The Frog Becomes a Fitness Freak

Given my last post (Aussie Lunch Break, French Breakdown), this one is going to surprise. Because Maxime’s major discovery since coming to Australia is not the restaurant Shoya, not Mount Mary wine, not Bruny Island cheese, not even TimTams, but yoga. Of all the things I expected him to get out of being here, yoga was not one.

He has been swept up in the Australian craze for personal trainers (PT) and bootcamps (though he has yet to be swept up by Aussie fashion - the craze for sleeve tats and bushranger beards. When he had to pick up the kids from school, he came home puzzled, saying, ‘I was the only parent without a tattoo.’ What a rebel!)

Maxime's life-changing moment came on a day trip to Mount Baw Baw (as they do). We were having lunch (no surprises there), when my attention was snagged by a line of spiky rubber mats on the ground near our al fresco dining table. We hadn’t known this, but it was an extreme sports weekend at Baw Baw. We’d just come for the less extreme sport of having lunch and looking at the view. But the thing is, despite my association with a decadent frog, I’m actually a long-time runner, with long–time injuries to match. And I wondered wistfully if a spiky mat might massage various tight muscles. But I’m a shy type, and so I made Maxime (not a shy type, as you’ve no doubt gathered by now) ask the bloke next to the mats about the product.

 It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Maxime purchased a mat right then and there. But not for me, I was chagrined to discover – for him! What did he need a spiky mat for? A digestion aide? Not only that, he made himself an appointment with the mat guy for a PT session the following week (in Melbourne, not Baw Baw).

I just looked Maxime, mouth gaping and a weeny bit cross.

Spiky yoga mat

‘I thought in Australia it would be easier to start a new exercise regime,’ explained Maxime. 

‘How do you mean?’

‘There’s the outdoor lifestyle. And it’s easier to eat more healthily. They try to cook healthily in restaurants here. You can have something vegetarian which tastes interesting.’

Well, I knew that in France, vegetables were often soggy and soaked in either oil or butter or cream or all three for good measure and bad arteries, but did Maxime just say vegetarian?! I mean, this is someone who, as we drove through the rolling hills of the Belloc in France, announced that the region was famous for its agneau and said, ‘Mmmm, I can’t wait to eat them!’ as we passed a flock of sheep.

‘OK,’ I said now, ‘but what are you going to use that mat for?’

‘Yoga,’ said Maxime.

‘Yoga on that? God. I guess it would be good for nerve stimulation and stuff, but … ouch!’

But the determined frog did. He yoga-ed all over the place on his bed of rubber nails. He still does training with his Baw Baw PT too, and, to the mystification of colleagues, has begun skipping at work. He has bought a special adult skipping rope (i.e., not pink with tassels) and while his workmates eat their Not Lunches, they can hear ‘pound pound pound’ coming from Maxime’s office.

What's more, where in France, breakfast consisted of croissant au chocolat, now it consists of smoothies. (Everyone these days seems to be eating gruel, as my dad calls it.) Each morning, Maxime mashes up chia seeds and rice bran and various combinations of coconut, turmeric, cinnamon and cayenne pepper, which have special properties, like making you live for ever or something. And Maxime only uses ‘quality products’, because, he says, otherwise the spices taste ‘like nothing’. So he buys a brand called ‘Herbs of Gold’, as in, gold for their marketing department. The only snag is that Maxime has a deep mistrust of our blender’s capabilities, so he makes his smoothies by hand. They are hand squashed, with the result that the smoothies are more like lumpies.

And unfortunately, he always wants me to try a sip.

‘What do you think?’ he asks eagerly.

‘Well, what can I say, Maxime?' I answer. ‘It’s completely foul.’

There’s one last consequence of all this new lifestyle and yoga-ness. Now, whenever the kids roll around on the floor in random fashion, Maxime insists that they are performing the Downward Dog or the Upright Pigeon or the Lopsided Duck or something. Personally I think they look more like a cut snake or a stuck pig.
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