There’s been a change of ownership at my gym

Not a big deal you might say and I’d agree because I’ve been using a gym somewhere or another for 50 years or so.

My first gym was in Tokyo in the early 70s. I stayed in the city twice for about three months and lived in a company apartment in Azabu Towers which was within convenient walking distance of the office for the day time and Roppongi for the night. And even more conveniently the Clark Hatch Fitness Centre was right there in the building. In fact it’s still there some 50 years on.

When I was a member it was pretty basic and not very large. There was a treadmill, maybe two, and lots of weights but no resistance machines. There really wasn’t much space and you shared it with other expats doing there best to stay fit and impressive kick boxers showing off their skills. It gave me my first introduction to a sports drink: Gatorade.

Later in the 70s I lived in Hong Kong where Mr Hatch had a joint venture with Tom Turk, hence the Hatch & Turk Health Centres Limited. According to the Hong Kong Company Directory it is no more having been dissolved in 2000. The company ran three gyms in Hong Kong and I used to go to the one in the Excelsior Hotel in Causeway Bay. It says a lot about the sort of life I enjoyed there that I would take a taxi there and back in my lunch hour.

This was a step up from the gym in Tokyo with more space, much more, exercise bikes as well as treadmills and simple resistance machines. It also provided clothing so I just left my gym shoes there and had no need to take any kit with me.

From Hong Kong I moved to Switzerland and for a while in the mid 80s worked out of an office in Zurich which was within walking distance of a Kieser gym. This is another business which has survived and although the actual gym which I used is no more Keiser still runs many gyms in Zurich and elsewhere.

I’m not saying that any of the gyms which I’d used earlier were in any way no good gyms but Keiser was serious. But then being Swiss you’d expect that. The instructors were ever present and they reviewed your exercise regime regularly. Strangely there was no aerobic equipment. You were expected to take care of that yourself and probably by cycling or running in the open air.

When I moved back from Zurich to my company’s main office in Horgen Keiser was no longer so convenient and I switched to Schmucki Fit which ran a gym a short distance from my home in Richterswil and close enough to the office to fit in a lunchtime session. Schmucki is also still in business but has moved into the centre of Wadenswil.

This was a full service gym with treadmills, bikes and, for the first time, stair master type kit. I used it for the years leading up to my hip replacement in 1992 and this certainly played a part in maintaining my muscle condition so that I was well prepared for the operation and could recover quickly after it.

I was back in the UK soon after that and joined BJ’s Health & Beauty in Wilmslow. It is no more. It was small but well run and largely health with little by the way of beauty. It was convenient for where I lived and kept me in good condition especially during my period of unemployment in 1996. It was the first gym I’d seen which had TVs to distract you from the pain of exercise.

After we moved to Cambridge I joined a gym on the Histon Road, a good 10 minutes plus drive so not too convenient. It had itself shoe horned into spare space at a squash centre with rather basic equipment. But shortly thereafter it moved to a ‘barn conversion’ where it spread out with a full range of aerobic equipment and more up to date resistance machines and an exercise room. And that was conveniently less than a 5 minute drive from my home.

I must have been with The Barn for over 20 years now and it’s now gone through its third change of ownership. Each new owner has brought changes but all pretty minor but generally they’ve improved the stock of equipment so that now there’s bikes, treadmills, stairmasters and rowing machines plus free weights and resistance machines and a gym with a range of classes from yoga to spin. I did spin classes right up until my cardiac event in 2019. The photo above is from a couple of weeks ago after the previous owner took all his kit out. It’s since been largely replaced.

It was whilst using an exercise bike at The Barn that I experienced some chest ‘discomfort’. I didn’t worry about it at the time and simply exercised through it. But I did go and see my GP and two weeks later was at Royal Papworth having a stent fitted in my right coronary artery. Probably a case of dodging a bullet. Read more about that episode at http://bit.ly/3KqgCx6

The name’s changed of course. After opening as The Barn it became Prime Time Fitness which is as bland and generic a name as you could imagine. After that it was Revolution Health and Fitness Girton, it being the second gym in the Revolution ‘group’ and now it seems to be Vision Fitness (Girton) which doesn’t exactly get the pulse racing. There are now three gyms in the Vision Fitness group.

I’ve used other gyms of course, generally in hotels when I’ve been travelling. Hatch & Turk served me well in the new hotels in Asia and US hotels generally have some provision even if it’s as little as couple of exercise bikes. Nowadays, and post stent, I’m not so obsessed with squeezing in a gym session when I’m travelling although I do appreciate a decent sized pool to get in a little low impact aerobic activity.