For a layman whose gym orientation is limited to seeing from the side streets and on glass panels and open windows and doors bodies in sweat-soaked shirts grimacing from lifting pounds upon pounds of iron and listening to human grunts and slamming of sets of steel to other sets of steel – it’s not easy to see the difference of one such facility to the next.
It’s not that I don’t exercise at all. I’ve been to lung busting sports myself in my younger days – the Robert Jaworski Toyota basketball brand, Brazil’s Edson Arantes Donascimiento a.k.a. Pele type of soccer football given of late the Azkal boost, Brazil’s Laila Barros’ transient Volleyball game craze – and softball.
But I never had much opportunity to lift weights save for the time when a drinking buddy back in college used his Physical Resistance Training background to haul a few more campus mates to pump iron in her elder sister’s garage. It was for us an added opportunity to hang out and drink ourselves to a stupor. So it’s bottles upon bottles of beer that we lift and gargle on right after a modicum of workouts.
The university where I went for my Journalism course has a full college dedicated to a spectrum of comprehensive academic disciplines on Human Kinetics. But while my own college is but a kilometer or two away from the Human Kinetics building, I am twice removed from that college’s own sets of philosophies.
But lest we be drawn to a long academic discourse on human kinetics the intent here is just to strongly put forth the commonly disposed off argument that everyone needs to keep fit, and simply that.
Having long taken the worn off dictum of being too busy to exercise Ranggersamy Ekamparam or Joe Ega for short and General Manager of the Enclave Fitness Center near Clark Freeport Zone rocked me back to the sense now that I’m just a few years short of my a senior citizenship.
Well, we’re not talking of just exercise here, but programmed and directed physical fitness. And who but Joe Ega can best expound on it with his imposing over six feet height and more than 200 pounds of well sculpted muscles. Besides having a degree in Physical Education he is a certified Sports Nutritionist.
Everybody should be fit is the first of a handful of mottoes he shared in my interview of him for this story. There is no age barrier for this he said. The older one becomes the more weight training one will need.
That as one ages the more the metabolism slows and with it comes the deposition of fats particularly around the belt area. And more than it being minus points in ones looks take note:
Hypertension or high blood pressure puts one at a greater risk of having a heart attack or stroke. Eating healthy, not smoking, maintaining the right weight and regular exercise will help lower your negative numbers.
I need not lay down a litany. Such information are right on the tip of your fingers – just use the internet. But if they still fell short of pushing you closer to the nearest gym for a programmed exercise hypertension and other complications on the central nervous system may prod you yet.
The heart, like any muscle gets stronger through exercise. Strengthen the muscles in your arms and you can lift objects easier. Strengthen your heart muscle with a right exercise and it gets better at its job delivering blood and oxygen in every inch of your length. This is elementary.
Joe Ega said exercise plus diet and rest, take away one and no optimum result can be dished out – an undeniable human kinetics philosophy. He said it’s always advisable to have a particular workout regardless of age. Diet? Age needs even better dieting.
Another human kinetics philosophy he shared is that muscles grow not when one is working but when one is resting. Wow! Pardon this writer for being too naive about this too.
Joe Ega said during strength and weight training your body is in the burning zone. By lifting weights you rip your muscles. With weight trainings your body burns more calories even when resting, and more muscles equals less body fats.
Common statistics say 40% of adults aged 40 years and above, especially women have back problems. Staying at home can only make it worst. Of course slip discs, scoliosis and other health conditions and limitations are a different matter and should be handled more carefully. But a medical check-up and a doctor’s certification can be an ample guide for any fitness center to provide the proper program and guidance plus the right set of equipments.
There are gyms and there are gyms – practicing care and scrutiny in ones choice of facility cannot be over emphasized. After all not only your joints and elbows but your whole physical being will be the issue here, always.
Joe Ega should know. He’s been in the business for 32 years now. He started operating the Enclave Fitness Center located at The Enclave, Fil-Am Friendship Hi-way, Pampang, Angeles City in June 2009.
A Singaporean by nationality with Indian lineage on the maternal side, he has set up gyms in New Zealand, Australia, Singapore and even in England prior to his venture in the Philippines to bring a world class fitness center in Pampanga.
