Boot Camp

This is a story I wrote for our friends a couple fo years ago.
By the way, I still work out a couple of times a week, even on the road, so I guess it was not all that bad..enjoy.


Boot Camp
Reservations

I haven’t fully decided if our best friends are trying to help us or kill us. As an anniversary gift this past year they decided to give each other joint sessions with a fitness trainer. Beverly and I listened to them talk about which muscles were sore, which were fine, which ones they didn’t realize they had. We took it all in good stride, never really even talking about it between us. But then their “gift” took an ominous turn. They said the fitness club was going to have an eight week “boot camp.” Would we like to join?
Okay, I’m pretty much on board with anything folks want to do, but this had several drawbacks. Number one was that I hadn’t been in a gym in years. I travel a lot and use the hotel “fitness centers” about three times a week, but it is really just to relax a little, spend 30 minutes on a stationary bike, stretch a little and go eat. It reduces stress, doesn’t make me sore, and deludes me into believing I’m doing something to stay in shape. But having a personal fitness guy looking over my shoulder and telling me what I’m doing wrong or should have been doing all these years…well, I have a boss, I don’t need another one.
Secondly, I was never the best athlete. I was pretty small in junior high and high school, so third string was about all that I could manage. 40 years later I suspect the group has not come back to me. Plus, I would be in this thing with at least two other women and probably more, but the number was a little vague. There is every possibility that I was going to be in with a number of women (my wife included) and might not even be in the top half of the class. Now this is not a huge concern, I’ve never desired to be the top in anything. I learned very early in life that if you bring home an A the first six weeks, you’ve set the bar too high. Growing up it became a fulltime job just managing my parent’s expectations. So I would ramp up from a C to an A over the course of the year. After 12 years in public schools they finally were able to enjoy the progress, and I had fewer and fewer “you can be whatever you want to be” lectures as time went on. This has become a tremendous skill in 30+ years of marriage.
Third, the “boot camp” was on Saturday mornings at 8AM. Who thought of this schedule? I’m not a late sleeper, but Saturdays are the only day of the week that I can be lazy. Plus this “boot camp” was going to seriously cut into my sex life. So let’s see, boot camp with pain and sweating or lazy morning with my sweet wife followed by coffee and breakfast and a newspaper? Hmmm.
Finally, tell me again what we are doing this for? They say you will look and feel better. Let’s be honest, looks aren’t going to get better for a 50+ year old guy. We have hit the age where something hurts all the time anyway, why risk making everything hurt? Besides, men my age are great self-deceivers. We look in the mirror, see paunch and handles, hair and splotches and are able to say, “You still got it” “you da’ man” “love machine” We know we aren’t like we once were, but it is okay. Women simply do not have it in their power to do this. My wife is lovely in every way, but she looks at herself in the mirror and obsesses over the part of her anatomy that she can’t even see, I just figure if folks aren’t happy with my backside, they can stop looking at it, she worries over hers. So what will this boot camp do for me? Make me look 52 instead of 53? Turn me into a guy that the young, attractive ladies will strike up a conversation with? As a hint guys, if a really young, hot lady starts hitting on you, it is either a sting operation, or she has mistaken you for someone with money, or has such epic emotional problems you don’t have the skills to deal with them. My advice is run as fast as your flabby, paunchy, hairy, aching body will take you. Well, at least I found a reason for the class.

Sign Up and Sign In

The initial conversation with the fitness trainer went fine. He said there was room for us in the camp. It concerned me a little that he said there would be some “tests” we would have to complete, so we needed to be there 20 minutes early. What tests? Multiple choice? True/False? Hey, give me essay, I’m a salesman, words are my friends.
So we show up early and “Sean” and “Utawna” (husband and wife, names were not changed, there are no innocents here) begin the paperwork and the “tests.”
Sean is a lean, almost wiry guy with very short hair, almost cut to the scalp making it hard to tell what color it might be. Wire-rim glasses, easy manner, covering a sadistic side that surfaces when he has us “fats” going through our paces. I bet he was picked on by guys with hair when he was in grade school. Utawna has short blonde, streaked hair; she is wearing those spandex outfits so popular with the female gym crowd. My guess is that the only bounce of a coin off her butt or abs would be the bounce in the coin. Of course the first thought I had was, “Are those real? Or bought?” My money is on bought.
As it turned out, the tests were fairly benign. We had to walk on a treadmill after taking heart rate resting and after 5 minutes, then we had to see how many push-ups we could do in a minute, then sit-ups. Which reminded me that when Bev and I were first married and for several years afterward she would do sit-ups everyday, hundreds of them, it made me a little queasy just to watch. I have never had 6-pack abs, mine are more keg-like. Then they used a caliper to measure body fat, I think I finally won a contest. I will say that I’m not sure they could have used a colder instrument. If they had been measuring something else, they could have used a much smaller caliper.

