No Rest For the Lazy

Everyone I know who exercises always rhapsodizes about its benefits and how the endorphins kick in and make you feel sooo good.

Well, I've been working out for two and a half years now and I haven't seen one measly endorphin yet.  But you know what does feel good?  When I stop exercising.  Yeah.  Sitting around eating cookies feels great, and sitting around eating chocolate and watching Sleepless in Seattle for the one thousandth time feels absolutely amazing!   Exercise just makes me feel sore, tired and a little bit cranky.  Okay, a lot cranky.

But I do it.  Twice a week...unless I can get out of it.  Which, no matter how hard I try, I can't.  My trainer won't let me.  I keep firing her, but she somehow got the crazy idea that it is her job to get me in shape, and she is like a terrier with a bone.  She just won't give up.  I've resorted to bribery, but nothing seems to work, not even leaving the country.

"We're going away next Monday and Tuesday,"  I'll tell her, barely able to suppress my joy at thwarting her evil plans, "so I guess that means I'll only see you Thursday."

"No problem," she counters pulling out her schedule book, and cackling gleefully at  thwarting my plans.  "We'll just switch to Wednesday and Friday."  I hate her.

I've tried leaving town for four to five days in a row to avoid her torturous machinations, but to no avail.  "Oh, I'm gone Saturday through Wednesday next week, so I guess we'll do either Thursday or Friday."  Got you there, Miss Smarty Pants.  Everyone knows that you can't workout two days in a row.  Muscles need rest.

Everyone but my trainer.  The harpy simply raises a superior brow, pulls out her pen and the dreaded book that I plan to steal and burn one day and calmly destroys my hopes and dreams of being able to not need massive quantities of muscle relaxants, super-sized heating pads and gallons of Bengay.

"Don't worry, we can do legs one day and upper body the next."

Wow.  You'd do that for me?  No, no.  I can't let you be that kind.  Honestly, you deserve a day or two or fifteen off.  I'll be fine.  Really.

And yet she shows up, week after week, month after month, year after year.

Even vacation  is not an excuse to slack off.  She has brought Tim over to the dark side.  The two of them have teamed up to make sure I get no rest from lifting, pressing, hopping, jumping, pushing, puling, crunching, lunging and squatting.

On our cruise last year, he somehow got the insane notion (which I know my evil genius trainer not only approved of, but actively encouraged), that because I agreed to go to the gym with him, I actually was willing to do something besides drink the free water and admire my coordinated Lululemon outfit in the mirror.

"Okay, there's two ellipticals free, let's go," he steered me away from the tempting bowl of bananas.  "Forty-five minutes, then we'll lift some weights"

Wait.  What?  Forty-five minutes?   I am on vacation.  Say it with me...vacation.  In case you are unaware of the concept, but it is universally accepted to mean no work!   Forty-five minutes is definitely considered work.  Hard work.  In fact, I believe it is against the labor laws in at least thirty-six countries.

Besides, working out for even forty-five seconds is waaay more time than I was planning to spend sweating and gasping for breath the entire week.  And for your information, the only lifting I'm willing to do is one of those yummy frozen drinks at the pool from the table to my lips.

I turned to make my escape, but he somehow managed to head me off at the pass and convince me to at least see what all the fuss over ellipticals was about.

I have to admit that after the first five minutes, I was starting to feel really winded... and all I had done was wipe down the machine and flip through the TV channel options.

And while I'm on the subject, if you expect me to make it even ten minutes, you ar going to have to offer me better choices than CNN and ESPN.  I mean, come on.  Hadn't these people ever heard of Lifetime or TBS?

Somehow, I muddled my way through the next sixteen hours, I mean thirty minutes, before Tim was sufficiently happy and we headed for the weights (after I tried my second escape, of course).

"All right, sixty-five reps with each arm, then six thousand crunch-jump-lunges," he decreed.

Couldn't I just jump overboard and pull the ship instead?  And even though you sound like her, just so you know, YOU ARE NOT MY TRAINER.  I came here to get away from her.

