual in the future. However, The Beast had other plans for me.

It seems The Beast and his mate (who from here on will be known as X, because he might not like seeing his name in an online blog and he's big enough to snap me in half using only his earlobes) have their own version of the Monday Night Crazy Weights Hollaback Squad. It's called the Crazy Weights Club. So-called because if I decide to be sarcastic about their weight-lifting activities in this blog, I might not survive my next gym session with The Beast.

Basically, it's like Monday Night Crazy Weights Hollaback Squad except there's more repetitions on the weights and no celebratory victory lap. There are however, words of encouragement yelled at your head from close range by the person spotting for you. X's preferred phrase of encouragement is "Be aggressive!!". I'm sure this is meant to fire up machismo to power the muscles, but unfortunately it makes me want to laugh because I instantly get the cheerleaders from Faith No More's "Be Aggressive" playing in my head:

By the way, when you start to snigger while holding a 20kg barbell with 35kgs of weight on either end, you damn nearly kill yourself.

The Beast's preferred phrase is "One More! Come on, one more!" which is ingenious in its inherent sadism. When you hear the phrase "One more!" you automatically think you're on your last repetition and so you push harder. It's only at the crest of your repetition that you realise that you're expected to do another one and so you struggle away as The Beast repeats the phrase "One More! Come on, one more!" again. The pain experienced between lower the weight to your chest and lifting it again is enough to black out your memory and reduce your concentration span to about 3 seconds. This means that by the time you start lifting the weight and you hear The Beast's catchphrase again, you actually believe he means it. Of course he doesn't and then you're back where you started.

Aside from these concerns, the only other problem with this activity is the size of the weights we're lifting. The Beast and X work out about six or seven times a week so they can handle these sodding weights. Next to them, however, I feel like a slightly tubby mouse trying to bench press a hundred times his body weight.

However, a couple of miracles occurred during this horrible, horrible afternoon. Apart from me dying of course. The first was that I was able to lift the sodding weight eight times. I may have ground my teeth into powder and felt like I'd been on a roundabout for an hour afterwards, but I managed eight reps on a huge, nasty, former-me-killing weight. Second, I realised that the shirt I was wearing for the gym felt looser around my stomach and tighter around my arms. I haven't lost more than eight kilos since the beginning of the year but my belly seems to have deflated somewhat. When I mentioned this to The Beast, he nodded and clapped me on the back.

"It's ll down to hard work, sport! All down to hard work!"
"Wow," I said. "I know I'd been putting in hellish hours, but this is the first time I've seen it pay off. It's really...

My ramblings are cut short by The Beast boffing me on the head with one of the gym's oversized loofas.

"I meant MY hard work. It's all down to MY hard work. You are nothing more than the clay mould. I am the hard-working body sculptor! Now hit the showers, shitbird!!"

It's good to be reminded of one's place from time to time...

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Apparently Singer Doll might be leaving the Pussycat Dolls after all! Maybe she's jealous that High-Kick Doll is getting more attention? Seems my predictions were right.

There you go, folks. Join a gym. Unleash your inner beast. Get buff. Become a Pussycat Dolls groupie and follow their developments in your spare time.

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I had a head cold coming on. Or a full on cold. Or a sore throat. It didn't really matter what the according to Hoyle definition was. I was coming down with something. I was getting sick. I am ill. This means exercising activities are suspended.

This means no gym.

In past days I'd probably have welcomed that state of affairs. Today it's made me mad enough to fart chlorine. As much as I hate going to the gym (and I do hate it, with a passion that borders on the murderous) I loathe and despise not being able to go to gym. I don't like the pain The Beast inflicts upon my body, but I hate not having the choice to have the pain inflicted. If that makes sense. Overall I hate it when my body breaks down because it's almost as though every weak aspect, every lazy impulse and every passive fibre of my being have joined forces to sabotage my efforts to look less like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

It's not just my body has let me down. Now I have to drink vast copious amounts of Vitamin C, swallow mouthfuls of Echinacea (which tastes like ear-wax) and stay on a diet that doesn't include bread, pasta or anything nice. It's soup and water from here on in until I recover. Recover - ha! If I was out for the count I'd be recovering. As it is I'm just sniffling and shivering.

And this is really what pisses me off! While my pussy immune system has managed to prevent me going to gym (The Beast has demanded I don't come in and infect him - and if I do, I'm dead, you understand?!) it's putting up just enough of a fight to make me work-fit. I'm not bed-ridden, I'm poorly. I'm not sick enough to stay home, but I am too sick to go to gym. And of course, this happens after a week of hellish cardio, in which I put in five fucking days of sweating all over the place and burning off nearly every calorie that went into my body. Just when I get back into the groove of going to gym on a regular basis, my body decides to hold a white flag and fail like the little bastard it is. Right now I feel like punching my own lights out!

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I haven't had a cigarette since then, and while I'm sure it's done wonders for my health (HA!), I miss them terribly. I miss them like an old girlfriend. An old girlfriend from a damaged teenage relationship. The sort of girl that everyone told you was bad for you. The sort of girl who was bad for you. The sort of girl who'd hurl tantrum after tantrum, play you like a cheap, cracked viola, and generally treat you like shit but you didn't care because she was smoking hot and dynamite in bed. And she could bake great cakes.

That's how much I miss them. The only reason I haven't taken up toking again is that giving up a second time (yes, I'm stupid enough to have quit and then started again!) was such a collossal bitch, I'm not sure I could take round three. Also, my new, enhanced lung capacity can barely cope with some of the things The Beast instructs me to do and I shudder think what would happen I was forced to run up a flight of stairs while nursing a smoking habit. The goop in my lungs would probably be forced into evolving into a sentient being which would then choke me to death if that happened.

Speaking of which, something strange has happened in the last few months - and no, unfortunately it isn't weight-loss, although hopefully that'll be on the way shortly as The Beast has informed me that the next packet of BBQ-flavoured cashew nuts I eat will be the last meal I get to enjoy before he kills me. I am now able to burn 650 calories (if the cardio machine read-outs are anything to go by) without feeling like my innards are going through armageddon. In the last week I've visited the gym three times (and I'll be going again after I finish this, God Help Me) to do cardio, and was able to make it through 40 minutes are sweat-spraying mayhem with little to no ill effects. I'd like to believe that this is my body learning to cope with regular exercise, but then, I'm such a pessimist that I find it more likely that my body is gearing up for some sort of inner rebellion at some stage.

At the very least, I'm in for more pain. I know The Beast reads this blog and will probably be devising some hideous torture to test the limits of my new found endurance. Why print this, then, you ask? Well, he was going to do it anyway. The least I can do to limit the damage is let him know everything's going according to schedule...

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Okay you can stop laughing now.

No, seriously you can stop laughing.

Shut up, okay!

Fine! Fuck you! Okay?

Anyway, we walked - we he did, I kind of lurched - over to the training mat area and he proceeded to tape up my hands. Initially I thought this was an exercise where he just strangled me to death and was done with it, so imagine my surprise when he pulled out a pair of boxing gloves and slipped them over my hands. All of a sudden I heard Survivor's number one hit belting out through my brain.

I started bouncing on my heels, jabbing the air. I circled the mat aggressively. I faked, ducked weaved, and lunged. I bounced up and down and again, and shook my head.

The Beast slapped me in the face.

"What the fuck are you doing?!" He yelled.
"I'm, just... you know... getting into th-"

The Beast slapped me in the face.

"Rhetorical question, dingbat! You don't know what you're doing! So allow me to enlighten you. Rule number one about boxing; you're an idiot. Seriously. Eliminate the thought process from your mind. The moment you try to start thinking during boxing, you're fighting an uphill battle. The trick is to learn the basics of what you're capable of and build on that. Then you don't need to think."
"So you mean, you react on instinct?"

The Beast slapped me in the face.

"Don't try to make yourself sound cool. You are not cool. You are an imbecile who knows nothing. Now, let's begin!"

I learned how to jab. I learned how to deliver a right hook. I learned that you need to keep your stance wide. I learned that you need to keep your body turned sideways to reduce the target area. I learned to keep my arms up to prevent being hit. I learned to lead with the left and then throw a right cross. I learned that the heel of your back foot needs to be off the ground at all times. I learned that boxing gloves are heavy. I learned that hitting pads is hard. That The Beast has no mercy. That sweat stings the eyes. That properly delivering a right cross makes me feel like I've been kicked in my ribs. That heavy breathing is a sign of weakness. That pads hurt when someone hits you with them. That farting while boxing isn't funny. Not in the slightest. That it results in being poked in the nose. That boxing gloves really weigh a ton after fifteen minutes. Well, actually it was about ten. Okay, it was five, but they are still fucking heavy. That I am an idiot. That if I just do as I told, that within a split second I can deliver a decent right cross. That if I get cocky I will be poked in the nose.