Camp

This reminds me of high school football. A bunch of people standing around, wondering who is the best athlete, who will be the surprise, who is the lagger. Now, of course the question may be, who will stroke first? Who will drop on their face, causing concern for the rest of us. I was a little dismayed to see a couple of young ladies, one young man, but encouraged to see some women who looked like the child-bearing years were tough on them, some guys who looked like me, a little embarrassed that we had let it go this far.
Then Sean began to explain the drill. Seven “stations” for one group, aerobics for the other group, then we would swap events. Bev and I were assigned to the “stations” group, along with Doug and Janet, one of the teeny-boppers, and a couple of the moms.
Here’s how this works. You spend one minute on each station, then shift to the next station with no rest between. The stations were lunges, and sit-ups on a big plastic ball, push-ups, modified push-ups on a bench (its too hard to explain, but it kills the little, hidden muscles in your arms) leg lifts, sitting position while holding a ball between you and the wall, one exercise at a machine that you pull towards your chest (sitting and pulling weights, that’s useful) and one station where you “jump” starting with one foot on the half ball and landing on the other side of the ball with the other foot on top of the ball. I just tried to act like a ninja jumping over the station, but I discovered that somewhere in the past 30 years my feet apparently had a falling out and weren’t speaking to each other. Of course the teeny-bopper was shooting off that thing. This looked like a hamstring pull waiting to happen. I stopped watching.
The real exercise is the mental work. How can I dog it on each of these stations with Sean standing right there staring at me? Well, the lunges were easy, I look like a goof just walking around, so I just exaggerated the look. The stations that were essentially standing or sitting were pretty easy to fake as well, it just looked like I had poor form. The push-ups are a little hard to fake, but I decided that if I just barely moved from the top of the push-up to the bottom, Sean wouldn’t know if I was on my way up or down. After all, he had to be watching the others a little didn’t he? Sitting and pulling the weights was tough to dog, I put more weight on than he suggested, but did fewer repetitions. Also, this station was right in the middle of the gym, Utawna and the girls could be watching.
Then we switched to aerobics. Let me just say that at the age of 53, there is simply not many things left in this life that I feel compelled to run away from. In my mind this is a mark of maturity. Apparently the creator of this boot camp comes from a long line of people being chased by large, savage critters. Utawna told us to either get on a treadmill or an elliptical. Aren’t there any other choices? We were going to start at a slight 5 degree incline, walking at a brisk pace. Okay, this is not so bad. Then she says, “When I say go, go as hard as you can for 30 seconds.” 30 seconds is not so bad, I can do anything for 30 seconds. GO! Ellipticals are like trying to climb stairs with ski poles, legs are pumping, arms are flailing, oxygen is sucked out of the room, clever trick. Now, slow down to your original pace, this is your restoration mode. Bad news, the slowdown pace is a challenge. Poor judgment on my part was to actually push as hard as I could for the 30 second sprint because I hear Utawna over the roaring in my ears, “we will do this 4 times!” Wanna’ bet? Let’s just say that the third and fourth sprints would have to be renamed.
We survive the eclipse (as in our lives being faded from view) machines and are returned to Sean for another round of his particular fun and I realize that Doug and Janet are trying to kill us. They are such conflict avoiders. Wouldn’t it have been easier to just say, “We want new friends, you guys are too old and cranky for us.” No, they choose to be diabolical. So instead of Colonel Mustard in the kitchen with a candlestick it is Dr. Doug in the gym on the elliptical. Did I win?
But wait, Utawna is not finished. She has a game she wants to go outside and play. It’s the beanbag game, and we pair up (I choose Bev, it is a winning combination for 30+ years) We run 30 feet, pick up the first of five beanbags and sprint back, drop the beanbag, spin around and go get the next one until they are all retrieved. All of sudden I hear coach in my head, yelling and telling us how slow we all are, and the last place guys will have to do it all over again. What was that called? Oh yeah, wind sprints, the scourge of high school football. And we are doing them at the end of practice. Man, I haven’t even thought about this in 35 years, another 35 would be too soon.
This I know how to do. Sprinting is an art form in sports. The first thing coaches work on is how to make small, white, slow kids a little faster. Nice forward lean, slide the feet along the ground, head still, good arm action, remember to breath. First set of sprints were fine, got beat by the teenybopper, no one else. Halfway through the second set of sprints I hear Utawna yelling, “Faster, faster, you can do it!” For a split second my eyes come up and see her standing there and I begin to measure my steps, like Bret Favre on a naked bootleg, plant my left foot, use the big muscles in the legs, hips, back, turn the hand out, producing a nice spiral of the beanbag, stick the thing right between implant-L and implant-R. Teenybopper could be in the way, Doug and Janet’s car right behind Utawna, this is what is known as a target rich environment.
But there is another problem. The oatmeal we had at 6:30AM is now threatening to make an appearance. This is not good. Oatmeal is unsightly when it is being served, I can’t imagine that it gets better 3 hours later after a heavy workout. Slow down! We can do this if I don’t push it. The heart is pounding, the stomach is trying to decide if it wants to unload. Utawna is yelling and telling me I have another gear. Listen lady, it’s not the transmission, but the fuel pump and exhaust system.

Cool Down

Made it. There is nothing left in the tank, total expenditure. Then I remember that we haven’t paid. I track down Utawna and ask her how much. She tells me and as I begin to write the check I realize my hands and arms aren’t really working all that well. The pen is in my hand, but the signature doesn’t look right. Their problem, not mine. Only seven more weeks of this.
I wonder what Doug and Janet’s back up plan is?