My history of working out has been a rather rocky one. Over the past few years I have made a few failed attempts at fitness and I will give myself this - I'll try anything once.
My first memory of working out was at a gym located in an alleyway, owned by a guy that ran a gym my mom worked out in during the 1980's. His name was Harold and he was old and slightly pervy - my first tip should have been that he only allowed women in his gym. I would go and dutifully work out with my mom and finally I signed up for a membership after much convincing that Harold was not on any watch lists and didn't own any broken down vans tinted windows. When asked how long I wanted the contract to be, I stated I wanted one for 6 months. At the time I was about 5'5" and weighed about 150 pounds. Harold looked at me over his glasses and said "Hon... you've got more than a six month problem." This from a man who still had one of those vibrating belts meant to shake the fat off of your ass. In 2007. After about 3 months of his French bulldog Archie humping me every time I got on the floor to do crunches, I had enough and said fuck it.
As with every lazy bastard who hates the gym, I had a veritable fit of joy when Wii Fit came out. My joy didn't last long after getting it out of the box. Here, I thought, was the non-judgmental, convenient and self-driven routine that I needed. Right here in my living room! First of all, you get to make an Avatar of yourself. You pick your hair, nose, outfit, and then... body type. I went for the upper portion of mid-range thinking "Well, I'm not skinny for sure, but I'm not as bad as the upper ranges, right?" You then step on the scale and the program RE-AVATARS YOU! "Oh really?" it seems to say "Don't kid yourself - this lump in the black t-shirt is what you really look like. This is what will be on the screen while you work out... don't try to hide." So me and my fat Avatar do a few days on the Wii Fit and we get to the Day 3 weigh in...
Now, the "characters" on this program are usually super excited to see you and positive about your progression towards fitness, offering you little tidbits of knowledge about your health improvement. "Did you know that building muscle during yoga workouts help your body burn calories more efficiently at rest?" No! No, I did not. Thank you for that, Wii Fit. How's my weight doing? You want me to step on the scale? OK.
I step on.
This thing says, "OH!" As I get on. Not "Oh, there you are, where have you been?" but the kind of "Oh" your friends saw upon seeing the super feminine mullet that you let your hairdresser talk you into. The "Oh" that says "I ordered the spaghetti carbonara and you brought me a half-dead hamster floating in a bowl of Honey Bucket drippings. But I am only JUST too polite not to ask you to take it back."
"Oh!"
Oh? Well fuck you, Wii Fit. They would do themselves a lot of favors by giving you different options for personal trainers on there too. Your two options are Super Buff Hot White Guy or Super Lean Attractive and Encouraging White Girl. No thank you to either. I want General Patton. I want Disappointed Jewish Grandmother. I want The Situation from Jersey Shore. I want Yolanda from The Nail Salon With No Verbal Filter! Let's skip straight from passive aggressive, sweet voiced, polite personal trainer to someone who will just tell it like it is:
General Patton: "You can't do one goddamn push up you filthy cow, drop and give me 20 until you cry for your mother and then do 10 more!"
Disappointed Jewish Grandmother: Every time your heart rate drops it says "This is just like the time that you told everyone you were going to settle down and get married to that nice lawyer from up the street and then you starting dating that - ..." and then it would just trail off as you started to up your game.
The Situation: "If you were hitting on me in the club, I doubt I'd be able to even find anyone to take the grenade for me. Doing just 'Tan' and 'Laundry' and skipping over 'Gym' is how you end up looking like Snookie."
Yolanda: "Oh my gaw... don' even tell me you're wearing spandex. I see you through the screen, gurl. You know that ain't right. Who do you have as a friend that even lets you wear that at home where no one can see you?! Whoever she is is a bitch, for real!"
Or... any Ethiopian female I work with. It would just say "Are you pregnant?!" and then, after you say no, be fairly nice to you but always look you up and down and shake their head when they're in the elevator with you.
Yesterday was my final attempt at any sort of guided personal training. The girl was nice enough and she sat down with me first to discuss my goals and background in working out. I basically relayed for her the entire above portion of the blog - maybe adding in the parts where I "used to be skinny in high school" and "this one time, in middle school, this girl Daisy and I had a contest to see who could get out of doing the mile run for the longest and I made it all through freshman year!"
As with anything that makes me feel weak and uncomfortable I cracked jokes and leaned on my self deprecation to get me through -"I'm just not into push ups... not that I don't love giving all these hairy gentlemen standing here a reason to look at my ass, but it's just not my thing" or "Oh, I'll do 12 reps instead of the 15... not that I don't LOVE spending time with you but..." Mostly, we were having a good time. She made sure to praise all my small accomplishments (doing a crunch without grunting!) and was indulgent of my weak ass squats. Until... pull ups.
Maybe I was having a flashback. I was suddenly back in elementary school gym class. We had different "posters" that you could get your name on if you were able to complete various goals. They all had cute names, but the only one I could remember was the only one I made - "Hippo Hoopers". Hula hoop was my shit, I'll be honest with you. And not because the hoop technically rested on both sides of my hips and allowed me to cheat since I hadn't gone through puberty. The pull ups were my one goal. The one chart I really REALLY wanted to make... and I never could. I could never even do one. I would come to the playground after hours and pitifully try to haul my chin over the bar until my arms started involuntarily shaking and I would eventually head home defeated. I had to be bribed with a brand new Slinky for 3 straight weeks to even TRY to make it across the monkey bars... It was an ordeal that I'm sure my Father remembers as he was the one who let me drag him to the park every evening after dinner for almost a month, knowing that I had the upper body strength of a newborn and that it would probably never happen. The fact that he was encouraging anyway is a testament to his patience and unconditionally supportive parenting.
...This personal trainer bitch was about to find the one thing she could not praise me for.
Me: "I cannot do those."
Her: "Sure you can! You have decent upper body strength it's fine."
Me: "No... I can't... It's... I wasn't on the poster... I..."
Her: "What?"
Me: "Nothing" (slowly realizing I've been sweating for an hour and my easily dehydrated ass didn't drink any water that day)
Her: "Just give it a try"
Me: (starting to get tunnel vision) "Hippo... Hoopers... I'm not able to do i-... I..."
Her: "What?"
Me: "Can I get some water?"
Her: "Sure, yeah!"
Luckily at that point my hour was up. I quickly bowed out, with minimal parting banter and drank an entire 5 gallons of water from the water fountain as some meathead who had ACTUALLY been working out was waiting impatiently behind me, listening to me slurp and pant like a dog running through the Sierra desert and finally finding a toilet.
This isn't even counting my recent forray into Hot Yoga... which is a blog for another time.
