My Trainer is Evil

Last Monday as I was standing in the workout room waiting for my 6:30 a.m. class to start, the trainer who teaches it, Randy, looks at me and asks "How much more weight have you lost?" The heads of the other four people in the class swivel to look at me. Great.

"None," I reply, hands on my hips in my defensive posture. "I am pretty much maintaining." 'Now can we please just get on with you kicking our butts?'


"Well you can see a difference." He says, while eight other eyes continue staring. Have I mentioned that I am the biggest person in the class? And while I am, admittedly, not as big as I used to be, I am still aware of that fact.

"Yeah, well, it is annoying." I reply, referring to the fact that the damn number on the scale doesn't. want. to. budge.

"That's because you are looking at the scale." He says smugly. "Throw that thing away."

Ha, yeah right. He might as well tell me to throw out my tennis shoes. It feels that essential to my progress (an issue to be addressed later.) So class starts and during the half hour of torture workout, I catch myself several times staring at the region of my body that exists from just below my waist to my knees. Those full length mirrors are brutal. And while I have lost 50 pounds, there are still a good 15-20 hanging around my hips, thighs, and butt. And let's be honest, who doesn't want to hang around my hips, thighs, and butt? But I want them GONE. I continue the workout, and at the end we all say goodbye and turn to exit through the gym.

"Morgan, let me show you something. Do you have a minute?"

Crap. "Sure, yeah."

"I know where you are trying to get, and I can help you out."

Randy walks me out to the lying chest press machine, and throws a mat on the floor beneath one of the handles. "Get down on your hands and knees," he tells me. Thus far in my time since I started the class with Randy, there are times when I will be working out on the equipment and he will come by and tell me how to do things a little differently, or how to ramp it up to get better results, and I ALWAYS do it. I figure, the man is a professional, and I am, at best, a layman. Or laywoman. Whatever. And I ALWAYS wish he hadn't come by and told me to do whatever it is. Because it nearly kills me. Every time. But just nearly. He knows how to keep me alive so that he can torture me again later.

So I get down on the floor, and he proceeds to tell me how to do mule kicks with my foot on the bar of that machine, thus adding weight to my kicks. I start the exercise, as he is telling me to do 3 reps of 10 on each side every other day. As he watches me he lowers that to 8. And then 5. That is encouraging. I am worse than he thought. He tells me that in a week or so, he will give me another exercise to add in. He goes back to his office, and I do the sets, and when I am done my legs are jelly. With a capital J. My thighs and butt are throbbing. Throbbing Jelly? Not so conducive to walking. But I make it to my car and off to home.

On the way, I was thinking that I have never told Randy that I want to cut the fat off of my legs and butt, with a sharp knife if necessary. That while I feel pretty good about how I am looking in the last few months, Those areas of my body are the bane of my weight-loss existence. But he knew. And he is giving me free personal training advice, something that the other clients in the gym pay through the nose for. And as I have watched him run the class and work with the other people in the gym, I have seen time and time again that all he really wants for any of us is to experience personal improvement. He doesn't yell, belittle, or force anything. He just challenges us continually, and that has really helped me see that I am capable of more than I ever thought I was.

But he is still evil.