Boot Camp

I went to boot camp the other day. Now, I imagine you are sitting there wondering what boot camp is, so I’ll tell you.

The routine goes like this. You are in either the Inside group or the Outside group. If you are Outside, you work your way round the periphery of the room, using a variety of painful and unnatural styles of locomotion. If you are Inside, you station yourself at a bench in the middle of the room, and you are bullwhipped through a series of activities designed to wind you, send you into convulsions, and leave you curled up in a whimpering heap. Sensational fun all round.

Since I was among those who had not been to these sessions before, I was instructed to start off in the Inside group. At first I thought the rationale behind this was to start the newcomers off with the easier exercises. However, I soon laughed heartily at the very idea, as it became clear that we newcomers were planted there for the simple reason that the trainer could focus his full attention on us and not let the tiniest lapse or sign of laziness slip by unnoticed.

The trainer, whom I had previously understood to be a sweet, gentle creature, was suddenly the size of a small mountain, erupting in explosions of molten rock and castigations, and bellowing things like, “Jump! Lift your knees as high as you can – all the way up to your chin! Jump! Jump! Jump!” and “Press up! And down – and hold. HOLD IT! I DIDN’T SAY TO GO BACK UP! Hold it till it BURNS!” and “Mountain climbers! Lift those knees! LIFT THOSE KNEES! DON’T slow down why are you slowing down keep it MOVING! FASTER!”

At one point, he had us doing press-ups, with our hands on the bench. Then he added an extra dimension, called a “gecko”, to each press-up. Doing a gecko, we learn, involves bringing your left knee up to your left elbow, then your right knee to your right elbow. So we were going: press-up, gecko left, gecko right.

Then he decided to add yet another dimension to this press-up. 

“Press-up, gecko, gecko, neo,” he instructed, demonstrating. And I swear he did this:

Humour me for a moment. Stand up, and put your hands on a knee-high surface, or, failing that, a chair seat. Now, throwing all your weight onto your hands, hurl your feet up behind you. Try to get them up above your head. I will wait a moment while you do so.

….

OK? Did you manage? No? No, of course you didn’t. It’s impossible. And yet, not only did this ambulant volcano of a trainer do it, but he expected – nay, he demanded – that we do it too! I have never heard of such a thing in all my days.

Just as I was starting to seriously worry that my lungs were going to rupture, and wonder why I couldn’t feel my hands or feet anymore, the trainer suddenly stopped, smiled cheerily, and said, “OK, change over. Inside group, go to the outside; outside group, come to the inside.”

Well, a change is as good as a rest, they do say, but it depends what kind of rest. In some cases, a change is only as good as a rest if a rest involves throwing your body alternately at the floor and at the ceiling, at intervals contorting yourself into a variety of uncomfortable positions, and impairing your sense of up and down in the most violent manner imaginable.

So this is what you do if you are in the Outside group:

You start in a corner. There, you do five burpees. This is what a burpee looks like:

(But faster than that. As fast as you can, in fact.)

Then you go to the next corner. But you don’t just stroll across – what on earth were you thinking? No – you jump across. And not the sort of frivolous jump you used to do with your friends in the playground, but a big, painful, grownup jump, starting with a squat, then propelling yourself forward in a magnificent parabola, and culminating in a hint of a thud and another squat, ready for the next launch.

When you get to that corner, you do another five burpees. In fact, you do five burpees in every corner you get to. (And this apparently rectangular room appears to develop a quite unjustifiable quantity of corners, I might add.) When you have finished burpeeing, you arrange yourself with your hands and feet on the floor and your back straight, so that the floor, your arms, and your back make an isosceles triangle. So far so good, you think. Yes, well, just wait. You then throw one hand and one foot out to one side, then bring your other hand and foot across to join them, so you are effectively crawling your way sideways across the floor. Have you ever tried to do such a thing? Of course you haven’t. Why would you? It is a ridiculous, unnatural thing to do, and makes for an incredibly uncomfortable journey across the room.

When you finally reach the next corner, you do the requisite five burpees, and then apply yourself to the task of crawling – yes, crawling – on your stomach, much in the manner of an agitated lizard, down a row of mats (by now smeared with the sweat of a dozen clammy, hyperventilating people).

Five more burpees, and now comes the only uncompromisedly fun part of the whole ordeal – hopping merrily from one Bosu ball (  )to another, as if you were crossing a river on stepping stones.

You breathe a sigh (or rather wheeze a gasp) of relief at this point, congratulating yourself wholeheartedly for having survived an entire circuit of the room. You look proudly across at the trainer, reckoning that at any moment now, he will say, “OK, change over again”. (What you would like him to say, of course, is “OK, folks, that’ll do for today”, but you are not living in Fairyland.) But the trainer pays not the slightest bit of heed to you or to any other member of the Outside group, because he is so taken up with thundering commands at the gasping, trembling, and occasionally collapsing, members of the Inside group.

So you cast your eyes to the floor in resignation, mop the sweat from your brow, and start off on another set of burpees. And round the room you go again. At intervals, you hear, in the distant corners of your consciousness, through a fog of searing pain and discomfort, the trainer shouting “30 seconds more!” and each time, your heart lifts a little, only to sink again after 30 seconds elapse and it turns out that he just meant 30 seconds until the Inside group started the next exercise.

Finally, once you have effected at least another two laps of the room (the crawling leg of the circuit slightly easier each time, due to the steadily accumulating film of sweat on the mats, which eliminates some of the resistance), the trainer yells out, “Get some water! You have ten seconds! Ten – nine – eight – “

And he actually counts the seconds you are permitted for the consumption of several litres of water.

Then it’s back to the grindstone. Insiders and Outsiders exchange places, and you start the whole traumatic ordeal again.

You know those sci-fi horror stories where someone gets sent back an hour in time? So they live that hour again, until they arrive at the point at which they get sent back an hour? And they just find themselves looped into this hour which, no matter how enjoyable it might have been the first time round, quickly becomes tortuous? Well, that is exactly what this Inside-change-Outside-change-Inside-change business was like. I don’t know how long it went on, but it seemed like days. It just didn’t end. Except that eventually, it did.

I had by that point downed enough water to irrigate a small farm for a week. And I’m just one person – there were fifteen others too. These boot camp classes must cost the gym a fortune in water bills. And as for my clothes… Have you ever had occasion to plunge a t-shirt into a bucket of water? You know what it looks like when you take it out? Well, that is what my t-shirt looked like. 

Well, I felt indescribably virtuous by the end of all this, and I went straight home and ate a large portion of chocolate fudge pudding to congratulate myself. But not before I had informed the trainer that his profile on the gym website, despite being very beautiful, contained an apostrophe which had no business being there. He didn't tell me to get lost, although he might have been justified in doing so, but just shook his head sadly.

“I hate writing that sort of stuff,” he sighed. “I’m trying to put together a new profile, but I really hate doing it.”

So I wrote a profile for him. I also wrote a glowing testimonial, and meant every word of it. And I’m going back for another session tomorrow.