I’ve been listening to my friend Erika talk about her Zumba teacher’s tight butt for over a year now. Although I love a viewing of a good butt as much as the next gal, I didn’t want to have to enter a gym just to get a glimpse.
“I hate gyms,” I told her one day when we were at the park with the kids. “I like to get my exercise outside. Plus, I can take my walks with greasy hair, coffee breath and bad BO and never worry about seeing anyone.”
“I see you on your walks all the time?”
“You do?” Although this slightly alarmed me, it still didn’t warrant a trip to the gym. But then Erika took off her sweatshirt and revealed toned, muscular arms.
“Holy crap!” I screamed. “Where did you get those?”
“At the gym. After Zumba I lift free weights.”
After fondling her arms to make sure they were real, I asked her for the true test. “Wave to me,” I commanded. “No, lift your arm high and wave hard.”
And damn if her arm didn’t wave back at her. Up until that day, I had assumed a woman’s lower arm began waving back at her once she hit forty and there wasn’t anything we could do about it. Erika proved me wrong.
“Wow, no wave,” I sulked. “My arms haven’t looked like that since I carried my twenty five pound toddlers around everywhere. And even then it was only my right arm that was buff, so it was more of a deformity than impressive.”
“I’m telling you, you’ve got to start coming to Zumba. Toned arms and the best ass in town. I’ll buy you coffee afterwards, it will be fun.”
Although tempting, I refused her offer. I took my kids and saggy arms home and for once thanked Seattle for it’s constantly wet and cool weather. What’s the point of having toned arms if you never get to show them off?
As the weeks passed it seemed as if everyone I knew was a member of a gym. Cindy, my hiker, biker enthusiast had a gym pass attached to her keys. My boyfriend talked incessantly of his personal trainer. Even Misty, my most unconventional artist friend, the one who sews compasses to her skirts, said she couldn’t meet for a walk because she’d be at the gym for her NIA class.
“You go to a gym?” I asked.
“Of course, but it’s not a gym gym. It’s for people like us.”
“People like us don’t go to gyms.”
“Sure they do, in a Ballard way.”
Although I was skeptical, I did start to open my mind to taking yoga classes again. I was a dutiful prenatal yoga student, but then the baby came and you know what happens then. Nothing. Well, nothing for yourself, lots and lots of things happen that revolve around the baby. With both my kids finally in school, I figured it was a good time to get back into yoga. And wouldn’t you know it, the class I attended was in a gym. Misty’s neighborhood, not a gym, gym.
“I’m just doing yoga,” I told myself. But soon enough those shiny machines and heavy weights started singing out to me. “Come to us Corbin, come. You too can have toned arms. It’s not hard, really.”
“No!” I said. “That’s for weird triangle shaped men and women who date their plastic surgeon. I’m not a gym person, remember?” But then I looked around my gym and saw a seventy-year-old man doing leg presses and a few women who, gasp!, looked like me using the machines. Misty’s right, I thought. This isn’t a gym, gym. I walked over to what looked like an arm curl machine, but one look at the complicated levers and stacks of weights scared me away and I resolved myself to “just being a yoga person” again.
Then another siren song sang out to me: the wall of personal trainers all happy and eager to navigate this foreign world for me. I read their bios, studied their faces for possible sketchy steroid intake, and finally made an appointment.
I made sure to say (twice) on my intake form and a few times in person, “I’m not a gym person.”
“Cool,” my trainer said. “Either am I.”
“But you’ve worked here for years?”
He merely shrugged in what I quickly learned was his Zen way. He sauntered over to the machines, studied a few and then said,” I’m not really into the machines. I prefer to let the body work with and against itself.”
“Great,” I said and followed him into the stretching room. Meaning, the room without metal. He did various poses and stretches with me, all of which were very natural and un-gym like.
“How many should I do?” I asked after he showed me a variation of a crunch.
“Ten or so, whatever you like.”
The more mellow he was, the more frenzied I became. Within fifteen minutes, I was begging him to show me the machines.
“Let’s start with free weights,” he drawled.
“Screw free weights,” I nearly screamed. “ I can buy them at Fred Meyer and do them at home. Show me the machines!”
He showed me two and said we should stop.
“No, I want toned arms!” I frothed.
“Let’s just start with the few exercises I showed you. It’s an all over workout, really easy on the joints and…”
“I want to work my triceps, biceps, deltoids, and pecs. Let’s thrown in the gluts and abs while we’re at it. Gravity hasn’t been my friend.” I surprised both of us with my vehemence, not to mention anatomy knowledge.
He conceded and showed me a few machines. If he put it on 20 pounds, I moved it to thirty when he wasn’t looking. If he said do “10 or so” reps, I did fifteen “or so.”
And thus, I became a gym person.

Corbin Lewars (www.corbinlewars.com) is the author of Creating a Life: The memoir of a writer and mom in the making, which was nominated for the 2011 PNBA and Washington State book awards and is now available via ebook. Her essays have been featured in over twenty-five publications including Mothering and Hip Mama. She teaches coaches other writers on-line, via the phone and in person in Ballard. You can find her and her yet to be toned arms at the Ballard Health Club.