How Not to Work out with a Personal Trainer/or How to Outwit a Torture Trader
It is possible to go to the gym for fifteen years and not look like it. I am a living proof.
A great looking personal trainer, out of sympathy and also a genuine need for an extra buck, approached me recently, asking if I would like us to work out together. She instantly sensed I was my own worst enemy.
I admired her looks: my age but everything ten thousand times better – a bulging bicep here, a well defined glute there, a concave abdomen with traces of fat invisible to the naked eye, a calf chiseled to a neoclassical perfection. You know the type, and so do I, and so it came as a surprise to me, too, that I was foolish enough to think I could duplicate it.
As soon as I innocently nodded, she started unleashing the tricks of her trade upon me with the efficacy of a medieval torturer.
We would foam roll and bend and flex for warm up, also squat and lunge and kick and jog; we would follow this up with push ups and lying leg raises and prone leg lifts and jumping jacks and walking jacks and criss crosses. For cardio, we would machine row our way to Australia and back and then switch to static biking for kinesthetic versatility. All this in preparation for lifting, since lifting was the be all and the end all of good exercise – we would lift and lift and lift, she assured me, until no bench in the gym was left unpressed, no dead weight unlifted, and no unlifted death unturned.
Her ambition struck me as sinister. And her movement was sprightly and nimble, so full of unrefined enthusiasm, in a way I could only despise. I decided to push back. Yes, I was of lesser physique, but my powers of self-advocacy were not diminutive!
There were certain things I would never ever stoop to, I exclaimed. I refuse to stretch, even for a minute. I would do only a limited warm up, and at my own pace. Anything that included lying on stomach was excluded, because of my bad digestion and constant bloatedness. I would not squat, since I had a generalized abhorrence for that position. It seemed animalistic to me, thoroughly beneath humans.
She looked at me for a moment to check if I was sane. At that brief moment, in fact, I was. I glared back, unyieldingly.
You see, I had my ways, and though not conducive to great results, there was a logic to them. She was an enemy to that. But I also felt pity for the precarious sustenance she relied upon: cajoling people into paying for pain! No wonder she ate meagerly!
This opened me up to a little compromise. How about I let her do what she wanted, but would she in turn allow some tolerance for divergent methods? Let’s exercise parallelly to each other, I proffered brilliantly: she can do her routine and me mine. Both will be happy.
It was now her turn to act out. She said I was not worthy of her time and expertise. She said I did not deserve a personal trainer, which had just been confirmed. She said I should go on exercising as before, lonely and inefficient. A sort like me deserved to perish flabby, malformed, and young.
I chuckled at my age. But I agreed with her and was delighted at my newly acquired freedom to move for free.
