Foreigner at the Gym: 4 Weeks with a Chinese Personal Trainer

I hate exercise. I had heard about the traumas of working-out-in-front-of-an-audience from fellow expats. I was not interested in going to the gym in China.

But I love my husband and he wanted to and it’s healthy so I went anyway. Here’s what it was like for us!

One of the signs in our gym - gotta love the English, lol.

We visited three different gyms before committing. The first one was super small, technically a sports club, located in a hotel. The price was a little steep, but there wasn’t a membership fee. The owner made us tea and kindly answered all our questions.

The second one was big, hot, and loud. Unintelligible club music thumped through the whole place. Rows and rows of machines were occupied by young adults who, of course, stared at the weird foreigner (me). My husband and I started sweating during the tour. I was not impressed.

The third gym was on the tenth, top floor of a building. They had a lot of space and were more affordable. I liked the yoga and cycling rooms on the roof. We sat in the lounge debating this gym or the first one for a while, until someone lit up. Lit a cigarette. In the gym.

So the first gym it was!

We met with a personal trainer four times a week for four weeks. Each session was an hour long, minimum. My husband translated for me, though after we learned the basics he didn’t need to much. Outside the gym, we sent photos of everything we ate to our trainer. We paid about 400 RMB ($60 US) for each couples session.

I was quickly comfortable going to the smaller gym. It was usually the same people in there every other night, and they all soon got used to me. My fears of having an audience faded. The only person I caught trying to take my photo was one of the staff, and he didn’t try again after I told him no.

Our smiley trainer was incredibly muscular, but he was so short that he wasn’t intimidating. He’s the same age as my husband and they hit it off well. My husband is stronger than me, but I was able to mimic the exercises more accurately, so there was a lot of “Your wife is much better than you,” which I was totally fine hearing so many times. I got easily discouraged during the last workout of each week, especially when it was a cardio-jump-around-till-you-suffocate session, but our trainer encouraged me with stuff like, “很好！(Very good!)  加油！(You can do it!) Two more! GOOOOOOO!”

It was great having someone to teach us how to do exercises correctly, and also to keep things interesting with so much variety! While our warm up was usually a repeated set, each set contained four different actions, and the rest of the session was constantly doing different exercises. We used weights, bars, elastic, trampolines, balls, mats, ropes, etc. We kicked, jumped, pushed, ran, lifted, pulled, squatted, stretched, etc. And then we did crunches and it sucked.

For the most part it felt like we were normal people going to a normal gym, but there were occasional cultural differences that made me remember that I was an American in a Chinese gym. For example, Chinese have no body shame. They don’t compliment or insult your appearance; they just state the facts (ah, “facts”). So at the beginning, when our trainer measured us and calculated our percent body fat, etc, there was no emotion in the meeting at all. It was just chill, like let’s write down some numbers, okay you’re under/at/over average, ok cool let’s go do some jumping jacks. And we walked out of the office like we had just had a lovely discussion about the weather.

Or the time our trainer stressed we need more protein, but then said I eat too much peanut butter. At which point I let him know what’s up and defended the benefits of peanut butter until he conceded. He often had to ask me what my food photos were of, as he wasn’t very familiar with American cuisine. I got away with eating pancakes for quite a while, until my husband ratted on me and told the trainer they were sweet. The trainer’s responses to my healthy choices were usually slang phrases like “bang bang de 棒棒的” which translates to “stick.” His responses to my chocolate choices were entirely the face palm emoji.

The biggest cultural difference came up the evening we got caught in a torrential downpour on our way to the gym. Summer thunderstorm winds were pulling ads off buildings as we walked, then ran through the rain. We arrived to workout soaked to the skin, feet squishing in our sneakers. While we blow-dried our hair, our trainer told us we should just go home, it isn’t healthy to exercise when you’re wet. Which I said is totally ridiculous, I didn’t run here to turn around and run home. It took a solid ten to fifteen minutes for me to persuade my Chinese husband and our personal trainer that it is perfectly safe to workout while wet and, so help me, I will not be going home until we have exercised.

I should have guessed being wet would cause an ordeal, though, based on a conversation from our first day. Our trainer encouraged us to use their showers after working out, as walking home all sweaty could make us chilled. I said it’s 40 degrees Celsius (over 100 Fahrenheit) outside. I would love to be chilled.

All in all, working out with a personal trainer in China was a surprisingly positive experience. I gained muscle and stamina, learned a lot, and even had fun. Now it’s just keeping up the habit of exercise. 棒棒的！