Discovery of the week: The Gym

About a month ago I joined a new gym. This is the second gym I’ve joined in Korea. Not because the first gym was bad but it was just a little too far away for me to get to it everyday and knowing myself I need it accessible to push myself to go.

This new gym is very dinky and small but lovely. The lady who runs it works so hard to maintain the place and is always there even though it’s open from 6am to 11pm.

The nicest element of a lot of Korean gyms is the fact they provide you with gym clothes. They give you shorts and t-shirts (In fabulous pink for the girls of course) and they also provide you with your own locker. Since I love going to the gym straight from school this is fantastic. I can leave my trainers, water bottle and ipod there so I’m always ready to gym it, any time of day. I now have no excuse.

I have been aiming to get a morning session in before school but I love sleep a little too much. A warm bed is a hard place to leave.

The downsides of Korean gyms, especially this one is the lack of personal space. The last gym I joined wasn’t so bad since there was a room to do floor exercises such as push ups and sit ups but this gym doesn’t have that. Koreans like to stare a little anyway and at the gym they are in creepy staring overtime, seem to find westerners fascinating. I am sweating up a storm only to look over and see 7 confused looking Korean men staring back at me.

Everyone is lovely; they just find us exercising interesting since they have never seen it.

The place has weight machines of all kinds (including a rodeo machine that lets you basically ride a mechanical bull in the gym) and running machines. This gym even has a cross trainer with is a rarity in Korea so I will probably stick with the place purely for that…and the fact its cheap compared to others. I’m counting the pennies as well as the pounds.

Over all it’s a nice space to work out, combined with the proximity to home , the very fair price (90 000 \ for 3 months or about 15 pound a month) and the fact its next door to Mcd’s (yes I realize the irony of going there after working out)all these factors mean its just a perfect little get away. Well I could do without the 6 flights of stairs to get to the entrance but it does slightly give you a rocky moment when you get to the top.

Let’s hope I can stick with it. Fingers crossed I’ll be new and improved sooner than you can say dumbbell!