I have recently joined the gym (nothing too fancy - just the local council one) and now find that when I try to go I have a panic attack.

I have never been to a gym before and I was expecting it to take a bit of time to get into the swing of it but this is just ridiculous. I went yesterday morning, got on the bike and when I held onto the heart rate monitors my heart was going at 140 bpm before I had done anything!

I thought that exercise was meant to be good for panic and stress, and as I am not really feelig stressed at the moment I thought everything would be fine.

Has anyone else ever had this sort of problem and, if so, what did they do to overcome it. I know I could ride out the the panic attack at the gym by sitting on a machine and waiting until my heart stopped racing, but the gym is busy and I am not sure that people would appreciate someone wasting time.

regards

Sam