On the subject of French Gyms...
For the past few weeks, I’ve been getting up early and heading to the gym down the road. On my bike, I leave my accommodation and cross the street, weaving my way through cheerfully quiet suburbia. I turn right and join a bigger road which passes by a park before arriving in a small industrial sector with construction companies and a billboard talking about firefighter orphans. Eventually, I reach a T junction and smell butter croissants from the boulangerie on the corner. The gym is just opposite, in a very small retail park. It’s called BasicFit, one of the biggest gym chains in the whole of France. It has a nausea-inducing logo with white letters set against an orange background. Inside, the machines are good and the equipment is varied, albeit slightly old. There are no changing rooms, just toilets, and the showers, though recently refurbished, have no ventilation and poor drainage, thus becoming a flooded sauna when you’ve finished your shower. On top of this, there is no water fountain! You heard me right. If you want water you have to crane your neck and sip from the taps in the bathroom sinks. There is a refill station reserved for those with a more expensive subscription. No water flows but instead, BasicFit’s nasty electrolyte drink which no one ever touches. I pay over thirty euros a month for this rubbish. At least they’re not making any pretences about what you’re going to get. It’s a shame because unless you live in Paris, you have no other choice than this subpar gym brand. In small to medium-sized cities, it’s a choice between BasicFit or some independent place which is more expensive with less equipment. There’ll also be a trusty sports club which has an antediluvian gym attached to the side of a running track, public pool, and climbing wall. BasicFit is the best of a bad bunch. I’ve come to live with it. It works very well for me, it has all that I need.
Now, Brexit was bad - don’t get me wrong. If I had been 18 at the time, I would have voted Remain. Yet there are a few things Britain gets right, leaving countries like France in its wake. One of these is the quality, variety, and value-for-money of its gyms.
I long for the day when BasicFit, in its French arrogance, tries to enter the mighty UK market. Caveat BasicFit! I look forward to this day because it would force them to concede that their customers are paying too much for too little. If BasicFit tried to stand next to Pure Gym, the UK’s cheap gym chain, it would melt like the Wicked Witch of The West. Pure Gym is half the price but still manages to have new equipment with whole sections dedicated to powerlifting, a jungle gym set-up, and even CrossFit. It also has classes and personal trainers. What’s more, if you want to pay extra for a better gym there are the two titan chains - Nuffield Health and David Lloyd - the latter equivalent to the American ideal of a country club. We may have been wrong and stupid to have left the EU, but in some ways, we left because the French couldn’t get on our level, we didn’t want to sink into the mediocrity of their fitness industry.
I still go to BasicFit every day with my tail between my legs. I mumble under my breath every now and then. My routine always starts with the treadmill. I do between 15 to 30 minutes before heading onto the weights. There’s no real air conditioning in this gym, so I always come off the treadmill soaking. Trying to do weights after a long run is a spiritual endeavour. It’s a moment where my energy is coming down from the run and the breezy, opiate-like endorphins kick in and I begin to feel relaxed. On the other hand, it’s exactly at this moment when I’m trying to boost my motivation back up and start on the weights. The inner discussion begins, I try and be as productive and meat-heady as I can to make the most out of the weights. There’s an Afghan guy at my accommodation who also uses the gym I go to. He told me that he thought I’d get more out of my workouts if I did my treadmill and weight sessions at different points in the day. I thanked him for the unsolicited advice, but he’s maybe onto something.
I look forward to my early morning treadmill sessions. I put on a podcast, whack my towel over the timer, and set off at a nice, slow pace which I gently increase. Time blurs and I zone out as the minutes climb by. A lot of people dislike the treadmill. They praise running outside instead - how much more interactive it is, the beauty, the smell of the flowers and the fresh air. They’re right, yet again. My favourite runs have always taken place outside, in beautiful scenery. In February, I ran around the Circus Maximus in Rome. On my second lap, running up the incline towards the Giuseppe Manzini statue, the sun rose above the cypress trees to the left of the United Nations building. I ran up the deserted Palatine Hill and entered dewy Giardino degli Aranci without a tourist in sight. I thought to myself “This is the Rome of Jep Gambardella! I’m seeing what it would have been like for Virgil or Ovid.”
You can never get anything like that on the treadmill but what you lose in views and running where Virgil stood, you make up for in the feeling of channelled flow that comes with focused exercise. In the morning, not much light comes through the prison windows of BasicFit. In a sense, it’s a good thing because as the day looms darkly, you can zone out, and get into a meditative state where you go nowhere and the rhythm of your legs becomes like a mantra.
I’ve only been able to access this state before on a treadmill, the feeling that you can go forever completely absorbed in the bionic motion of you and the treadmill. Add some music to make it even more spiritual. I recommend French DJ ‘The Blaze’, and the 2-hour set they did on the peak of Aiguille du Midi, right by Mont Blanc.
It works better than a shouty Joe Rogan Podcast.