It’s time to break a sweat

By Gilbert Kidimu

GET your sneakers, sweat pants and T-shirt on. It’s time to break a sweat in the gym. This has suddenly become a familiar phrase in daily conversations in the corporate world.

The group has caught a fitness fever, it’s like there’s a bug biting every graduate as they join the corporate club. So, don’t find it odd the next time someone asks you where you work out. That question is in vogue.

For many, it is a habit to wake up so early — not to hit the road to work, but to dance through the fitness routines on television, as stations like Bukedde TV and others telecast fitness sequences every morning. Even Urban TV, the newest kid on the block that is testing its signal, is shooting to the same effect.

Some companies have taken it a step further by hiring fitness instructors for their employees after work. Just the other day a friend’s facebook update read: “Time check, 5:30 pm. I am off to the tennis court @Lugogo. ”

Most of those big cars you see on the road have workout kits in their trunks. Lanes in the posh residential quarters are awash with the corporate jogging in the mornings and evenings. At shopping malls and sports shops, toning sets are running out in record time — this one here buying a pair of dumb bells, the other a skipping rope, name it.

So what is this fitness thing all about? Is it for health? Good looks? Or it is it just cool to work out, or have a gym one is affiliated to? You pick up that call and go like: “Hi…sorry I’m in the gym right now, can I call you later?”

Or maybe it’s the place for some lonely girls to find some lonely boys?

Whatever the case, the fitness thing is now a fad and if you have not picked up on it, you are late. Gyms all over the city are making a killing. Universities like Kyambogo have the art of fitness and workout as a whole course unit, and students taking it will also make a killing as instructors when they get out. The corporate have taken it to a whole new level. Just the other day the Kampala corporate were thronging the City High School playground for the fitness bazaar that had several companies sponsoring. This thing is so here to spread, it seems. So why is it?

“Modern women like us want our men hot. No potbelly, just a flat well-toned tummy, preferably a six-pack,” says Angela Kuteesa, an advertiser, adding that men likewise are suddenly more conscious about their looks. “They also want to be eye candy nowadays,” she says.

“But then again, a gym could upgrade your social calendar. It can be a meeting point where you get to interact with different people, some become your ‘good friends’ while others could hook you up with a better paying job,” she adds. So health is not the sole reason fitness centres are being besieged by non-athletes lately? There is clearly more than meets the eye? Shawn Kimuli, a news anchor, reasons that it is not cool to just eat, sleep and be chubby when you can do something about it. “You see, ladies also want some eye candy,” he says, adding that going to the gym is more convenient than say walking or jogging.

“When you are in town; all you need to do is step by a nearby gym and the day is done.”

Marianne Arigye, who has been going to the gym for two years now, believes people are just becoming more health conscious.

“I wouldn’t want to get overweight and get hospitalised at 30 because I have hypertension issues,” she reasons, adding that above and beyond health, women need to look good. “Even a new mom needs to get back in shape.”

But some people just want the alluring aftermath of a workout? “Every morning I skip and do sit-ups until I sweat a great deal,” says Samalie Naiga. She says nothing looks as awful as a flabby belly bulge in a nice dress. “Now I am confident enough to get into a two-piece swimsuit and feel at ease.”

From the instructor
Antonio Bukhar, a Ugandan professional dancer with a dance studio at Royal Suites, Bugolobi, principally targets the corporate looking for a remedy for their sedentary lifestyle and those who may want to tone their body.

“Dance is one of the recognised cardiovascular exercises (fitness routines that involve working out the whole body simultaneously) and is in the same category as swimming, cycling, jogging and walking. It gets you sweating like crazy and panting,” he says. The spectrum of dance genres takes in African movement, salsa, breakfast, hip-hop, dance hall and the Zumba fitness dances.

The workouts begin with warm-ups and stretches. Slower music is played when stretching to get you concentrating and relaxed right before getting on the floor and sweating the day’s fatigue off.

It is just as well that the fitness bug has finally bitten us. In fact, we have caught up so late, as a daily workout could extend one’s lifespan by about four years, a fact several health journals worldwide have sold since time immemorial. Working out keeps one strong, healthy and good-looking. Is it a wonder that Goloola Moses has many girls stalking him?