the trainer

k. so you are all asking yourselves "why the crap did natalie post pictures of a hot shirtless guy on her blog. shouldnt she be through that whole "posting pictures of hot guys" phase by now?". well, yes. i should be. but as i said, i am endeavoring to capture the absurdity and awkwardness that IS me working out with my personal trainer, Taylor. (ever since i mentioned it in my last post, ive been laughing to myself about it so i need to just do it already. plus, since i will only be working with him for like 2 more months (ack! it makes me wanna puke just thinking about that, cuz he is the best trainer ever, gonna be very hard to replace), i gotta get some of this down in print, lest i forget about it when i leave...) so anywho, thats him. and yes, when i saw him i thought the same thing you all did.. "what the?! thats gonna suck to do really ridiculous things and be sweaty and gross all the time with this guy watching my every move. " so ill just go ahead and say, to put your minds at ease, its really not so bad. k, taylor happens to be really good at what he does, and from the first second we started training, he has been amazing and totally professional and for some reason, he just makes you feel pretty ok and not dumb about what he is making you do. but man, i can only imagine what its like watching me sometimes, and im truly impressed he doesnt burst out laughing on a regular basis. i guess those are the kinds of things they teach you at trainer school. and im gonna go ahead and say it, im pretty dang impressed with myself that i still, to this day, have never farted in front of him. i mean, thats got to be a record, right? maybe im way off on this, but training seems to be the "perfect storm" when it comes to potential for that particular humiliating moment: the flexing, moving, holding, pushing, sometimes early in the morning with weirdness in my stomach. ya ive been waiting for the day when it just happened. so far so good. ya, ill have to ask him about his percentage of clients that can claim that distinction. anywho, i can remember so vividly one of our first sessions when i was doing a "plank" on the mat (you hold yourself parallel to the ground, on your toes and forearms, trying to hold yourself steady and pretend like you dont know that everyone on the cardio equipment behind you is pretending to look at the tv but they are really watching your clinching/quivering glutes and arms as you try to hold yourself in this wholey unnatural position). taylor was sitting next to me, calm as a warm summer morning, no cares in the world, counting down ever so slowly. ok, let me pause here to say people, i am a major sweater. seriously. i literally ring out my ponytail in the sink when i get done working out. my roommate has witnessed it many times. so im there clinching and sweating and i feel a huge drop of sweat...sliding....ever so quietly and annoyingly down my forehead...to my nose, and off the end. (a lot like that scene in mission impossible, when tom cruise is suspended above the computer and the drop of sweat rolls off and he catches it in his hand. only it somehow wasnt as awesome when it happened to me) it splashed down on the mat, i swear it was so freakin loud and i felt like it was going to splash onto the person next to me. and i was there, clinching, flexing and helpless. taylor continued to count down....ever...so slowly. all he said, was "it happens" when i glanced up at him, with a horrified look on my face. and thus it began.

so we went through several months of training much like this, him pushing me and helping me do things that i had never in my life conceived of, let alone imagined myself being able to do. but when you've got someone there watching you, and you know they arent going ANYWHERE until you do what they say, well, its pretty motivating. at some points, you forget that you are actually paying this person to stare at you and not leave you for one second, but stay with you and make you do all the most uncomfortable and annoying positions/movements imagineable. it really wasnt so bad at first, cuz i couldnt do much, and we mostly just worked out on machines and stuff. and then, as i started to get fitter, well that brought a whole new awesome world of humiliation. a world of plyometrics and swiss balls. wow. ok so swiss balls are awesome and ya, great for "core" work. cuz whatever you do on it, you have to work harder to stabilize and whatnot. but, being a ball, it does have a tendency to move around, and yes, to roll. and combined with my lack of coordination and strength, well, hilarity ensues. so i dont know what made taylor think that i could do a push up on a swiss ball (maybe the fact that all his old lady clients can do it. i dont know. ) but at first he held it and i tried, gosh i tried my little heart out to go down but i just kept losing my balance and flopping around. so finally, hes just like "just go down and bounce off it and come up". ya. ok, i want you all to stop now. and picture this people. picture yourself. or me, either way. in push up position, hands on a big huge ball. so i try to go down and bounce off it, and sure enough i managed to flop down and bounce some body part off of some part of the ball, and then it all just happened so fast and i lost control and, well, i didnt come back up. i am fairly certain i ended up in a pile on the sweaty mat with the ball rolling away. it may or may not have hit some innocent people warming up next to me.

so time went on, and i learned and got stronger, and didnt hit myself in the face or head with the weights/bars as often. wait, i still do that pretty regularly. anywho, i think it was when i started running and training for a half marathon when plyometrics were introduced. so, plyometrics are "fast twitch" muscle exercises. they include lots of "exploding" (when taylor says that, it means, like being powerful and strong when i jump, not the gastrointenstinal type of exploding that one might associate with this type of exercise. although.....:)), jumping, quick movements, obstacles, steps, etc. IE: things that look super awesome and cool when athletic people like Taylor do them, and incredibly ridiculous awkward and sympathy-inducing when folks such as myself attempt them. it just feels so funny when you jump with no real purpose in it, like, you are not jumping over a log or a puddle. you are just jumping. up and down and over and across. your hands and arms sometimes get confused about what they should do and where they should go. (ok, mine do anyway). so taylor had me bounding through the gym, and squat leaping and what not. and it wasnt toooo bad. then, came the day. the day for which the girls were so ill prepared. k i will not go into details here, for the sake of the male readers of this blog. but ill just say, not all jumping is created equal. there are certain ways to jump that make it, ummm shall we say, a little more annoying when you are a girl. a girl...with not small at all sized girls. (as my sweet niece Lexi has always called them "chesties"). to make matters worse, i happened to be wearing stretchier pants with a not super secure wasteband, and as i did these intense, fast twitch, explosive jumps, well, my plants kept slipping down (just enough to be annoying cuz, due to the type of jump, i couldnt use my hands to pull them up. luckily they never slipped down quite enough to make this experience extra horrifying) even taylor's professional calmness could not overcome the awkwardness of this one.

however, it turns out personal training is super good for your health, and CLOSE TO as ridiculously entertaining as my dating life. im super glad i discovered this. really though, in the end, i absolutely recommend the personal training thing, in case you are wondering. it adds a whole new dimension to working out, and its amazing what you can actually do when someone else tells you that you can. plus its good to have someone guaranteed to be there to witness the funny awkward ridiculousness that is bound to happen. cuz i hate it when i have a really good fall or something and theres no one around to laugh about how funny it looked. its a total waste.