Spandex, Johnny Phelan, Van Morrison & the F**king Boat

It’s worrying that I seem to be the default option for company when the lad’s girlfriends are away for a weekend. Fortunately for the better halves, while I’m still on the straight and narrow they have little to worry about. This week it was Johnny Phelan and on Friday night we planned for two gym sessions over the weekend.
The first was Saturday afternoon. I had accepted the invitation with some trepidation. When Johnny hits lads at training, fellas pause, unsure whether to laugh or show concern for his latest victim. If you substituted in Johnny Phelan’s name in those Chuck Norris jokes you’d be unlikely to get much disagreement. No-one likes being dwarfed in the gym either so a visit with him could cause untold damage to my ego.

He agreed on my routine and was sensitive to my feelings in the early exercises before casting aside my pitiful weights for the heavier ones. We broke the session up with a 30 minute core class. In we trudged, kitted out in Belgium GAA training gear and beaten up runners. We were the only men in a group of about 15.

Women dress well for the gym here and there seems to be no shortage of spandex in the local sports stores. The beads of sweat queued up on our foreheads before the class even started. Those classes are a nightmare because they’re in studios with mirrors all over the place. It seems like every time you raise your eyes they cross paths with another participant either directly or through the medium of the mirror. Although, I’m certain they were looking at me first.

We were going ok until we got to the boat. It’s basically an exercise where you left your legs up so your shins are parallel to the ground and then left your upper body up and try and balance. The instructor brings various punishing variations into it along the way. Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl provided the back-drop for this exercise and I counted down every word to the end. The grimacing on our faces was a little embarrassing in the pristine company we were keeping.

We repeated the visit to the gym this afternoon and followed Johnny’s routine. I thought he had broken me with the first few exercises but after swallowing my pride and reducing the weight, I survived. The highlight was Power Box though.

It’s an hour long class with a load of stretching and strength exercises. However, as the name suggests, there is a heavy boxing theme in it. It was not until half way through, with sweat hopping off us that we realised the actual idea behind the boxing/kicking drills. Technique and speed were the objective, not trying to beat the shit out of the pads as myself and Johnny had been doing!!

A good weekend but maybe the last of its type for a while. Tomorrow is February 1. The self-imposed drinking ban has come to an end. The girlfriends better start thinking twice....