It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. That is one way to describe my session today with Trainer Jeremy. This is the first time in nearly seven weeks that I actually want to say:
I have to stop! I can’t do this one anymore!
But I don’t say it and I don’t stop.
The day starts off innocently enough. I hobble down the long hall past all of the windows and the beautiful city views to the fitness center at The Spa at Trump – today known as the Chamber of Torture. And we get right to it. Jeremy leads me to the big contraption with all of the cute straps and ropes connected to pulleys. I proceed to do my pull downs on the double strapped rope – picture a wishbone made of black rope with a rubber ball on each appendage. It feels a bit heavier than usual but not impossible.
After some innocent leg-lifts, he leads me to the part of the device with a straight handlebar (also dangling from a pulley) He tells me to walk back several paces with a wide stance and do a squat with an underhand grip of the bar. No problem except the weight was pretty heavy.
“Now stand up and pull the bar straight in towards your body like a row.”
Say WHAT?
And repeat 15 times. This lovely exercise takes the wind right out of me. A weighted squat followed by a standing row.
Then he leads me – I am dazed by this time – to another contraption against the wall. It involves handles and cables attached to weights. I stand to the side of this device, grab a handle, pull my arm back to my side, elbow bent and extend it wide open and back fifteen times, per side.
I barely have time to stop panting from the squat-row thing! There is another exercise in there but I can’t even remember what it is because all too soon I am back to squat-row Hell. I have to rest in between and take water. It is during this time that I notice the pretty blonde doing Michelle Obama type leaps and squats on the other side of the room. She hasn’t broken a sweat. Her body is perfect, thin and lean with huge breasts. She smiles sweetly in my general direction as I sit there sweating and panting like a dog. I manage a half grin and whimper.
After my 45 second rest, I start the whole routine over again, pull downs, squat rows and the other thing. It is at this point that I notice Skinny is doing weight lifts on her back and I notice that her boobs are sticking straight up. As I ponder the laws of Physics and Gravity, I continue my last set.
Finally it’s over. I am dripping sweat and wondering if maybe I am too fat for this shit.
Jeremy disappears for a minute and returns with a HUGE fat fiber rope with rubber handles at each end. I kid you not, it looked like he’d taken it off the “Black Pearl” from “Pirates of the Caribbean.” Images of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow flash through my head. Surely some sadistic sea-worn captain had asked his squalid crewmen to do something with this very same rope on a 19th century Clipper ship.
It is wrapped in a huge spiral practically covering his entire body. I eye it with suspicion.
What – pray tell – is that?
Trainer Jeremy answers brightly: “It’s called The Weighted Rope”
He threads one end around the pole of contraption-one and pulls the two handles together. He then cheerfully demonstrates my next punishment. Standing about ten feet away, he holds one end in each hand and just moves his arms up and down making ripples along the length of the rope, all the while demonstrating all of the moves and effects one can make in the rope by moving each arm – alternately – up and down, in and out.
“Easy, See?”
I have my doubts but I go right to it. I stand and bend down to pick up the two handle ends of the rope and note how it feels quite like picking up my rotund cat Shana Punim, and I proceed to mimic his movements. After about ten seconds I begin to feel a burning in my forearms, biceps and shoulders.
WHAT THE HELL?
“35 more seconds!”
I will no longer be amongst the living in 30 more seconds. By the time I am through my 45 seconds of The Weighted Rope Hell, I am panting and sweating like crazy.
“FASTER!”
Oh please! I fantasize vomiting on the floor. But I keep at it, three sets of 45 seconds each. My arms are burning, my heart is racing, I’m dripping sweat and once again I ponder on whether fat people of a certain age should be forced to do such things.
Later this evening, I describe this device to my friend Jana who swears she has neither seen nor heard of such a thing. My friend Barbara recognizes it as one of those “Boot camp” kind of exercises.
Okay … It’s supposed to kick my ass.
“Time for Core-work and stretching!”
Yay! Yay, because that means I get to lay down. Thank you Jesus!
But NOOOO. Master Jeremy has all kinds of Boot Camp Basic Training for a 20 year old types of crunches for me to do.
It HURTS! I whimper.
“Good!” He snaps back!
Feel the burn!
Yep! I felt it. And my arms are still a’buzz from The Weighted Rope.
God only knows what he’s got planned for tomorrow! I can’t wait!
