From Zumba Mummies to hot Latinos, it’s a gym life for me

YOU know when you try to cancel your gym membership and they make you wait six months before you’re freed from your contract because you didn’t read the small print? There is only one feasible response to that. Go to the gym every single day.

You may die prematurely from over-exertion, but you’ll have got your money’s worth – which will make you feel better, even as you are carted off to A&E with heat exhaustion and snapped hamstrings.

You’ll meet entirely new species along the way. Like Kick Boxing Woman, punching the air and kicking out furiously, as the instructor shouts through headphones to imagine you are jabbing and hooking your boss’s face. That doesn’t really work if you are self-employed, but it’s still very good fun. Kick Boxing Woman is built like a Staffordshire bull terrier – tidy, compact, solid muscle, with a killer instinct. She will kick and punch to terrible music – speeded up Guns ’n’ Roses, Dire Straits set to a psychotic dance beat – and shout in time to her jabs. You hop from foot to foot behind her, watching her wing-less upper arms flash like strobes before your eyes, as you lamely copy her punches.

And before you know it, you’re hooked. Not in the face by Kick Boxing Woman, but by the kick boxing itself. Your punches become more intent, more focused, more aggressive. You start to anticipate the adrenaline rush when you’re still in the car park outside. You can’t wait to get in there and sideways kick the hell out of – well, nothing, thankfully, as it’s non-contact. But imagine if it was. You’d be like the Karate Kid’s menopausal mother. A coiled spring of middle aged rage kicking and punching your way to post-exercise serenity.

Unless, of course, you accidentally wander into the wrong class. Hang on a second, where are the grunting, jabbing pitbulls? And who are these creatures in minimal yet co-ordinated lycra, some wearing actual make-up, who are twerking rhythmically across the studio floor? Meet Zumba Mummy. Golden tanned and pony-tailed, with a tiny body that has been avoiding carbs since the Nineties. Perfect skin, thanks to all the Restylane plumping up the hungry lines of her carb-free life. And she can move. They all can. The teacher is a hot Latino whom all the Zumba Mummies would like to accost in the dark, and he knows it.

They shake, they swivel, they pirouette. You try very hard to copy them as the Brazilian carnival music turns everyone into fiery snake-hipped divas. Except you, of course, because you are tripping over your two left feet and wishing you could kick and punch instead, but are too mortified to leave. Never mind. Just another 50 minutes to go.