I was running a bit late for my 7.30pm aerobics class the other night and as I was flying through the gym door, I bumped into a girl I haven’t seen in ages. Despite knowing that by stopping and chatting, my favorite spot in the class was probably going to be taken, I was keen to find out where she’d been for all this time. We got chatting and quickly established that we were both well and busy. Wondering if we could perhaps move the conversation closer to the dance studio so that I could baggsie my spot, I asked her if she was doing the same class as me. “Hell no! I've just come in to watch Coronation Street on the bike. I’ve been doing it for a few weeks now and it’s quite cool.  It makes the time pass quicker and relieves the sense of guilt that I have after being sat down all day”.

I said that we should make time to catch up properly, wished her a good workout and ran into class with seconds to spare; taking the best spot that was left.

As I was leaping around in lycra to some beefed up version of Dave Dobbyn (yep, don’t worry – I’ve already told them!) and for hours afterwards, I was bugged by my friend’s definition of ‘working out’. Surely sitting on a bike, plugged into Coro with a pair of skater shoes and baggy track pants was not ‘working out’. What exactly did she think she was working out? I couldn’t imagine that her heart rate would have increased any; I couldn’t see her breaking out into a sweat or struggling to hold a conversation. I couldn’t imagine that after 12 weeks on this ‘programme’ that she’d be fitter, faster, leaner and meaner. Surely the whole thing, therefore was a complete and utter waste of time?

I brooded over this for a few days feeling incensed that this inferior form of exercise had been confused for the hard core, character building type that changed kittens into lions and mid riffs into washboards. Yet, once I’d started to calm down a bit, I began to wonder whether this was in fact the very thing the fitness industry needed to help bridge the gap from nothing to something. Surely my exercise resistant friend, who preferred an imitation pina colada to an interval based training programme, was better off sat on a bike than slouched on a couch. Surely the routine of going to the gym two nights a week with the motivation of watching something she enjoys was a great way to get her started on a good habit. Perhaps, once this habit had been formed, anything else would be welcomed more warmly.

I’ve never looked at exercise in this way ever before and for a moment I felt quite embarrassed that I harbored such an elitist view. Rather than being scathing of her activity, the fact that it was activity and one that didn’t affect me in the slightest, should have been praised and encouraged. Perhaps it’s exactly this view that has prevented more people from doing something in the first place. With most personal trainers arguably thinking the same as me, do we need to target different people to work in the industry? People happy to help those who do nothing to get doing something? Or should we be helping more personal trainers learn to accept that we all have to start at the beginning and some get there later than others?