After fi..te..five minutes we stopped. Sweat is running off me in rivers. The Beast looks like he just woke up.

"Very good," he says. "You will hurt soon."

I will hurt soon. This is good. I want to do this again.

I have obviously lost my mind. It's a good place to be...

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I'm talking about cashew nuts. BBQ-flavoured cashew nuts. Here are some cashew nuts. Look at how yummy they look.

Look at them. Yummy. Not as yummy as BBQ-flavoured cashew nuts, but yummy just the same. Now if you could imagine them covered in MSG and salt and BBQ flavoured "stuff" you'd be staring at a food stuff that actually makes my heart beat faster. Of course, they're very bad for me. Well they would be. They taste nice and yummy and the world is a cruel place and if there is a God, he's a sadistic prick. This is why everything in life that tastes good is bad for you. Cashew nuts are bad enough, but BBQ-flavoured ones are a heart attack in a bag, apparently. I found this out while I was Googling them to find an image of them. The second link that pops up under that search string tells you just how bad they are.

The Beast confirms this when I arrive at the gym and pick his brain on whether the internet is right.

"Cashew nuts?" he sniffs. "They're awful. Full of oil and saturated fats - and that's just the normal ones. If they're salted or dry roasted, they're even worse."
"Really?"
The Beast looks at me through narrowed eyes.
"Yes. That means you can never eat them. And don't ever question me again."
We amble over to the rowing machine and The Beast programs in 2000 meters.
"I want you to finish this in under eight minutes and twenty seconds," he says.
My jaw hits the floor.
"I'll never manage that!" I wail.
"Well, you won't if you keep whining!" snaps The Beast. "Get to it."

The first couple of minutes on the rower and I start to wheeze a bit. I keep going though, as The Beast has changed the time to show what my projected finishing time will be, rather than how many minutes I've been strapped into this horrible fucking contraption. The time alternates for what feels like eternity, flashing 08:15, then 08:11, then 08:21, then 08:25, then back to 08:16. Every time the projected finish time shows higher than 08:20, he throws me an exaggerated wince, causing me to laugh. Or at least, I would laugh if I had any fucking air in my lungs; with every stroke on the rower, my knees push my stomach in and force out a mouthful of much needed 02. Towards the end, The Beast starts tapping his foot rhythmically and barking "Ramming speed" at random intervals. I finish and he gives me a little round of applause.

"Well done. I'm almost tired having watched that!"
"I... I... I'm so... so glad that I amuse you. May... Maybe you..."
"TO THE CYCLES!!!"

On the bikes he sets the speed at an equally sadistic level, except this time I have the upper hand. I've been following his horrible 600 calorie program at the weekend - recently the little fucker upped it 650, if you can believe that - mainly using the bikes. I pedal furiously, looking like I'm about to die, but secretly rebuilding internal organs that were reduced to paste on the rower. By the end, I've almost returned to normal.

This doesn't last long. The Beast takes me over to the squat rack - the place where all legs go to die - hands me two dumb-bells and then forces me to do some horrible combination of lunges and vertical presses which reduce my legs to jello and make my arms feel as though someone's shoving bits of broken glass into my triceps and shoulders. This, however, is just the beginning...

(Be here tomorrow for part 2 and find out why this entry was cut short and why my hands are in so much fucking pain right now, that I don't care this entry is incomplete, I can't fucking type anymore.)

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Burn Notice, if you aren't aware of it, is absolutely brilliant. It follows the trials and tribulations of Michael Westen, a blacklisted CIA contracter who has been sold down the river by his superiors. He's trying desparately to eek out a living with what scant contacts and resources he has left and hopefully avoid getting killed in the process. The plot is essentially an excuse for grand-theft-auto-stylee adventures with an espionage-themed backdrop. It's very funny, violent and smart. Usually all at the same time. Westen is played by Jeffrey Donovan, a dark-haired clone of Guy Pearce in Memento. They even have the same taylor:

While there's plenty to recommend this marvellous show, one of the small things I like best about it is that the character of Westen only drinks water. Like I said, it's a small thing, but one I appreciate. This is because I am fed up of watching TV shows and movies in which the heroes look like they're carved out of marble, yet seem to exist on a diet of fast food, cigarettes and booze. I want to exist on a diet of fast food, cigarettes and booze, and have done so at various stages - and I have the belly to prove it. Westen may have the hero physique, but he drinks water all the time and only seems to eat tofu and pasta in very small portions. He is also fairly miserable as a character and this is probably down to the fact that he has to drink water all the time in between eating miniscule portions of tofu and pasta in order to stay fighting fit. The fact that Westen has horrible diet has made me warm to this character. In fact, his diet is almost as appealing as his sarcastic manner and unconventional looks. I could almost believe him as a spy if he didn't dress so well - let's face it, if you're tailing someone in Hugo Boss and red shades, they're more likely to spot you than if you're wearing something from Primark.

Anyway, this water-drinking thing. I think I might have to go back to drinking exclusively iced water - or fizzy iced water if I want to experience a bit of a thrill - after this last weekend's shenanigans. I woke up on Monday feeling not bad, but not too great either. My throat felt like it had been coated with bee's piss and I was aware of a dull, dusty sensation behind my eyes. No matter, I thought, onward and upward. I went downstairs, showered, dressed shaved, made sandwiches for the wife and I, cursed the name of the cunt who invented the working week (even though I don't know who he is) ate a hearty breakfast of weetabix and toast and then set off to the bus stop. As I closed the gate, my throat cleared and I felt a twinge in my bowels. Probably just the after effects of the weekend, I thought.

The twinge in my bowels turned into a dull, throbbing ache by the time we got to the Tescos near the Tube station. Apparently the bee's piss had detatched from my throat, run down into my stomach, mixed with the brekkie I'd eaten and my body was now working on ejecting this foul compound from my bowels as quickly as possible. The fact that I was about a mile and a half away from home didn't seem to concern my body's need to fire waste out of my anus at the earliest possible juncture.

"There's a public loo in Tesco's" The wife said, helpfully.

We entered the supermarket and I headed over to the public convenience. My wife went in search of immodium as I entered the men's room, opened the cubicle and almost burst into tears upon seeing a large turd and a bowel of urine water threatening to spill over the sides of the loo. Men. Are. Scum. I tried the door of the cubicle for wheelchair-bound toilet visitors and found that unless they were wheelchair-bound individuals with lockpicking skills, then they were shit out of luck. I angrily pulled out my phone and rang my other other half> I was trying to move as little as possible as the contents of my guts were now churning and kicking like a small mutant demanding to be let into this world.

"Yes?"
"Get over here quickly! I need your help!"

Bless her for not laughing when she arrived as I got her to first check that the ladies' room was empty and then to stand guard outside while I rushed into the cubicle and proceeded to pebble-dash the toilet while making the most unholy noises in Christendom. The ladies' room is emaculate. Presumably because women aren't scum. This is a new one for me, I thought, having a shit in a supermarket. I think it's time to adopt a diet of water and small portions of tofu and pasta. This will save me ever being in a position where I may conceivably lose control of my bodily functions in public. Who knows. It might even give me a nice physique. I already have a jaded outlook on life, so I'm at least one third of the way towards getting cast in a UK re-make of Burn Notice.

No. More. Booze. (For a bit anyway)

Comments

"Today, we try something new, tubby!" says The Beast. "Today we're going to alternate your speed a bit."

I climb on the bike and cycle away for about 2 minutes and then The Beast twiddles the controls and ramps the speed up to 20, and suddenly I feel like I'm pedaling through a moat of cement.

"Stand up!" barks The Beast. "If your revs drop below 60 I'll hurt you!"

I plough through the next five minutes as my legs turn to jello and my breathing slows to a wheeze. The temptation to slow down is immense but after The Beast gives me a crack to the back of my bare legs with the flat of his hand, I speed up. Now I know what if would feel like to be a horse pulling a cart through a bog.

After the bike we walk (well, he does, I flop around slightly) to the squat rack.

"Right," snaps The Beast, "I want you to do lunges. Then I want you to do squats. Then I want you to do push-ups. Then bicep curls. Then push-ups again. Then deadlifts. Then..."

He trails off as my mouth falls open and my eyes bug out of my head.

"Pffft! Nevermind," he says, "Just do what I say when I say it. GO! LUNGES! NOW!!"

I start with the lunges, my body wobbling a bit as my centre of balance is off. I count out loud until a rubber-band pings off the side of my head.

"Who told you to count, arsehead?"
"It helps if I know how many I have to do."
"You have to do as many as I feel like making you do!" says The Beast, collecting his rubber band off the floor. "Squats, now!"

I begin my squats and get through about two before the rubber band pings off my head again.