Housed in the two floors of the Enclave complex the gym is the most modern in the province and has got a complete system of equipments that can address all general and particular needs for physical fitness.
It operates from 6AM to 10PM Monday to Saturday. On Sundays and other public holidays it opens at 8AM to 6PM. It’s got 600 members now, 50% of who are foreigners. It offers a host of fitness programs such as bodybuilding and muscle toning and sculpting, weight loss and weight gain. It also offers aerobics and dance classes.
Members and walk in visitors can also enjoy all its amenities which include a spacious basketball court, badminton court, three swimming pools, and two separate sauna facilities for male and female. There’s also a Health Bar that offers an array of health drinks including protein shakes – a concoction that world boxing icon Manny Pacquiao takes in regularity.
One pays the price of efficiency – define that as quality and safety. Joe Ega gave me a tour of the equipments; costing at least half a million apiece sparkling, oiled and revving well as the day they were bought.
The center prides itself of a complete line up of treadmills, cross trainers, cycles and full range of strength machines and barbell sets from two pounds to 100 pounds to address every muscle groups that each client would want toned.
“We invest on the top of the line equipment to ensure customers’ needs are met” Joe Ega said.
His treadmills model for example can serve from a low speed of one mile per hour to 16 miles per hour. Not even world class athlete by any stretch of imagination can ever hope to outrun.
Even the Enclave gym’s lay out was well planned to adhere to the gym’s motto of customers’ satisfaction and maximum safety. For a start the aisle and between equipment rows are six feet wide so that on accidents the clients are likely to land on the flat of the carpeted floors and not bump on the adjoining equipments. The television sets are never installed facing the treadmills for the users’ maximum focus, as a split second distraction can throw a user smack to the next machine.
The staffs here are trained to attend to emergencies from first aid to Cardio-pulmonary Resuscitation that run on the mill fitness centers will be hard put to match. Any emergencies beyond first aid can be competently handled by a top of the line clinic next door. One can’t be more forward looking than that.
Hygiene and sanitation are meticulously taken care of here. Joe Ega dares anybody to try and look for even a piece of thread scattered in the place.
The center’s air purifier is also top of the line made in Germany, silent, safe and child friendly. It complements the good air conditioning and ensures a refreshing environment amidst energy filled, calorie burning and muscle ripping activities.
Half an hour in the sauna followed by a refreshing shower can cap ones routine be them muscle ripping or simply sweating it out on the treadmills, cross trainers or cycles. Towels and toiletries are well provided.
All customers are treated equally and even the undecided ones who just walk in to have a good look of the facilities are attended to.
The personnel and staff are trained by Joe Ega himself. So they are prompt in their services, never without basic courtesies and with ready friendly smiles.
The gym runs smooth by strict implementation of the rules including basic etiquettes between and among members and other clients. Towels must be use on all equipments for full absorption of one’s sweat and ensure maximum hygiene for the next user. No using of cell phones within the exercise area so as not to cause any distraction that may result to accidents. And so on.
How about the fees? It goes without saying that whatever you have to pull out from your wallet to enjoy the facility may seem prohibitive to many. But then again what’s subtracted in one’s resources can be more than equaled by the gain in one’s well being, and the services are all worth it.
But one can check the required fees for a more affordable package though. There are the student fees, and the summer promo. Both cut a good chunk from the prices.
Joe Ega with some other partners is set to open another fitness center named Shape and Curvz, but this time in EDSA Mandaluyong in Metro Manila.
Shape up, shape up, shape up — it’s a must that exercise be addressed holistically. Best still to go programmatic, ask Joe Ega himself. He offers anybody to just walk in and try the whole facilities for two days or three free.
Those who work out regularly in the context of exercise plus diet and rest philosophy look a lot younger than those who hold on tooth and nail to the dictum of having no time to spare for well being and physical fitness. The grimace that accompanies ones effort in lifting weights tone facial muscles.
But well, Joe still have a friendly advice for those who can’t dispose of the convenient alibi – chew a chicklet for ten minutes daily and exercise the more than a hundred muscles in ones face – but make sure it’s sugar free. So there you go.
