How not to endear yourself to the trainer.

I may have gotten myself in big trouble today.

At a certain point in the circuit of machines in my Strive class, there is an elliptical. It's the third one, and by the time I get there I am sick to death of ellipticalling. So I skip it and do whatever ab exercises I can think of, one for each 45-second cam: planks, crunches, twisting crunches, 6-inches, whatever. Sometimes Tony (the trainer who runs the class) gives me suggestions. More often, he barks orders (he has a mean streak when it comes to abs).

So today he started barking and had me doing all manner of gut-wrenching exercises designed to flatten my abs. Unfortunately, my abs are well-insulated and nothing short of a 400-calorie-per-day diet is going to get rid of what's on top of the rippling muscles I feel sure are hidden well beneath the surface. But I digress.

When it was time to move on to the next machine, I jumped up and Tony asked hopefully, "Well?" meaning, are you in agony? And this is where I made my fateful mistake. I said, "It wasn't the hardest thing I've ever done," and he looked offended. He said, "If you're not whimpering or throwing up, you haven't worked hard enough."

So I replied in my best snark, "Well, you'll have to do better than that on Wednesday."

I live in fear.

Be thankful ~

Karen