"Don't you dare straighten your legs all the way! I want them bent at the peak of your squat!"
"The peak of my what?"
"DON'T! STRAIGHTEN! YOUR LEGS!!" And the rubber band pings off my right cheek.

The pain is fucking excruciating. It feels like a dwarf is using a hand-drill to bore a hole straight through my knee cap. Furthermore, it feels like my body's forgotten how to breathe. I stare into the mirror in front of me and see a pink-faced sweat-gland who looks like he's about to cry. I'm actually about to cry.

"Push-ups!"

At least down on the ground no one will see me cry. The Beast for his part pings the rubber band off my arse this time, and then sings the lyrics of Everclear's "Wonderful" over the top of Shontelle's new video for the single "T-Shirt". Well, they are the same song after all, even if the latter is a key lower. Eventually I'm allowed to stand up and he hands me a barbell and barks the word "CURLS!!!" in my face. By now I've stopped fighting. I've stopped whining. I've stopped crying. I just want to die.

"What was that?"

Oh shit, I said that out loud.

"You just want to what?" yells The Beast "You want to die, huh? You want to to die? Then why don't you quit, you pussy?! Why don't you just put the weight down and quit??!!"
"No!"
"Why not!!??
"CUZ I GOT NOWHERE ELSE TO GOOOOOOOOOO!"

At the end of the workout, The Beast offer me a cup of orange juice and delivers some of the most horrible news of all time:

"You have lost weight, but your figure will not change until you change your diet. Also you now have a weekend assignment. You are to lose 600 calories every weekend. I don't care how you do it. Treadmill, rowing machine, cross trainer or bike. But you need to have burned 600 calories a weekend. If you do not do this, you will die in the coming months. And I shall inherit your games consoles and your comic book collection. Understand?"

I nod and head to the showers with The Beast's final words echoing in my ears.

"600 calories, bitch! Remember that! 600 calories!"

Comments

Ahem.

Oh cross trainer, you of easy cardio work-outs.
Oh cross trainer, you with the decent screen and working headphone jack.
Oh cross trainer, you accomplished what the treadmill and bicycle couldn't
Namely prevent my beer belly from bouncy around like I was carrying bag of suet under my shirt.

Oh cross trainer, you with levels 1 through to 14 out of 20.
Oh cross trainer, I can go as high as 14 with much sweat but no asphyxiation.
Oh cross trainer, at 15 it was still okay.
Even though my lungs felt like someone was pouring rock salt into them.

Oh cross trainer, why did you allow The Beast to turn you against me at level 18?
Oh cross trainer, your pedals that feel like I'm wading through tar.
Oh cross trainer, you handles feel like I'm pulling ten ton weights.
People are staring because they think I'm going to turn one deeper shader of pink and then explode like Michael Ironside in Scanners.

Oh cross trainer, what's that high pitch-whistling sound?
Oh cross trainer, is it the nerve-endings in my legs about to snap like cheap guitar strings?
Oh cross trainer, is it wind escaping from my body through my arse?
Because it's certainly not going into my lungs like it should.

Oh cross trainer, you have betrayed me
Oh cross trainer, we had something special
Oh cross trainer, but now it is over because I have discovered your true, treacherous nature.
There's obviously a reason you were designed to look like a giant metal praying mantis

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"Geff om ra bmphs. I bmph thmph shmphl," he says.
"What?"
The Beast turns his head to the side so he isn't talking directly into the mat.
"Get on a bike. I'll be there shortly."
"What's wrong with you?" I ask.
"Shoulder's fucked," comes the reply, "but don't think that it means you're going to be getting an easier ride."

I get changed and head over the cycles and start pedalling. Without The Beast there to yell at me, I need to provide my own soundtrack of abuse and so I turn my iPod on to full volume and press play. Fittingly enough, the song that blasts into my cranium first is "Happiness In Slavery" by Nine Inch Nails. Even better it seems to work better with the video for "Watch Out" by Alex Gaudino than the horrible piece of shit tune it originally scored. After all, the girls in the video look happy enough touching each other up, even though they're in a sexist, softcore porn music video made at the behest of a talentless dickhead, who on screen is controlling them all in a video game.

I stare at the scantily clad females in the video feeling not one iota of shame. This video is beamed into the gym daily on an almost hourly basis. In the beginning I'd avert my eyes, red-faced with embarassment. Now I'm not even aroused it. At this rate I could probably walk through the Playboy Mansion and the only thing that would distract me is the drinks cabinet.

The Beast appears at my elbow and presses the "off" button on the bike. We then head over to the nearest torture rack and I proceed to struggle through some bench presses with a 30kg barbell while he eats a banana and hums along to the latest number by Pink. We then head over to the treadmill and as I step on to the neverending road of doom I stare glumly down at my still ample stomach.

"God, how did I get so fat?"
The Beast shrugs.
"I dunno mate. I see it a lot with of guys your age. It just sneaks up on you."
"First off, less with the "guys of your age, shit! Second, how does something this size sneak up you? With this I gut, I couldn't sneak up on someone if I was the villain in a fucking pantomime."
"Less talk talk, more run run," says The Beast. And he presses the speed-increase button on the treadmill.

It's at this point the latest video for the Pussycat Dolls comes on and at this point The Beast and I hunch over the TV. We're waiting for High-Kick Doll to do her High-Kick. The Pussycat Dolls are all generally forgettable except for Singer Doll and High-Kick Doll.

Singer Doll... well, I would say that she sings, but that's not strictly true. She makes soothing noises and pouts a lot. The rest of the Dolls dance and then High-Kick Doll does a High-Kick which is kind of like her trademark move. It's an impressive move which demonstrates both her flexibility and... the fact that someone does something other dance behind Singer Doll. Sound daft? Yeah, well, anything than can keep your mind off the fact that the stitch in your side feels like your innards are about to prolapse and come flying out of your anus is pure gold in the gym. Especially when your stupid gym hobby shocks you for the first time as High-Kick Doll fails to do her High-Kick. Maybe there have been internal squabbles in the band and Singer Doll has decided to hog even more of the limelight. Watch this space.

In fact, don't and pretend you did.

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On the lateral pulldown machine: A man pulls down 80 kilograms of dead weight. His muscles ripple along his arms. His tight-fitting T-shirt makes him look like he's been carved out of marble. Seriously, snap off an arm and we're talking greek god here.

On the treadmill: An amazon with a fixed look of determination in her eyes sprints away showing no visible signs of strain except for the thin film of sweat glistening on her body.

Using the free weights: A human tree trunk with biceps the size of footballs grunts and groans as he uses a 40 kilo dumb bell to do 20 reverse flies. This is his light workout between serious ones. Tomorrow he will return to his proper regemin which involves lifting houses.

In the mirror: An overweight ex-smoker performs dead lifts with a barbell boasting a puny 5kg weight on each end, his body shuddering with effort. He is terrified he might fart.

There's no way you can feel good about yourself when you're surrounded by the fucking ubermensch. Some of them look like they can take down a Balrog. I bet Gandalf worked out!

Most of them seem to be clad almost exclusively in spandex. I don't wear spandex. I wear a ratty T-Shirt that announces I was once stupid enough to entrust my life to a South African Bungee Jumping operation. I have too much respect for myself and the rest of humanity to wear spandex. No one needs to see me in spandex. Ever. Gandalf was hard - he didn't need spandex.

That having been said, there are times when I'm tempted to throw in the proverbial towel and to accept my lot in life as a flabby bastard. The Beast rolls his eyes when I tell him this;

"For fuck's sake it's only been two and a half lousy months."
"Yeah, but I haven't even slimmed down any."
"You've lost weight."
"Look around this place," I say gesturing to the supermen and woman in the room. "I'll never look as good as these people."
"You just might, but it'll take time," says The Beast.
I groan and pick up the weight again.
"Besides," he says, "these people spend a lot of their lives in the gym. This is why they look so good. Most of them are dull and boring, which is why they have to work hard at looking good. You spend your spare time doing other things so you're interesting, even if you're fat."
"Interesting like what?"
"Well...Oh fuck, I dunno! Reading?"

Oh great. Well that makes me feel wonderful. So even if I am a big tub o' guts don't worry because at least I have a library card. It's not like I'm now going to watch open mouthed as a man dead lifts a barbell roughly the same weight as a Mack Truck and then be able to feel better about myself by thinking;"

"Aha! You may be able to bench press an elephant, my good man, but have you read The Iliad? I think not! Victory is mine!"

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In short, I had a couple of very good evenings which while being immense fun, have been bad for my gym-going habits.

The Beast has sensed this. Don't ask me how; I think he might have been born with the ability to sniff out the social habits of his clients. As I step onto the treadmill he pokes me in the flank.

"Been down the boozer, porky?"
"Yes. Once or twice."
"Well, which is it, once or twice?"
"Well I..."
"Don't lie to me! We'll soon find out."

