Carol’s Column

Aerobics, like bungee jumping, is strictly for lunatics

It's that time of the year again. The time to come out of shrink wrap and expose flabby thighs, drooping bottoms and burgeoning beer bellies to the great outdoors. Get up early, open your bedroom curtains and peer outside. You'll see what I mean. Suddenly the streets are filled with puffing, panting persons, feet pounding, arms flailing, running like bats out of hell, all in an attempt to lose a few kilos and get fit.

Even the sound of traffic is drowned by the wheezing of long-dormant lungs suddenly exposed to the harsh reality of petrol-polluted fresh air.

Alternatively, pop into a gym and you'll find the circuits wall-to-wall with pectoral-pumping enthusiasts. In fact, it's advisable to take along reading matter, because the equipment queues stretch forever and you can spend half an hour waiting for a saddle on an exercise bike.

Okay, we're all used to fighting for a parking place or a supermarket trolley, that's part of life. But having to compete for a place in an aerobics class is ridiculous.

Like everyone else, I hibernated during the winter. It seemed unappealing to set an alarm clock for the early hours and drive to gym in the dark in order to start the day in a healthy way with an energetic workout. Let's face it, long winter nights and dark early mornings are sleep inducing.

But come the hot season and it's a different story.

So when I received a note in the post advertising musical aerobic classes at the local gym, I shook the mothballs from my trainers and trotted off eagerly.

I wasn't the only one. It's the first time I've ever had to arm wrestle for a mat, and the large hall with its state-of-the-art sprung floor and wall-to-ceiling mirrors throbbed with the movement of keep-fitniks strutting their stuff. Like cramped pilchards in a can they moved and moaned together.

“I've never seen such a large turnout,” I observed to the man on my right who kept cracking me in the stomach as he gyrated crazily in time with the music.

“They say Madiba works out here. He's a big drawcard,” he eructed as he bounced.

Then: “You've dropped something,” he added. “Just my bottom,” I replied as I bobbed to the beat.

“My name's Percy,” he said at a later stage when I helped him straighten after some particularly strenuous kneebending. That's the thing about aerobics, it creates an immediate intimacy.

There was a strangled sigh and then a gurgling. Pulmonary distress? I sneaked a glance. No. My stretching foot had somehow arched its way to within five centimetres of Percy's left nostril and it seemed he was suffering from chronic asphyxiation.

“Sorry about that,” I muttered as I removed the offending extremity.

“Think nothing of it,” he gallantly gasped.

“Breathe in, blow out,” intoned Chantalle the agile instructor as she took us through a series of bodily contortions. “You're giraffes and you're stretching for the trees.”

It was while performing this exercise that Percy went into spasm and froze like a pillar of salt.

No amount of chipping would unfreeze him and he was eventually carried out on a stretcher.

Which has taught me two things. Firstly, Nelson Mandela does not attend the gym up the road. He's far too healthy and all his parts are in working order. Secondly, aerobics, like bungee jumping, is for lunatics. It stands to reason.

Had the Good Lord wanted us to perform aerobics, She would have designed us with everlasting batteries and spring joints.

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