Bobby stalls in front of us and makes an announcement. ‘What’s Lucy doing wrong here?’
She is open mouthed looking up at him from the ground. I scratch my hand, the side of my face. Everyone’s eyes are on us.
‘Think about it. Look at her positioning.’
The room is silent.
‘She should do it from the side, maybe?’ I say.
‘Yes. Don’t measure a client with your head in front of their crotch. Always come from the side. Same for the bust and chest.’
Lucy shuffles to the side and continues. Bobby examines her page.
‘What have you written for waist?’
Lucy reads it out. With both hands he pinches my stomach and sides.
‘You need to try that again. That number is way too low. Inaccurate. Do the measurement again.’
My face glows red.
Lucy tries again, crosses out her original number, and puts the new one over it. Bobby nods in approval.
I measure Lucy. She’s about five feet tall and has a petite frame.
‘I’m like a wee eleven-year-old boy,’ she says as I wrap the tape around her hips. ‘But I’m fast as fuck. Lightning Lucy.’
Bobby hands out the T-shirts and tells us to put them on straight away. ‘Ladies, you can go to the bathroom if you’re too embarrassed to change here.’
In the bathroom, a woman who was sitting at the back of the classroom, called Magdalena, poses and checks her appearance from all angles in the toilet mirrors.
‘This is such an ugly shirt, no?’ she says.
‘Your accent is lovely. I was in Latin America on a trip earlier this year. De dónde eres?’
‘Venezuela.’
We chat about travelling. With no English, Magdalena moved to Ireland a year ago, and is a housekeeper in a B&B.
She says, ‘I want to work in a gym but I’d like to turn professional as a sports model. I compete in three months, in a bodybuilding bikini contest. Have to get down to twelve per cent body fat. There’ll be lots of scouts at the contest.’
Lucy says, ‘Sounds like an invisible woman contest.’
Magdalena says, ‘Maybe, but a strong invisible woman.’
‘Twelve per cent?’ is all I can say. I repeat it a few times to get my head around it. I look down and wonder if I carry on my chest all the fat Magdalena has on her body.
‘Come on, we better go back in before yer man releases the hounds on us,’ Lucy says, holding the door open.
Bobby is explaining the skeletal system, with a slide show. I take notes and draw diagrams.
Lucy exhales noisily and looks out the window. ‘This is so boring,’ she whispers.
Bobby throws a few questions out about the function and movement of bones.
I innately know a lot of the answers, I don’t know how, maybe from childhood or from biology in secondary school. If I don’t know, I still hazard a guess at the answer. Sometimes it’s easy because of the way Bobby phrases the questions. I enjoy the recap quiz at the end, and get eighteen out of twenty in it.
‘Natalie is slaughtering you all in here,’ Bobby says and I rub the back of my neck. ‘Your nearest competition scored ten.’ He addresses the group. ‘You need to study hard. Theory will not only get you past the exams, it’ll make you seem professional.’
He outlines our first assignment, due a week later. Then he puts us into pairs and tells us to follow him to the gym. I’m matched with a strong young fella called Christian.
The gym floor is bright, large windows wall the space. It has that paradoxical chemical-clean odour from bleach and sprays, and a natural sweaty smell from the people working out.
We walk by the line of treadmills and elliptical machines to the free-weights area.
‘I want you to instruct three exercises. One simple, one compound and one on a machine. Tell me what muscles are being worked, what the plane of motion is, teaching points and how to modify it to make it easier or progress it,’ Bobby says. ‘I will be back shortly to see them. Go.’
‘I don’t really know any proper moves,’ I say to Christian. ‘Will you teach me how to teach you?’
‘Let’s do a bicep curl first, it’s easiest.’
Christian passes a two kilo dumbbell to me.
‘Keep your elbows close to your body. Bend them to curl the dumbbell up to your shoulder. Pause. Slowly lower it back to the starting position. Movement is elbow flexion. Muscle is bicep. Progress it with a heavier load. Easier with a lighter load.’
We practise by me parroting him.
‘Are you a bodybuilder?’
‘Yep.’
‘Do you wear tan competing?’ I ask as Christian returns the dumbbell to the rack. He nods.
‘Why?’
‘If you put someone the exact same build but with a tan beside a pale person, the one with the tan will look more muscular. To showcase definition or striation you need shadow.’
I tilt my head to the side and visualize Christian as a green-skinned hulk flexing.
‘Which machine will we do?’ Christian asks. ‘Lat pulldown?’
‘The what?’
He sits at a machine, extends his arms overhead to grasp a dangling bar and pulls it down. ‘This works the latissimus dorsi.’
Christian shows where the muscle is located on his mid to lower back. He then offers teaching points on the machine. I try it out with no weights attached to the bottom of the cable.
We’re about to decide on a third one when Magdalena and Lucy holler at us to come over.
‘What does this bad boy do?’ Lucy says, pointing at the machine called Vibro-Plate 3000. She switches it on and hops onto it, holding the handle while the plate vibrates at high speed under her feet. ‘Jesus, it feels like me brain is moshing against me skull.’ Her voice shakes.
We all have a go. My vision blurs as it aggressively sends vibrations through my body. I get off, and my head is wobbly. ‘That thing is vicious.’
‘Maybe it’d be better craic to sit on it,’ Lucy says.
We’re loitering around and don’t see Bobby return.
‘Right, Christian, Natalie, show me what you’ve done,’ he says and claps.
I wipe my hands on my tracksuit bottoms as I follow Christian and go first with the bicep curl. Bobby corrects me on a few parts of it.
Christian shows the lat pulldown.
‘And your third move?’
‘We didn’t have time for a third move,’ I say.
‘Bicep curl is the simplest one to explain. I want you to show me a deadlift, Natalie.’
‘A deadlift?’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay,’ I say and hover over the dumbbells.
‘You’re doing it with a dumbbell?’
Christian points at a kettlebell.
I pick that up instead.
Christian demonstrates the move behind Bobby.
I try to copy him but haven’t a clue.
‘Natalie, that’s not a deadlift.’
‘What is a deadlift?’ I ask.
Bobby double-takes me. ‘You’re serious?’
I say nothing.
‘Christian, show her.’
‘With a kettlebell or a barbell?’
‘What’s it called with a kettlebell?’
‘A Romanian deadlift.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘They’re the reverse of each other?’
‘That’ll do. How could you modify it?’
They may as well be speaking Chinese.
‘Reduce load. Use the Smith machine?’
‘No. That would be dangerous.’
‘What’s a Smith machine?’ I ask.
Bobby turns and says, ‘Natalie, one second, look around you. This is what is called a gym. Have you ever seen one before? And that is a barbell. And this here is a rack. Bloody hell, woman.’
‘You told me that I’d be learning these things when I signed up?’
I recall the phone call with him, when I rang for information on the course, wondering if there was any point me being on it considering my inexperience. He assured me that they had many students who were new to the gym, who wanted a career change or a second income.