And The Beast sets the treadmill's speed to sprint. The first two minutes pass without too much trouble. Then my lungs start to burn. David Bowie is on the TV in front of me singing Modern Love. He's orange with perma-tan and his hair looks like a dollop of candy floss. The Beast starts humming along and I start to laugh. Bad move.

"I you've got air to laugh, you're not running fast enough," says The Beast and increases the speed. Once he's sure my lungs are about to burst, he hits the stop button and we head over to the squat rack where I am told to do vertical chest presses and then dumb bell curls. My arms are on fire and I tell The Beast this.

"Whaddya want? A cookie?" comes the reply.

Once he's knackered my arms we head back onto the treadmill for another round of sprinting. Then it's over to the peck-deck to... well I'm not sure how to describe the action you have to do to use the peck-deck. Peck-decking? Swivelly moving? Arm crossing? All I know is it makes your arms ache from your shoulders to your fingertips and it involves a lot of shouting from The Beast. Mainly at me.

"Control it!! There's no benefit if you do it too quickly," he yells.
"Oh sod off!"

The Beast's face snaps up, his eyes wide with shock. My eyes are wide with shock. We both can't believe what I've just said.

"Sorry about that but I'm in a lot..."
"TO THE TREADMILL!!! NOW!!!!"

And I run. I run until my legs feel amputated. I run until the stitches I get in three places on my body feel like bullet wounds. I run until my vision blurs. I run until I no longer have air. How did I get like this? How did I get to the point where moving was painful? How much sweat can one man create. And why in God's name will I be back here tomorrow?

I must be insane.

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"Sorry I'm late...," I begin.
"Oh, you will be," says The Beast. "You will be."

We hit the treadmill and The Beast pulls his old trick of chatting to me amiably about this and that, and then suddenly yelling "AHA! Got enough air to talk, eh? Well then you're not working hard enough!!" and increasing the speed. My body screams silently as I'm forced to quicken my pace. I flop from one side of the machines moving tread to the other. It's almost as though my mind is engaged in all out war with my body. As the treadmill finally slows to a stop, I see The Beast staring at me curiously.

"What?"
"You don't walk properly."
"What do you mean?"
"Just what I said. You're feet aren't straight. Your glutes are probably fucked. You don't walk properly."

This is news to me. After all, I'm 33-years-old. I'm pretty active. I'm not a genius but I have a university degree. I can get from point A to point B most days. I thought that I had this walking thing down cold. I would've thought if I'd managed to fuck up walking that someone would've pointed it out by now. "Ha ha ha," they'd have said, "look at this guy trying to walk! Ha ha ha!" No one's ever done this, and I make my case to The Beast.

"Yes, yes, yes," he says dismissing my obviously worthless opinions with a wave of his hand, "you're very funny."
"Well how come I don't walk properly?"
"It's caused by having bad posture due to being a fat lazy bastard. Which is what you fucking are."
"So how do we fix it?"
"We're going to have to work on your glutes."
"My what?"
"Your glutes. Your Gluteus Maximus Muscles."
"What are those?"
The Beast smiles at me nastily. "You're about to find out."

This is how I end up lying on my back with my legs raised in the air at a 45 degree angle to my body, and biting my lip to stop crying out in pain. It feels as though, either side of me, someone is trying to bore into the area just below my hip with a Black & Decker Electric Drill. The Beast slowly counts down from 30 and I lower my legs.

"Feel anything?" he beams at me.
I describe the sensation.
"That'll be your glutes. They're probably getting the first work-out of their miserable lives. It's not really possible to work your glutes by sitting on your arse.

We work my glutes some more until The Beast is certain that my attempt to stand up will be amusing to the rest of the gym. When I stand up, I stumble about and go arse over tit like a new-born lamb taking its first steps. Then it's more humiliation as The Beast makes me cycle using only one leg for ten minutes, alternating between my right and left every 60 seconds. Then we stretch. Or at least, The Beast stretches. I sit on the floor and whimper a bit until The Beast batters me with one of the gym's giant loofas. I'm hurting in places I didn't even know existed before today, and as I descend the stairs with my legs shaking The Beast calls after me.

"If you can walk by Friday, remember to be on fucking time!"

If I can walk? Oh Christ...

Comments

At the bottom end of the scale, Watch Out by Alex Gaudino is one of the most horrible songs in existence. It's boring, bland and unimaginative. It's all wall to wall cookie cutter beats and shitty sampling. It's not even interesting enough to hate so how is it I even know it exists? Well, watch the video and have a bloody guess. If you can hear a dull thudding noise in the background, don't worry, that's just the beating of millions of adolescent fists. You can't really blame anyone involved in the production of this video. The only way you could enjoy this shite is if you were off your tits on Ecstasy or if the song was being used to soundtrack porn. Since actual porn in music videos is out of the question (for now, anyway) the only other alternative would be a video of Alex Gaudino being pressed into a vegetable shredder.

The reason these videos are beamed into the gym is... well, I don't know. Maybe they act as incentive to get in shape. Maybe they're meant to impress upon you that no one who looks like these people will ever give you the time of day unless you lose every ounce of body fat and throw up every tenth meal. Maybe they're supposed to present titillation to be a distraction from the pain. As you cycle into oblivion and every nerve-ending in your legs screams for mercy, maybe the sight of a scantily clad woman hip-thrusting her hot-pant-clad pelvis into the camera will stir some primal instinct that'll help you soldier on.

Of course, if the TV showing softcore porn happens to be mounted on the wall next to a TV tuned to Sky News which is reporting the story of a 13-year-old boy who may have fathered a child with 15-year-old girl, it prompts a very different sensation altogether. It was a strange mingling of sexual arousal and the urge to be violently ill. Gaze upon the approximation of what I had to put up with for about 15 minutes and tell me you aren't gagging.

I'm not sure if The Beast stuck me in front of this televised sensory ying-yang by accident or by design, but when he became aware of my discomfort, he glanced up at the TV sets and announced; "See, this is England. This is what we've become. Shit like this has been going on for years and the only reason we hear about it now is because there's money in it for the adults surrounding these little inbred urchins." I fought back the waves of nausea and grunted my agreement. On the Sky News channel, some pundit was asking a child psychologist why the sexually active age of kids seemed to be getting lower all the time. I was tempted to email them the link to Alex Gaudino's latest video - or indeed the video of any piece of shit song released in the last four years. Crappy music and softcore porn is a bigger part of growing up than ever before.

Seriously, try it out. Think of the shittest, most repetitive rave song you've heard and YouTube the video. I guarantee you the sight of flesh within two clicks. That having been said, I leave you with the video for the worst song ever made.

I'm not exaggerating, by the way. It really is the worst song ever made and I take no responsibility if you click play and your brain starts to fucking melt. The video is a black screen, probably because a song this shit would require footage of the most diabolical and depraved sexual theatre known to mankind to make it acceptable if my crapness top porn-ness music video sliding scale is accurate. Which it is...

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Fuck you. You're going in.

I eat two pieces of toast and peanut butter. I jam handfuls of pills down my throat. Vitamin B. Vitamin C. Echinacea for my pussy immune system. I stretch and feel the stab of the back muscle I somehow managed to pull while in fucking bed! (Christ alive, even the pillows think I'm easy game!) My blocked nose shudders and I grab a handful of kitchen roll before expelling rivers of mucous. Disgusting, but at least I can breath again. I swig my coffee in an effort to wake up. I'm drowsy, clogged with snot and sporadically prone to launching into violent coughing fits. What if I'm still sick? What if I injure my back?

Fuck you. You're going in.

I stuff my gym kit into my bag and try to close it. The zip snags. I curse. I pull out my kit and re-arrange it carefully in the bag, and pull zip tag. It snags again and takes a small piece of my thumbnail off. I hurl the bag on the floor and kick it against the wall. There's more where that came from, bag! I pick it up, slam it against the wall and pull the zip tag (I'mfuckingwarningyou) closed. The bag is behaving, but just to make sure I have no further problems, I hurl it onto the floor and drop a knee on it WWE-wrestling stylee. Let that be a lesson to you, bag. Tell all your other bag friends that this is the price of fucking with me - particularly the Marks & Spencers shopping bag that refuses to roll up properly. It usually escapes punishment because the wife doesn't like me to abuse shopping bags. She thinks that this behaviour is indicative of the possibilty she married a loon. But she isn't up, is she gym bag? No, she can't see us having our little chat! You tell that M&S bag that his fucking number's come in!

I put my water bottle in the side pocket and leave the warmth of my house. Bus. Tube. Crowds of people. I shiver and feel slightly ill. I read my new book and become engrossed enough to miss my stop. When I look up I see the Tube pulling into my work stop. Well, since I'm nearer to work now I guess I should postpone...

