Wednesday 12 May 2010

The Badminton Challenge: Spitting Feathers

Back To My Routes

Having sat down through my entire first challenge I knew I needed to start bucking my ideas up, so I rechecked the Olympics listings and opted for a sport I'd actually played before - in fact this was one of the few sports I'd ever come close to playing regularly. All it would take to get started would be a trip into my loft to dig out the tools of my new trade and to make a few calls to set up some opposition.

Having been up into the rafters and dusted off my gear I sat down to coffee in my kitchen and rebooted my laptop to work out the details of my challenge.

The sport? Badminton.

Saturday 1 May 2010

The Rules Of Induction

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Already I've joined 2 gyms in my quest - The Everyman Olympics (see Post 1 new comers), thus bringing me to a current lifetime tally of 6 gyms that I've held membership with at some stage or other. Thanks to the madness of health and safety rules this means I've also had to endure 6 different gym inductions.
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Yes, in the 15 years that there have been between signing up to the first gym to the most recent there has been some considerable progress in the development of sports equipment and yes, I understand that such establishments need to cover themselves in the event that you suffer injury due to poor use of the facilities but in all honesty only once has a gym inductor thought to use common sense and ask me whether I'd ever joined a such a place before. Thus sparing us both the time it would take to ascertain whether I know how to run on a treadmill or follow instructions which are clearly labelled on a weights machine.
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Clearly with the 'vast' experience I have of signing up to gyms (ok the follow-up on my part of regularly using them hasn't been so hot I'll grant you) I'm in a good position to advise you on how to handle such situations. So for what it's worth, here's my guide to The Rules Of Induction.
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