It all began after my first caesarean, sixteen years ago. In an effort to get my midriff back in shape, my undisciplined- in-exercise self decided to hire a trainer. The price for a trainer in 1992, an exorbitant $40 per hour. What followed in the passing years were a series of relationships with twenty-two different trainers, I can only liken to dating. Some were short term, others long lasting. Some were rebound relationships, others were just pleasant company. Here is the story of all my trainers.
My first trainer, Alana* and I worked well together through my first and second c- sections. The real fringe benefit of working with her was the location of our sessions. A hole in the wall, small no-frills studio in Brentwood owned by Ryan O’Neal called Pro Gym generated the best celeb sightings of all my years in Los Angeles. Look at me, un-athletic Sylvia, tread milling beside the likes of Cindy Crawford, Neil Simon, Bruce Springsteen and Gabriel Byrne. A good companion for our long power walks around Brentwood Country Club; I remember Alana fondly and still bump into her.
But after a couple of years, I grew a bit tired of the same old machines, the same walk and yearned for a bit more variety, so I joined the posh Unnamed Gym where I could get more cost efficient, frequent workouts. Their group exercise schedule was longer than the Declaration of Independence. And my new membership came with three free private training sessions.
I asked around my mommy and me class, and my second trainer, Jamie, came highly recommended. Unfortunately, what worked for that mom was a bit torturous for me. Jamie conducted her workout session unemotionally and I could never get her into much of a conversation. She seemed bored with me, while I needed a bit of friendliness to make those darn pushups seem less tedious. Though we didn’t last long, she still works at the gym and even remembers my name. Strange!
Since personal recommendations did not guarantee trainer compatibility, for my next trainer, I decided to just pick someone from the attractive line up of pictures on the wall at the gym and read the short bios. I picked perky, pretty Jenifer who was accredited by the some national association for trainers.
Jenifer and I got along swimmingly and I even signed up for a second package of ten sessions. She was estranged from her large family for some unknown reason and seemed to be supporting her long-time aspiring screenwriter boyfriend who was on the verge of a big deal. Jenifer had mentioned studying oriental medicine in the evenings and having Crohn’s disease. The last I heard from her was a phone message cancelling our session. She died a few days later from colon cancer at age twenty-seven.
Her death affected me a great deal. I thought about her often. She was the first person younger than I who died, that I actually knew. She appeared to be in perfectly good health and a quite physically fit. Besides, trainers weren’t supposed to suddenly die of a serious illness at such a young age …
When my gym opened a new branch in Beverly Hills I had a whole new group of trainers to choose from, after Jenifer. I scanned them over and randomly picked Nicole, who seemed friendly. However, our relationship floundered. She seemed a bit unhappy either with her job or her ex-boyfriend or both. Furthermore, she didn’t seem to like me that much and was a bit short-fused. One day when she grew impatient with my failure to perfectly execute a complicated exercise, she asked me quite seriously, “Do you have attention deficit disorder?” Before I knew it, she had fired me. Whoa, who ever heard of a trainer dismissing a reasonable, but no-so-athletic client!?