You're going in!

But my bag doesn't want to, and I'm feeling ill, and my back hurts, and... and...

Listen, you stinking puke! I've given up too much for this. I've stopped drinking. I've quit smoking. I've done star jumps in time to horrible music. I've given up Sunday afternoons to jog on a treadmill. I've run up and down stairs like a trainee fireman. I haven't had a packet of crisps in 42 days. And I love crisps, do you understand, love them. If I'd known I was going to go without them this long, I'd have replaced the confetti at my wedding with them!

SO FUCK YOU!!! YOU'RE GOING IN!!!

I open the door to the gym. I can hear the whine of treadmills. I can hear the whoosh of the rowing machines. I can see pictures of people with bodies that look like they've been carved from marble. They advertise protein shakes, one-to-one training sessions and the fucking gym I just fucking walked into. They're presumably here to motivate the clients, but all they actually do is depress most of us.

The fembot behind the gym's counter smiles and swipes my card. Somewhere, Pink is singing her horrible, horrible song. The Beast sees me and cracks his knuckles. I head to the change room vowing to visit whatever pain he puts my through on my gym bag. And so the cycle of abuse continues...

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Comments

According to The Beast I hated it long before I started subjecting it to his tri-weekly torture sessions.

"If you're even vaguely satisfied with the way you look, you'd never subject yourself to the pain necessary to change your body's shape," he intoned one day. "You'd give up at some stage, or dial down what you do. To change your shape, to tone up - you truly have to hate the way you look."
"That's sick," I say.
"Yes, but that's the mind-set needed," he says, "take a look around the gym next time. All those people who look so fantastic lead fairly miserable lives."
"That's not true!"
"It fucking well is."
"Rubbish!" I snort, "I know loads of people who lead very happy lives who are slim."
"Yes, I'm sure you think you do," says The Beast, "But all those people are really miserable because they're denying themselves sweets and chocolates and crisps and lovely salty totally- bad-for-you food in order to stay slim."

I consider this - could it be true that my slim friends are really miserable? Or at least, miserable some of the time?

"I'm sure you're wrong," I say finally. "I can think of several examples among my friends who say they just can't put on weight no matter what they do."
"Well those people are lying cunts," says The Beast, "And if they're not they are freaks of nature. In either case if they go around saying things like that they deserve to be pushed down an escalator and fucking paralysed. Then they deserve to be force-fed cake until they put some weight on, kicked until they burst and then rolled down a hill into the path of an oncoming train. And then they deserve to be set on fire."

I consider this - it's hard to fault The Beast's logic.

It still doesn't help me, though. I've been sidelined for a sodding week with a blocked nose and the sensation that someone is lighting sparklers somewhere deep down inside my throat. I've been hitting the Echinacea and Vitamin C all week, and while I can now pull my head off the pillow in the morning without the use of a fork-lift, I'm still nowhere near gym-ready. I found this out the hard way last night when I sprinted to catch a bus. I made it all right, but then found myself hacking and coughing up green flem which had the consistency of chewing gum. My fellow commuters recoiled in horror and I heard some kid in a hoodie murmur something about the deserved results of smoking. I would've breathed on the little sod if I'd been able to breathe.

I'm hoping to get back to gym (and that's a sentence I thought I'd never type) within the week. It's not that I'm turning into a gym monkey, it's just that I've worked too long and hard and suffered too much to have it all go to pot now. Yes, I know it's only been a month, but this always happens to me; just when I get into a rhythm with gym, just when I think I have the pain beat, just when I think I'm on the road to a fitter, happier, healthier and - most important of all - better looking me, my body fucks me over. The bastard! It only does this because it hates me and wants me to fail! Well I shall not surrender! I shall deny it cake! I shall deny it booze! I shall run for the bus every night even if I bark my larynx out! And if it's not careful, I shall give my wife control of the remote and make it suffer through an entire two seasons of Ghost Whisperer! Don't test me, body! Don't fucking test me!

I'm a man on the edge with gym membership!!!

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"What's that?" I asked.
"It's a pedometer," he said.
"Ah, I thought it might be an ASBO," I quipped, thinking a little joke may lighten the mood.
The Beast didn't even look up as he finished tying his laces.
"You'll pay for that," he said simply.

Great. Note to self: no one finds you funny except you. Certainly not The Beast. Unless you're in pain and he's not. Then it's funny. Maybe physical comedy including the oddd pratt-fall would liven things up. The Beast, it seems, has an old-school sense of humour. I just hope none of the exercises involve custard pies.

First it's the bikes. Then it's onto the mats for star-jumps, press ups, squats and lunges. Then it's the treadmill for 12 minutes of sheer hell split into sprinting and walking. Then at some stage my brain disconnects from my nerve-endings and starts to ask weird and esoteric questions about the videos on the gym TVs. Like, what the hell is going on in this Beyonce Knowles video:

Why is she yelling shout-outs to "all the single ladies!" in what seems to be a celebration of being "single" and a "lady" and then moaning in the chorus that some cretin has missed his chance with her because "if you liked in then you shoulda put a ring on it!" Is this song one protracted bitch about not being married? Does this mean a femninist celebration of being single is only possible once you've been dicked about by some bloke who's scared of committment? Or is the song about how Beyonce has some weird metal infection that could only have been staved off by putting a ring on her finger?

What the fuck is up with her left hand? Is she the next James Bond villain? Is this a song from a new musical about the Stepford Wives? Answers on a postcard, please (or at the bottom of this post).

After more treadmill hell, The Beast takes us over to the mats where we do crunches until it feels as though my breastbone is about to poke through the skin on my chest, and my abs feel like Percy Montgomery has been using them for place-kicking practice. The Beast laughs at my wheezing and then hits me with one of the gym's oversized loofas.

"What the hell are those things?" I ask.
"They're stretch rollers," he says, "You use them to stretch out your leg muscles and side abs."
He demonstrates by turning his body to one side and using the roller to stretch his calf muscle.
"Ah, I see."
"They're also great motivators!" he says.
"Eh, how?"
"Like this!" cries The Beast, bringing the loofa crashing down on my head. Walked right into that one. I blame delerium brought on by gym fatigue. Oh shut up!

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I now have gone for a month and a half without cigarettes. I still miss them and I probably always will. However, I had my first taste of wine in a month yesterday - it was a glass of Pacific Rim Dry Riesling from Bonny Doon. I almost came.

Comments

"What?" I say.

I'm praying he's forgotten about the video game I promised to bring him the day before. I'd forgotten to bring it so The Beast was sure to make me suffer.

"I see you have a blog, funny funny man," says The Beast.

Oh. Shit.

"You've seen it then."
"Yes, I've seen it. It's highly amusing."
"Highly amusing in a "good" way? Or highly amusing in an "I'm going to make you walk like a knackered flamingo for the rest of the fucking week" way?"
"Highly amusing in a "go and get changed and find out" way."

We start with a brief minute walk on the treadmill, before The Beast grabs my water bottle, stows it behind the gym counter, takes me down to the basement and stands me in front of the building's fire-escape.

"You remember our little friends the stairs, don't you?" he leers at me. We jog up the stairs and to give credit where credit's due, I do a lot better than last time; my body holds out until the eighth floor before threatening to empty my bowels in the stairwell and shoot bile from every opening in my head. As we walk back down the stairs, The Beast reports that we'd managed the climb in just under 2 minutes. He then tells me off for holding the banister like an invalid on my descent.

As we reach the bottom, he speaks the dreaded words; "Right, ready to go again."
Jesus Balls! I'd thought he'd been kidding about doing this twice last time.
"Are you serious?" I gasp.
"No, I'm just kidding!"
"Well thank G..."
"OF COURSE I'M SERIOUS, YOU TURD!!! MOVE IT!! TWO STEPS AT A TIME!!!"
"What?! If I do that I'll die! Right here! In this fucking stairwell!"

The Beast pinches his nose and speaks to the floor.

"Look, walk it if you have to, but you're going up the stairs. Two stairs at a time. I will go up ahead of you, because I'm not a fat old man!"

I steel myself and begin the ascent. By the time I reach the top it's almost as though my body has given up sending varied pain signals in the form of burning lungs, aching legs and rivers of sweat, and is now levelling off over the pain threshold in some sort of dull thrum. I meet The Beast on level six - he'd come back down to presumably laugh at my crumpled form. At the top I 'm given 10 seconds to recover and then we go back down - my legs shake with each step.

Back in the gym The Beast and I cycle through the latest video from the cultural ambassador for the island of Barbados, Rhianna*. From what I can tell, Rhianna is in some sort of competition with the rest of the women in R&B to see who can wear the least clothes in a video before the censors step in and actually call it porn. So far, she's way ahead on points, and she's fast becoming one of my favourite R&B stars for this reason.

