Turkish men at the gym: A sociologic study
It's been a while I didn't post anything... Summer life is not that quiet as it could seem at first and the free time I thought I will have after the lost of my job has been rapidly occupied.
Today's blog is not about fashion or its other face or about professional struglling. Today's post is about my life in Turkey and more precisely about Turkish men and gym clubs...
One of my “Back to school” resolutions was to take a membership at the local gym to keep “a sound spirit in a sound body” as once Francois Rabelais wrote.
And here I am, running as crazy, or at least trying, after that my “personal” trainer checked if I spoke Turkish and gave my training schedule for the sessions to come.
So here I am, running and sweating as hell, trying not to collapse after 5 minutes when suddenly I hear a scream.
Gosh! Someone is dying! I check in the mirror to see if I need to play Pamela Anderson at the gym but I see only some men “exercising” that weren’t there when I arrive.
And the show begins…
I have to precise that I live in the “hipster” part of Istanbul. The fauna you meet at the local gym corresponds to the one you see drinking coffee at the terraces: hairy and bearded with well hipster looks.
I finally spot the guy who screamed: Turkish, not bad looking and “excercising”. Deciding that he will be a good example for my sociologic studies of “Turkish men at the gym”, I start to follow his sport practice discreetly, without laughing too much and too loud.
Turkish men can spend hours at the gym. 90% of that time is dedicated to admire themselves, their tattoos and muscles in the mirror, 5% of that time is dedicated to speak with the trainer and drink water. And the 5% of time remaining is dedicated to exercise, pushing loud and eloquent screams to make everyone around understand that they are doing real sport, serious stuff while you, poor weak female, you are just running 40 minutes non stop as if your life was depending on it.
In the end, I, too, spent hours at the gym, running, sweating and especially having fun spying Turkish men in action at the gym, concentrated more on they way they and their muscles look than on really making their muscles work…