That wasn?t the worst of it, and I had concluded that growing up meant not only that one never again had to eat cornflakes, but also that there need never be physical games.
These machines, though. Roberts is right about their seeming alien. What do they remind me of? At home I have a framed print of the accoutrements of bullfighting: the picadors? lance, the banderillas, the sword, the cloak.
I have no interest in bullfighting, but those bits of equipment are depicted as if they were the instruments of Christ?s Passion: the spear, the nails, the crown of thorns, the cloak.
So it is that tools of horror can be turned variously into objects of devotion or of art. My objective if I really want to be fit would be to turn alien and fearful machines into friendly equipment.
What, for instance, is this shiny chromium, snub-jawed instrument on the desk, nestling in its contour-lined wooden box? It?s a Harpenden skinfold calliper. It doesn?t hurt a bit.
Invented in 1958, it indicates percentage of body fat. In the hands of a trained operator, its chilly muzzle lightly grips a fold of skin and subcutaneous adiposity (just above the iliac crest perhaps), and the dial at the other end whizzes round like the pointer in a gas meter.
This doesn?t make you fitter, it?s part of the preliminaries. Everyone who sets out on the path of improvement at a Matt Roberts club has a fitness test, a blood-pressure measurement, talks to a dietitian and has the chance of biomechanical analysis for things such as gait.
Gait I am interested in, with its set of descriptive terms: cadence, double stance, dorsiflexion, festination. It is an extraordinary complex of factors, from brain signals to the bit of the foot you put weight on. When it goes wrong you notice pain in the back or joints. The Matt Roberts centre at Chelsea offers 3-D colour scans of the feet like weather charts of thunderstorms.
In the meantime, Roberts gives me a tour of really useful machines for achieving a goal. ?If you want genuinely to change,? he says, ?if you?ve got a goal, I?ll make you do it.? Some want to gain muscles, others to lose fat, or to take part in a charity run in two months? time. I Will Make you Fit Fast is the title of one of his bestselling books. ?Two-week blitz? it announces on the cover, ?Twelve-week plan?.
Well, the way my knee feels, I?ll settle for walking back to my office through the park. Not for me the TecnoGym Excite treadmill (?Experience the elation of the adrenalin of real competition?, says the manufacturer). Not for me the cross-trainer or rowing machine.
But wait, what is this? From wall bars like a big clothes horse, above the matting with an agreeable smell of the sacks that coal used to come in, hang some colour-coded straps.
With Roberts?s help I hang on to one while attempting to crouch on one leg. The idea is to take some of my weight on my arms and to perform some squat exercises.
But I?m not here to get stuck in just yet. There?s no cheaper laugh than taking pictures of a fat man pretending to exercise in a gym. Indeed, it is when I make funny faces while Roberts shows me how to use the kinesis machine that he becomes stern for a moment.
The kinesis apparatus has cables threaded through skipping-rope handles so that you can pull against a specified force, stretching your arms across the body like a golfer making a shot.
After the photographer has spent many a happy minute snapping away at my grimaces, Roberts says, mildly enough, ?To be honest I?m not too happy about the suit.? It?s not that, like David Cameron, I should have worn a morning coat. But if I was planning serious exercise, I should have brought along suitable togs.
I am plunged into mortified shame. After all, the Matt Roberts clubs have taken on clients recovering from heart attacks. ?They invariably say, 'I wish I?d done this 20 years ago?.?
Anyway, I should not be downcast. Roberts declares that exercise gives you more confidence. The psychological component in exercise, it seems, goes in gloomy at one end and comes out cheerful at the other. Plenty more scope for that, then.
Free with the Telegraph next weekend:
- On Saturday: Get Fit For Summer: 2-Week Blitz, a 52-page glossy guide, including a daily diet and exercise plan, by Matt Roberts
- On Sunday: an accompanying 100-minute exercise DVD
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