That, and the fact that her songs are so utterly forgettable, so utterly devoid of any musical hooks at all that I can't remember a single note of them. (And in the unlikely even that Rhianna or any of her musical producers are reading this, that isn't meant as a criticism. It's something I am deeply grafteful for as most of the music I have to listen to in the gym is more painful than having a Black & Decker hand-drill plunged into my earhole. Please keep up the good work, Rhianna). Her video also has a guy being beaten up in it, which is great; it's easier to cycle with legs made out of lead if you can watch someone else suffer while you do it.

After 12 minutes of grunting, sweating and complaining about physical exertion, Rhianna's video finishes and the new Girls Aloud video comes on. I don't remember much of their video as thankfully I was starting to black out at the time. As the cycling draws to a close, 50 Cent appears on the screen, sounding for all the world that he was going to beat up the microphone that's dangling in front of him in the video. Or maybe he was threatening the sound guy who set up the microphone. Whatever the case, someone is definitely gonna get it courtesy of the OG pimp gangsta muthafucka half dollar denomination G-Unit posse leader, no doubt!

Actually, his timing was great as The Beast had us do crunches with a fitness ball and then more crunches in which we had to reach behind our legs whenever our shoulders came off the mat. And if one of us - ie that would be me - stopped for a breather, that person was hit in the head with what looked like a giant loofa and told to stop being such a pussy. 50 Cent's refrain of "Get up!" is the perfect soundtrack for crunches, and looking at his abs, you can see at least he practices what he preaches.

At the end of the session I stagger downstairs, shower, change and come back upstairs. I yell "goodbye" over my shoulder and I'm half way out the door...

"Wait!"
I turn around and see The Beast drumming his fingers on the gym's front counter.
"Where's the video game you said you'd bring?"
"Er, I'll bring it tomorrow."
"Yeah you better run!! You just fucking wait until Friday!!"

*I'm not joking about that by the way. Rhianna actually does serve as the cultural ambassador for the island of Barbados. I read it on Wikipedia. So it must be true.

Comments

Friday started with the bikes and "Money In My Pocket" by Wiley featuring Mark Ronson. This is by far the finest song on the gym's in-house playlist and so, for those 60 minutes of sweat-filled agony, the greatest song in the known universe. The songs is sweet, the video is funny, and it's in rotation seldom enough (probably because it's good and the gym playlist programmers are bastards) that it's hard to get sick of it. We finished on the bikes and then The Beast did something new. He took my bottle, stowed it behind the gym's front desk and then told me to follow him into the basement.

What now? Was The Beast about to go all Mr Miyagi on my ass? I had visions of him of forcing me to do some sort of manual labour that usually constituted part of his daily job, like hefting laundry bags or drums of protein drink powder.

The Beast: Pick up the bag! Pick it up!
Me: Isn't this your job?
The Beast: No talk talk! Lift lift!
Me: This isn't fair!
The Beast: No fair? Silence! Afterwards you paint basement wall! Not lift lift! Side side!

However, it seems I'd underestimated The Beast's capacity for sadism. Instead of lifting weighty objects, he'd decided that today he was going to attack my legs. The first exercise on the menu was a quick jog from the basement up to the top of the building which houses the gym. The ten story building. Ten fucking flights of stairs. To be fair the first two floors weren't bad. The third and fourth were a bit harder. By the fifth, my legs felt like they had ten pound weights attached to them. On the sixth the saliva in my mouth hardened and deposited foamy white flecks at the corners of my mouth. When we hit the seventh a firebomb went off in my lungs and my bladder started gurgling. If I hadn't had a mild panic about possibly shitting myself there and then, I probably wouldn't have made it up the last three flights of stairs. I stood at the top of the stairs sucking in air like I'd just spent six minutes in a vacuum. The Beast stood nonchalantly against the wall and fixed me with the a pitying stare; the way he was breating you'd think he'd just fallen out of bed. After I'd regained the ability to breathe, we walked back down the stairs. "That was horrible," I said. "Well fucking get used to it," came the reply, "because you're doing it again next week. Twice!!"

Back in the gym it soon became apparent that The Beast's beasting of my legs was set to continue. Following leg extenions and leg curls, we did squats and lunges before The Beast dragged my crippled arse over to the centrepiece of his torturous routine:

THE CHAIR OF DOOM!!!!!

The Beast set the chair to a hefty amount of weight - which I didn't look at because while ignorance isn't bliss in this instance, knowledge is certainly capable of breaking the spirit. I placed my feet on the steel plate at the end of the chair.

"What are you doing?!" snapped The Beast.
"I'm pushing...," I dribbled.
"No!! Use one foot! Twelve reps per leg!"
"Oh my G..."
"God won't help you here!! Get on with it!"

As if to compliment the hoplessness of my situation, "Right Now (Na Na NA)" by Akon started beeping and echoing out of the gym's PA. Let's be clear on this; this is a fucking horrible song and Akon is going straight to hell for releasing it. Not only does he commit the unpardonable blasphemy of using a vocorder to electronically tinge his vocals, he sinks this pie-eyed "Na Na Na" refrain into the chorus so it burrows into your backbrain and sits there for the remainder of the day. You actually find yourself humming this piece of digital offal for the rest of the day. It's also the sort of crap that's popular with loathsome individuals who subject their fellow commuters on public transport to their disgusting music tastes through the knackered three-inch speakers on their mobile phone. You know the phones I mean. The phones, that no matter how new they are, make every beat in every song played on them sound like a cricket trapped in a biscuit tin. The phones that come in a box that may as well have the words "just add cunt" stamped on it.

The Beast's head snaps up as Akon's filth fills the air.
"Ah. Acorn. You bastard." He looks down at me. "Fight through the pain. Pretend you're pushing Acorn's head into wet cement."

As if by magic, a second wind courses through my body. It's always good if you can take something away from the gym other than aching joints and muscles. Today we learned that not only is hate a great motivator, but that the crappy soundtrack in the gym can be used to one's advantage. I wonder if would do as well with listening to Snow Patrol in front of a speed bag.

Comments

The Dolls are essentially back-up dancers pushed front and centre. Oh sure, one of them sings lead, but who cares? Do you know her name without googling it? (If you do you are either a very very very sad individual or an aspiring Pussycat Doll - and good luck to you!).

They had one hit which I can hum because of the massive airplay it got when it was released and a new single which I can't remember a note of despite having heard at least seventeen times in the gym. The only thing I can remember about the song is there is a drum-rilled bridge in it, at which point in the video the Dolls proceed to soundlessly gyrate on dodgy-looking scaffolding. It's the best part of the song, really. I can almost picture the scene in the studio when they were recording this track:

Producer: Okay singer Doll! That was great! You can take five now!
Singer Doll: What happens next?
Producer: Well, now I mix in some drum beats for a bit and then we replay the chorus and we're out.
Singer Doll: Don't I have any more lyrics?
Producer: No, this bit of the song is where you and the other Dolls do a dance routine. If you want, we can record you saying "Uh, uh, uh" occasionally, like you've just started having sex.
Singer Doll: But that's not the same as singing.
Producer: Yeah, that's kinda the point - actually that gives me an idea. Note to self: store drumbeats and "uh-uh" track for an extended re-mix later. God, I'm a genius!
Singer Doll: But I though...
Producer: You're done for today, Singer Doll.
Singer Doll: Hey! My name's...
Producer: Yeah, whatever!

The Dolls should be the rule-of-thumb as far as acceptable music for the gym goes. Their video looks like they're instructing an aerobics class and, apart from the drums, everything about it is completely forgettable. They have never tortured me in the gym, the same way Leona Lewis has and Beyonce Knowles is starting to. The also distract TheY Beast for brief periods so he stops yelling at me to go faster and adjusting the speed on the treadmill accordingly. In fact, they should be the model for all R&B bands; drums, gyrating and voices that can meld in to the background and be safely ignored.

Pink could take a leaf out their book - her contribution to the gym's soundtrack is 'So What' which was mildly irritating the first time I heard it. Now I appreciate it as nothing less than a full blown abomination. The lyrics are gash, the structure yawn-worthy and her tin-flecked voice is as head-thumpingly painful as the song's metronomic beat. At one point she even utters the phrase "uh, check my flow!" which, in any right thinking world, would make it legal to fire a bazooka at any speakers this shit is blaring out of.

However, my true hatred of this song was cast in iron by The Beast's decision to work in tandem with this song to ensure my maximum humilation at the end of our last session. After my umpteenth six-minute stretch on the cross trainer, we retired to the mats for star jumps and spot jumps - which just so happened to coincide with Pink's horrible single blaring out of the speakers. With no concious thought, I started to jump in time to the horrible song, much to the amusement of several onlookers in the vicinity. To give them credit, they only started laughing out loud when The Beast started hopping around me with a maniacal smile on his face, punching the air and chanting "yeah!" and "check his flow!" at timely intervals.

