Cause of Death: Unknown

YOU CAN DO IT!...

Remember the Gazelle by Tony Little? Remember how humiliating this looked? (My apologies to my best bud Lisa!)

It’s the most unnerving, unsettling and unpleasant thing to have somebody talk to your personal trainer while you’re working out. Don’t talk to my trainer! I own her for an hour! We’re upstairs where the huge scary wall-to-wall mirrors are, and she is training me on free weights. She’s in charge of counting, as I try to perfect my form. A lady doing crunches on one of those big beach balls started chatting up a conversation with her about the dangers of smoking. Not only did my reps go up to 75 per set because there was a bit of a distraction, but I was compelled to say, “Is this enough?” My triceps swelled into huge knots. My personal trainer is a really nice lady and I know she doesn’t want to be rude, but she also doesn’t want to see me cancel the next day because I can’t move out of bed.

I was always used to the old fashioned way to do sit ups. Either half a crunch on the floor and feet set firmly on the ground or use the sit up bench, which gives you an incline. I never thought the other weird ways would work, such as lifting both legs in the air and using your ab muscles to lift up. I always thought it was some new fad and seriously thought they didn’t work. Boy, was I wrong. I could hardly move today. She had me lifting my legs, scissoring them, and tapping each foot on the floor as I raised the other half of my body twisting myself diagonally as I suffered in pain.

“Let’s use the 10 lb medicine ball now!”

She placed this 10 lb medicine ball on my lower abdominal and made me do it all over again. After I was done with all of my sets, I lied there, staring up at her in agony almost muttering out these two words: help me. I wanted to be strong for her. I wanted to show her that I didn’t waste my life savings on this training program. I’m a trooper. In my mind: oh GAWD what have I done?!! She literally had to pick me up off the floor, this way I could do these weird body leaps across the room like a leprechaun on crack. I can’t tell you how foolish this maneuver looked, but when I started to finally get the hang of it, a ton of people piled in and I was red in the face with embarrassment. What happened to conventional workouts???

After my training program, my instructor ordered me to go on the stair master…for one hour. She really wants to see results more than I do! She asks me, “Do you exercise outside of the gym too? I told her I did in the morning. I thought she would give me some sort of mercy on my physical well being. Nope. One hour up on that stairmaster until I hear some EMT volunteer yell, “CLEAR!”

When I walked out of hell, (the gym), I had to go to the supermarket to go grocery shopping. I looked like a drowned rat, hair up in shambles, sweat pants that looked like I’ve been rolling on some linty floor and my face smeared with cover up lines because I refuse to walk out of my house without makeup. Wouldn’t you know it – I bumped into every single person I know. I bumped into old co-workers, my old housekeepers, a few friends from high school and an old flame that remembered me looking like a decent human being and not a cavewoman.

If you see my obituary in the newspaper, just make note that it’s either from working out or dying from embarrassment.