After about three day of this, Tim finally recognized the futility of this endeavor (and got tired of the whining and having to physically carry me to the gym and strap me onto the machine) and gave up.  Off he went to the gym, alone, while I parked myself at the pool and read fairy tales about lands far, far away where no one had ever heard of weights, reps or personal trainers.  And we all lived happily ever after.

Until vacation ended.

Taking it to the Next Level

What is it with exercise people and their obsession with taking things to the next level? Recently, my trainer bumped things up to the "next level" for about the tenth time. Meanwhile, I'm still trying to figure out what was so wrong with the first level.

Was it not enough for her that I regularly collapsed on the floor in a heap after each and every set of fifteen reps, gasping for air like a fish out of water? Wasn't she happy that I couldn't climb the stairs for a week after each session without the aid of at least three people, a lever and a pulley? Didn't she feel job satisfaction when such physically demanding tasks as, oh, it don't know, blinking and breathing became painful enough to make me seriously contemplate not?

What gave her the idea I was ready for the next level? How exactly did that thought process go?

Okay, three sets of fifteen didn't literally kill her, so let's go for five sets of twenty. Hmmm. Still able to hang on to consciousness by a thread, so let's kick it up to the next level and do eight sets of one hundred. Holding one thousand pound weights. In each hand. And to rest in between each set, she can drop it down a level and do ten sets of twenty other exercises from the I'd-rather-be-getting-a-root-canal-without-Novocain list.

I used to dread the mornings she showed up with a device called a Bosu, that I'm sure they invented during the Spanish Inquisition (basically, it is one of those big exercise balls cut in half and mounted on a plastic frame).

Like the ground wasn't hurtling toward my face fast enough with a regular, old-fashioned push-up, I now had the added challenge of trying to balance on a round, springy object without crash-landing my way to a nose reconstruction.

"Go deeper," she would urge. "Keep those hips up."

Yeah, like either one of those things were actually possible. Well, on second thought, maybe the deeper was possible, as long as I didn't have to push back up, but somehow I got the impression that wasn't what she meant.

Before I could fully recover from the upper body work though (in other words, three days bed rest), we would move on to the legs.

"Okay, you're going to do squats with one leg on the Bosu, then jump over it, landing in a squat with the other leg on the Bosu."

I'm going to do what???!!! Evidently, she had mistaken me for a frog. I barely have enough strength and coordination to manage a normal squat on solid ground, let alone squatting, hopping, and changing legs.

If I'd had so much as an ounce of strength left after the ten sets of twenty (or was it twenty sets of ten? I don't know because I lost count somewhere around two), I would have seriously considered finding an ice pick and creating a new exercise for my biceps involving the Bosu and a sharp, downward movement, then kicked it to the curb with my powerful glutes.

I tried in vain to convince my trainer that just because I no longer felt like blacking out or throwing up half-way through our sessions didn't mean I was ready for this next level. I was happy where I was, really. I didn't need to ever again wear a bathing suit that didn't have a stomach panel and skirt. And who needed sleeveless tops anyway? Air conditioning had been invented so that we would be comfortable wearing long-sleeve shirts in ninety-five degree temperatures.

She didn't buy it, and we moved on to the dreaded "next level".

I have now gone from being a frog to a kangaroo, hopping madly back and forth across my backyard, leaping and springing into the air, like I'm trying out for either the NBA or Olympic pole-vaulting team (without the pole).

"Higher," she tells me. "4001, 4002..."

Half the time she doesn't even count out loud anymore though because I think she's afraid if I hear that I'm only on ten and I have to get to 8000, I might do something drastic like hop over to the neighbor's yard and seek sanctuary.

Lunges off a Bosu? That's for sissies. The four-foot high steps down to the patio are a much better place to really work the quads. And hey, we've gone waaaay beyond using those wimpy stairs in the house for step-ups too. Now the eight-foot wall out back is just right for that treat. Oh, and let's add a karate kick and a lunge for good measure, while doing presses with two thousand pound weights, blindfolded and backwards.

I'm beginning to get nostalgic for the good old days when she would hand me a two pound weight and worry that I was going to give myself a concussion trying to lift it with both hands over my head.