When the star jumps were over, he grinned at me.

"Thank you for coming down to the auditions," he said. "I'm afraid we've filled up all the spots for back up dancers for Pink's next video, but we'll keep your details on file and we'll certainly give you a call if something comes up... like a Coke Zero commercial, or something!"

Comments

Last September, Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan became the majority shareholder (and de facto owner) of Manchester City - the less successful football team of Manchester. Al Nahyan is a member of the Royal Family of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates and thus obscenely wealthy. With his injection of funds, Man City was able to plonk £32.5 million (that's $44,754,692 and some change) down on the table for Real Madrid's Brazilian international striker, Robinho. At the time this was a British record fee and quite frankly, a stupid amount of money. But this is nothing compared to the sums being hurled around lately.

This month Man City decided they wanted to sign another Brazilian international star - this time the absurdly named Kaka, a 27-year-old midfield wonder at Milan. It was going to take some doing, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Kaka has spoken at length of his love for Milan, saying that he would like to grow old at the club and some day take on the mantel of team captain. Second, Man City doesn't really have a great reputation for winning; despite the recent injection of star talent and the blank cheque they were recently given, the team is still struggling to get out of the bottom half of the league. Perhaps in an attempt to prove that nothing speaks louder than filthy lucre, Al Nahyan authorised Man City the amount of £100 million in transfer fees - which they offered to Milan for Kaka.

That's right £100 million. That's nearly 140 million dollars. That's a new hospital. That's new Opera House in Toronto. That's Damian Hirst's diamond encrusted platinum skull. That's a fleet of 500 Ferraris.

Or if you're Man City, it's one midfield player, who responds by saying; "Er, I'll think about it."

Here's where the obscene gets interesting because you remember how Kaka said he wanted to grow old at Milan? And you know how that sounds like the usual crap professional sportsman spout about their club right before some other club tosses a large chunk of change onto the table in front of them? Yeah, well it turns out Kaka might actually have meant it, because after a couple of days of hemming and hawing between Milan and Man City, the guy still said he needed to think about it. At this point, even Milan (though no doubt touched by the amazing club loyalty on display here) probably wanted him gone. Hell, at this stage Kaka was actually costing them money. £100 million could by a lot of underarm deodorant for the change rooms; it could also buy Milan a 3 or 4 blue-chip players to help crush any contenders for the Serie A top spot. Compounding the insanity, Kaka then demanded a get-out clause for any contract he might accept with Man City that would allow him to leave at the end of next season if City didn't qualify for the Champions League in 2010-11.

So to re-cap; Milan get a £100 million, Kaka gets half a million quid a week for at least a year and Man City get to pay around 127 million over 12 months for a player who may fuck off back to his old club at the end of that period if Man City don't finish at least fourth in the league by the end of next year. Which they haven't a prayer of doing whether Kaka signs for them or not.

Now, allow for a slight digression. A long time ago, a mate of mine approached me and said that he and his other half were taking one of her mates to a Ricky Martin concert, that they had a spare ticket and would I like to go? My response was: "Not for a million bucks!"
But what if a million bucks had actually been on offer? What if my mate had been standing there with a briefcase full of readies when he made the request? Would I have gone then? Er, fuck yes. I'd even have learned the words to a couple of songs and sung along on the night if that had been a deal-breaker. Hell, for a million bucks I'd have gone to at least four Ricky Martin concerts a month in a Ricky Martin shirt.

Now, I don't think that earning half-a-million quid a week playing for Man City for a year is the same as attending four Ricky Martin concerts a month in a Ricky Martin shirt. But Kaka seems to, because in spite of the cash, in spite of the proposed get-out clause, and in spite of the kick ass salary on offer, Kaka decided he didn't want to play for Man City.
Considering the ludicrous amounts of cash involved, any way you cut it, that's a pretty direct diss.

Still Man City has taken it all their stride. After all, they've signed Craig Bellamy! For 10 million! Sure he's a player who has slagged off his managers, threatened to fake injury ahead of a match, allegedly attacked a teammate with a golf club and generally been thoroughly unpopular at nearly every club he's ever played for, but his addition is bound to lift the spirits of Man City fans and players alike. And let's face it, they'll need a lift. Because shortly after Kaka's decision was made public, Robinho abruptly left Man City's training camp and went back to Brazil. And while it may be very possible that Robinho returned home "to address a family matter", a cynic might say it looks like he's having second thoughts about his new club. Given the timing of his decision, he may as well have gotten a plane to sky-write "God! We're Shit!" over City Of Manchester Stadium as he headed out of UK airspace.

Comments

Clearly, I will need something a little more than my own free will - that's always been slightly dubious. I'll need something to take my mind off the pain. I'll need something that can shut out the entire world. Something to stop me whimpering like a little bitch. I need to put my head into a metaphysical vice and then turn the handle until my skull cracks. I need Helmet.

Helmet was a band formed in New York in the early 1990s. They were a quartet of clean-cut looking young men who collectively made some of the most ear-splitting heavy metal ever put on record. Critics and fans have waxed lyrical about how groundbreaking the quartet was in its approach to heavy metal; how they used dropped-D-tuned guitars and played and recorded songs with uneven and jazz-like time signatures and harmonies and blah blah blah! That's all well and good. As far as I'm concerned, the most important thing about Helmet is that they make an almighty bloody racket which, if listened to through headphones on high volume, is loud enough to drown the sound of a nuclear bomb detonating three feet away from you. Also, they're the only band I've ever heard who make playing the guitar sound like it's as much work as picking up a ten ton weight. In short, however much pain you're in, Helmet sound like they're in even more, and therefore, they're perfect for listening to in the gym.

It also doesn't hurt that the lead-singer, Page Hamilton, sounds like a drill sergeant barking orders on a parade ground, shortly after someone dropped a cannonball on his foot. He delivers his lyrics in either ear-drum-numbing drones or a visceral screaming. Furthermore, his lyrics are either merciless "get-a-grip-on-yourself" bitch-slaps, or garbled insanity, and after running for an hour straight, you are in dire need of the former with your brain veering into the latter.

At 25 minutes on full pelt, Ironhead punches its way to my frontal lobes with taughtly regimented guitars and vicious snare drums. My body's about to give out until Hamilton starts snarling:

"What's the worst? Better dead?
Wear it out! The pain is in my head!!"

At around 45 minutes when my legs are made of paper and the stitch in my side feels like someone is using a cheese slicer to take a better look at my lower intestines, the avalanche of FBLA and Hamilton's spartan world view is all that keeps me from collapsing in a wet heap of sweat and failure.
"Prisons have wallls!!" he screams helpfully, "Prisons have walls!!"

He pauses briefly and my ears prick up, listening intently for more words of wisdom - anything to inspire me to keep going.

"Prisons!!!!! Have!!!! WAAAAAAAAAAALLLLSSS!!!!!!!"

Right on, Page. If Leona Lewis was standing near this band, the sheer testosterone hammering out of the speakers would be enough to turn her into a man. It might even do the same to the members of Snow Patrol...

Comments

"Tomorrow we are going to be doing cardio and abs. I suggest you mentally prepare yourself."

I clock in at 9 as specified. The Beast is getting changed, so I hop on the treadmill, set the incline to 8 as I have been told to in the past, and start walking at a sedate pace. I manage around 8 minutes before The Beast returns wearing a T-Shirt on which an ominous slogan is emblazoned: Fitness Boot Camp. He looks at me, then at the treadmill, and then back at me with an incredulous expression plastered across his mug. Then he punches the stop button.

"Idiot," he says as the treadmill grinds to a halt, "I told you we were doing cardio today. I don't want you dying on me. To the bikes!!"

The pair of us hop on the bikes and start peddling. Level 13. Revs above 93. For ten minutes. We chat about the likelihood of Kaka moving to Man City ("no-one's worth that sort of money") and how Alexandra Burke is working for minimum wage despite selling enough albums to earn a mint ("who cares?"). After about eight minutes I realise that not only was my brief mountain climb on the treadmill a stupid idea, but that I'm going to have to stop talking as it's using up too much oxygen. We hit ten minutes. "To the treadmills!" roars The Beast.

On the treadmills we set the speed at 10 and start a 10 minute jog. My face is now puce and sweat is pouring from me in bucketloads. It's even coming out my nose. At the two minute mark I want to quit, but instead I clench my fists and plough on, muttering "push it, you wimp. Push it, you wimp" under my breath in time to the rhythm of my feet hitting the treadmill. I find this mantra oddly comforting until I hit the 8 minute mark and notice several people staring at me from the warm up area. Fortunately my embarrassment is hidden by the fact that my face is the same colour as a sun-baked lobster that's been dipped in red paint for good measure. The ten minute mark comes and goes, and The Beast hits the stop buttons on both of our machines. He grins at me maniacally; "To the rowing machines!!" He yells.

