Pump up the volume, in more ways than one (From Times Series)

Pump up the volume, in more ways than one

9:30am Monday 1st February 2010

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I SWEAR to God that Janet sounded sweet as anything on the phone, and super-friendly too. So imagine my surprise when five minutes into her Body Pump class at Finchley LA Fitness I was confronted with a yelling, grinning, blonde amazon telling me to "PUSH!"

Scared? You bet I was.

Body Pump consists of getting a big metal bar and shoving weights of various heavinesses on each end, then taking the device and near killing yourself lifting it up while doing a variety of squats, lunges, bends, sit ups and lifts.

I took the wimpiest weight available – 1.25kg - and used that one for all the moves but other members of the class were adding and taking away 5kg, 2.5kg and 1.25kg weights from their bars throughout the hour and sometimes, somehow hefting them all at once.

Impressed? You bet I was.

All the while Janet, who is blonde, tanned and seriously toned, is barking instructions at you with the authority of a sergeant major and occasionally singing along to the music, which has the combined effect of making you not sure if you've stumbled into the Army or a karaoke bar.

Either way you're sure you've somehow been warped into another dimension - one where a techno remix of Bryan Adams' Summer of 69 (yes such an abomination exists) was attempting to burst my ear drums.

That was closely followed by a techno version of Dead or Alive's You Spin Me Round (Like a Record), as if the original wasn't horrible enough.

Nobody looked like they were having fun.

To be fair to Janet, who is a 5kg woman through and through, the music is not her choice, though she seemed to be getting into it.

You see Body Pump is a kind of brand, everything from the type of weights used to the cds played are part of the package, and Janet has gone on courses and passed exams to be able to teach it.

Presumably all the shouting is part of the package too because Janet is very nice and not scary at all when she's not teaching her class.

She said she started as a punter, just like me, ten years ago, and looking at her you can see that the programme works. There's not much in the way of cardio so you wouldn't want to do Body Pump all the time but in terms of flexing your muscles, the class is perfectly worked out to pretty much stretch them all. Lying on the plastic block provided while lowering the weights slowly behind your head was particularly gruelling while at one point I thought if I had to do one more squat my legs were going to give out on me completely, which let's face it would've been embarrassing.

It is loud and fast and dizzying and painful but by the end of it you've followed an all-body regime which would be pretty complicated to work out for yourself. I wasn't too sure about Janet's frequent references to the bra line when she spoke about where to position your weights. The one male member of the class looked somewhat put out by this and I couldn't see any reason why the class wasn't suitable for both genders.

What it is suitable for is people who firmly believe in the mantra “no pain no gain.”

After what has to be one of the longest hours of my life, I stumbled out, feeling light-headed and somewhat sick while the next group of people shuffled in for the Pilates class. They didn't look like they'd have any truck with techno.

Knackered? You bet I was.

Having said that I felt a small spark of pride, buried deep within my, now aching, bosom – I had survived the Body Pump experience.

And through my blurry vision I could see somewhere else that looked even more hellish – the spinning class.

The thumping bassline emanating from this tiny, squashed box of sweat was giving me a headache outside the room, let along inside it, while a number of adults were crammed in very close to each other in the darkness on exercise bikes maniacally spinning their legs around as if their lives depended on it.

They were being shouted at too.

LA Fitness Finchley is at 47 East End Road, Finchley. Telephone 020 8346 7253 or email finchley@lafitness.co.uk.

Opening hours are Monday to Thursday 6:30am – 10pm; Friday 6:30am – 9pm and Saturday and Sunday 8am – 8pm Body Pump is on Mondays at 7.10pm, Tuesdays at 7pm, Wednesdays at 7.35pm, Thursdays at 9.45am, Fridays at 7am and Sundays at 11am.

All classes last an hour.