The worst part though about this next level stuff is that nowadays if I survive the full hour (and it is pretty much touch and go), I can't even reward myself with coffee and chocolate. I head for the nearest bottle of water and have to debate whether I want to drink it or just pour it over my head. It's at least an hour before I can even contemplate the thought of anything else, and by then, I start to wonder if it's worth it (for the record, chocolate is always worth it, but still, I wonder). And I can't get rid of the nagging worry in the back of my mind. What if, gulp, when I get to the next level, I can't face a candy bar or cookie until, heaven forbid, noon?

Maybe, if I try really hard, I can come up with a way to avoid the next level before I get there.

Never Let Them See You Sweat

My life has been dedicated to the goal of never breaking a sweat, and so far, I have been pretty successful.

Admittedly, there have been random deviations over the years. Temporary bouts of insanity like in the 80's when Jane Fonda had us all wearing neon spandex and hopping around like rabbits on a bad acid trip, or more recently, when I decided that if I danced with the stars, I too could look like Edyta or Karina.

The only redeeming quality about exercising to these tapes is that the machine is equipped with a stop button. Over the years, I've gotten really good at warm-ups, but as far as I know, the actual exercise and cool-down portions are just urban myths.

For the past few years, I thought I'd found the holy grail with yoga; the perfect balance between exercise and inertia. But no. Lying down and visualizing your breath expanding your rib cage does not translate into abs of steel. Go figure.

And so, I decided it might be time to try something I have pretty successfully avoided my whole life...actual, consistent exercise. To this end, Tim got me ten sessions with a real, live personal trainer for my birthday, who, regrettably, has no off button.

It all started out innocently enough. She seemed nice and kind, like she would have pity on an out-of-shape slug. When she showed up for our introductory meeting, she didn't seem intimidating or like someone who could make me cry. I was wrong.

Lesson one in personal trainer school must be lulling your gullible victims into a false sense of security.

We chatted about goals(looking like Jennifer Aniston), expectations(looking like something other than a life-size pear), and health concerns(that exercise would kill me). She took my measurements (after which I had to consume a lot of chocolate to soothe me and help me forget) , and did some small sample moves to test for balance and muscle tone (there was none).

By the time she left, I felt...encouraged, hopeful, even maybe a little excited.

Then she came back last week for our first two sessions.

As she unloaded the instruments of torture from the car, I felt the excitement drain away. Hope became a distant memory. What had I been thinking, asking for this? How could Tim not have seem my request for what it actually was...a cry for help? I needed counselling and liposuction, not free weights and balance balls. But it was too late.

For the next hour, she made me lunge, lift, squeeze and push. I began to really hate the number 15. 10...11...12...I think she was adding numbers in between because I was getting to 15 reps before she even got to ten.

And why, once we finish an exercise do we need to go back to it? Shouldn't we just hit 15 reverse flys or push-ups and be done...forever? What about lying down and breathing for 15...minutes. I suggested adding that on after each new exercise, but it didn't go over so well.

"You can do this," she would say. "Look, you've got a little bicep already." Okay. Good. Then we're done here. Mission accomplished. Thanks for coming.

"We're going to hold this pose now for 10...9...8... We? Who is we? I didn't see her hold the pose for a ten count. And could she count any slower? Instead of 10 Mississippi, 9 Mississippi, I think she was trying to name all fifty states in between numbers including the territories and District of Columbia. I began to suspect that Tim had not hired a personal trainer, but a hit man. I was going to have to check my life insurance policy and see how much I was worth.

Eventually though each hour came to an end. As I crawled into the shower and wept, I tried to console myself with the fact that I was getting healthy and would eventually be able to step on a scale without running screaming into the night. My triceps would no longer flap around when I waved like laundry on a clothesline during a monsoon. Spanks would no longer be a staple in my wardrobe. I wouldn't need oxygen after climbing a flight of stairs.

But then the next morning would come and as I crawled out of bed and limped toward the bathroom, I became more convinced than ever that I was right in the first place.

Exercise is evil.