As we sit and strap ourselves into the evil fucking contraptions, The Beast turns to me: "This isn't a race," he says. "Proceed at your own pace, but try and finish in under five and a half minutes." We start rowing and it's at this stage that I realise that the Christians got it wrong when they said hell was a firepit filled with demons and the screaming damned. It's a gym where you are run ragged to the cookie cutter music of Beyonce Knowles, gulping down air as though you've just been blasted out of an airlock. It's a place where you hear The Beast say; "Remember, try for under five and a half minutes. But don't finish yourself off. You still have ten more minutes on the bikes, ten on the treadmill and another five back here."

I would've screamed out "WHAT?!!!" if I had any fucking air left in my lungs.

The rowing ends and we flop back over to the bikes. As we mount them, FrankMusik's '3 Little Words' pelts out of the gym TVs. It's not great, but my God it beats the sugar coated R&B that usually seeps through the joint. In fact for the first four minutes its something of a Godsend as we power on through. "Aim for 4 and a half kilometers!" yells The Beast. I concentrate on the red LED readout and try to ignore the fact that every nerve-ending in my legs is on fire. The 10 minutes fly past and then things get worse. As we step onto the treadmills for a second 10 minutes, the opening bars of Leona Lewis's cover of 'Run' start to play. I now hate Leona Lewis. I hate for singing this song. I hate Snow Patrol for writing it. I hate the world for buying it. I hate...

The Beast leaps off the treadmill and storms in the direction of the gym counter. "Turn this shit off!!" he yells. "I'm trying to keep a man alive here!!!" Silence mercifully descends on the gym. The only sounds are the slap of our trainers on the treadmill and me mumbling "push it, you wimp. Push it, you wimp" under my breath over and over again. I look up and see some more people staring at me. I turn my head and smile at them baring my incisors. Two of them recoil while one stares in fascination; the gym machines have regressed my social skills to those of a fucking primate. All I need right now is for David Attenborough to step into shot to dissect my primitive behaviour for the folks at home;

"As we can see, at the half hour mark, the base instincts override rational thought. The part of the brain normally reserved for social interaction is not only preoccupied, it is now obssessed, with paying close attention to the sound of the heart pounding against the ribcage. This assures the primate that he is not dead yet, and however crap his day is, it's going to get better from here on in."

I don't remember the second turn on the rowing machines. But I remember looking up at the TV, seeing Take That come on and thinking:

"I hope they don't let Robbie Williams rejoin. He'd probably ruin the subtle dynamic that makes Take That the wonderful group of lads that they are."

----------------------------------------------------------

Days without cigarettes: 40
Days without alcohol: 15
Lesson learned today: Cardio can destroy your sanity

Comments

I glanced at it warily. No, I thought. He wouldn't change the time on me just before midnight. Not even The Beast would do that. I picked up my phone and swore loud enough for God to hear as I read The Beast's latest missive;

"Change of plans. Be at the gym by 9."

Jesus Balls. This means an 8 o' clock bus. Which means a 7:30 start. On a f*cking duvet day! This meant setting the alarm for half six if I was to leave myself the necessary time to respond to it by getting out of bed rather than smashing it to pieces with my bare hands and then burrowing into the duvet like a giant tick. My brother, was in effect, sending me to bed.

At the age of 33, I now have my bedtime dictated to me by my brother. Joy.

The day didn't improve when I got to the gym. The Beast greeted me with a curt nod, and said "warm up on the cross trainer, I'll be back in a minute," before sauntering out the gym with his mobile glued to his ear. I got changed, and got on the cross trainer to do my usual five to seven minute warm up. I kept the revs above 13 as the counter ticked off the minutes. I watched the gym's TVs to distract myself, although my only viewing choices seemed to be either a repeat of the football match in which Man Utd beat Chelsea or R&B videos. Disappointment or softcore porn. Well, it's not like those two things are ever too far apart from each other. After watching a lapdance, Christiano Ronaldo dive like a bitch, Beyonce shake her cellulite and Wayne Rooney explode over a linesman, I stared down at the timer. I'd been on the cross trainer for 10 minutes and no sign of the Beast. At 15 minutes I started wondering if this was some elaborate joke on the part of The Beast, but just then he appeared at my elbow and instructed me to follow him to the cable machines. There, the pair of us did exercises involving lying on a stress ball and doing chest extensions. The Beast found it invigorating. I thought he was trying to use the cable machine to rip my arms out of my sockets. From their we did bench presses (ARRRRRR!!!!), tricep extensions (Aaaaaahh!!!), Squats (Owwwwww!!!) and then reverse pull ups (Mummy!).

Then when both got on the cycling machines.

"How long are we going to be cycling for?" I asked after the 10th minutes - when my lungs had decided to edge closer to my throat in order to see out of my mouth to find out why they weren't getting any air.
"For as long I feel like cycling," came the response.

We cycled for 17 minutes. Except they weren't 17 actual minutes. Because right in the middle of our cycling session, the video for Leona Lewis's hideous cover of "Run" came on, and as we all know, this song is capable bending and lengthening time if you're in earshot and in any sort of pain at all. If you listened to this fucking song at the dentists while you were having root canal work, you'd leave on a zimmer frame, sporting white hair and a colostomy bag - the contents of which you'd sooner have poured into your ears than this frightful fucking song.

I think I blacked out at this stage. Or maybe instinct took over. The body shut down my sight, hearing and taste. All I remember are my thighs and knee-caps aching. The laughter of The Beast.

"See you on Wednesday, bitch!"

Comments

"Hey there, can you bring in that Homicide Book for me tomorrow? Cheers! TB."

I had workout session/hour of pain scheduled with The Beast the next day and the book he was referring to was the impeccable Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets by David Simon. (If you haven't read this book, go and buy it now and do so.) I texted back that I hadn't finished with it and he could jolly well wait until I had.

Bad move.

There was a brief pause and then the phone beeped again. I picked it up and read The Beast missive:

"Bring me something to read or I will train you until you crap yourself!! TB."

Given that my brother/trainer/drill sergeant - or The Beast, as he shall be known - has trained me to the point where I almost finished one of his sessions staggering from the rowing machine with a mouth filled with vomit, I'm tempted to take this as more than an idle threat. Like the best - read:sadistic - personal trainers, The Beast has a refined understanding of the human body. He's not just a trainer. He's a dietician. He's a physio therapist. He's a masseuse. He knows how just how much food, physical exertion and dedication is required to sculpt a body so it looks like it was carved from marble. He understands the pyschological mindset needed to initiate such a change - and that each individual needs to reach that state on their own (it can't be taught or enforced). He can clearly see the line between pushing yourself to get results and pushing yourself too far.

So he knows how to make you crap yourself.

Hell, five years ago when I was a regular gym monkey myself, my brother noted that my water intake was low, and so he decreed that I should drink at least two litres a day. "Nothing wrong with that," I thought, "more water will probably be good for me." Of course, the day before I started drinking down H20 by the gallon, The Beast took me through a work-out which targetted the legs with a series of squats, lunges, curls, extentions and other ghastly exercises that left them feeling like Indian Rubber by the end of it. I think at one point I yelled, "Ok! I'll talk! I'll talk!", which he responded to by telling me to shut up and hurling a stress ball into my head. The next day my legs felt as though I was trying to wade through quick drying cement and I was hobbling around the office like an invalid.

This would have been fine in itself if I hadn't been chugging down gallons of water. You see, a body - and in particular a bladder - needs time to adjust to a massive change in the in the volume of water it gets on a day to day basis. So it wasn't long before I was creaking between the toilet and my desk every five minutes. It was only after my third trip to the bathroom that my mind slowly started to piece together a scenario based on the things I knew about my dear brother, The Beast:

1. I need the loo a lot right now.
2. The reason I need the loo is because The Beast told me to drink lots of water.
3. I can barely move.
4. I can barely move because The Beast beasted my legs yesterday.
5. The Beast knows I'll be in a lot of pain and barely able to move.
6. He also knows my bladder won't be able to contend with the vast amounts of water he's instructed me to drink for quite some time.

All this evidence pointed to only one scenario, and I felt both outraged and stupid when as the pieces fell into place. It was obvious! He was trying to make me wet myself at my desk!! The bastard! The fact that my suspicions could be written off as paranoid delusion only convinced me further. After all, plausible deniability is the fuel that drives most of The Beast's mischievous schemes.

In light of this past experience, you can see why I packed King Suckerman by George Pelecanos into my bag ahead of my next session with The Beast. He'd almost made me piss myself - making me take a dump in my pants would be child's play.

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Days without cigarettes: 35
Days without alcohol: 10

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