Mike the personal trainer

While I’m feeling the 24 Hour Fitness flow, I thought I’d reflect back on when I first signed up for my three-year membership and got five “free” personal training sessions. Not one to turn down anything labeled “FREE” (even if it’s stale cookies from an unknown source sitting on the water cooler, or ugly magnets and post-it notes at a career fair), I quickly jumped on this opportunity — after all, it had something like a $300 value. So really by attending five sessions of personal training (which I really really didn’t want to do) I was gaining $300. If I didn’t do the sessions, it would be like taking $300 and throwing it into the gutter. This is how my easily manipulated mind works.

Plus the enthusiastic people at 24 Hour Fitness would not stop calling me. Every day since I signed up, they would call me incessantly, asking how my workouts were going, encouraging me to sign up for personal training. So I signed up and was assigned a trainer named “Mike.” (This was not his real name, but it works.) Our relationship did not start out on a good note. When I arrived to my first session, Mike was not there to meet me. It was a Wednesday evening. I waited for ten minutes at the front desk and still he did not show up. Somewhat relieved, I went home. Then I got a phone call from Mike. “Hey, where are you?” he asked, as if I stood him up. We arranged to meet the next morning at 6am, before work. He sounded reluctant but I couldn’t do any other time. Clearly we were both unenthused about our meeting.

Later that night I got a text message from an unfamiliar number. “Hey can you meet on Friday night instead?” the text said. It took me a few seconds to realize that this was Mike the personal trainer, texting me. What the heck! I wanted to tell him No, I do not want to meet you for personal training on a Friday night, but I also did not want to text him back. Who wants a texting relationship with their personal trainer?

Anyway I think I did end up texting him back, and we still met the next morning for our first session. Mike was a young black guy who was apparently on his college wrestling team and did personal training on the side. For our first meeting, he basically did a variety of weight tests and asked me a bunch of questions about my diet. His concluding assessment was that I’m slightly overweight according to some weight chart and that I need a new diet, which he printed out for me. Half of the “approved” food items on the list were Apex products, conveniently sold at the front desk. (If you’ve never tried Apex food, trust me it’s very disappointing — they have yummy-sounding items like chocolate chip cookies and granola bars, but they taste like cardboard and have the consistency of a rubber boot.) With my self-esteem lowered and my motivation to exercise increased (I guess that’s the point of the first meeting?) we agreed to meet the next week for my second session.

The lowered-self-esteem-and-motivation-to-exercise wave did not last long, however. By the third or fourth session with Mike, I was pretty done with personal training. I learned some handy exercises with the balance ball and the weight machines, but I didn’t like having to meet with this guy in the mornings. He did try to connect with me, though. He’d make all kinds of references to hip hop or r&b music and ask me if I liked this song or that artist. Nine times out of ten I didn’t get his references or hadn’t heard of any of the songs. This was disheartening.

One time I called Mike to reschedule a meeting. He did not answer his cell phone but instead I got his voicemail greeting, which was a guy singing “"Make up, and break up, That's all we do, Then we have sex, next thing you know, Everything is cool. Best of Both Worlds! Holla at your boy!" Apparently this was an R. Kelly song. I can only guess that the voice of the guy singing was Mike himself. When I told John about his voicemail greeting, we both agreed that this guy must get all the ladies. I mean, his voice wasn’t bad, and who has the balls to sing an R. Kelly song as your voicemail greeting?

Anyway, I think the lesson I learned was that from now on I will only do things that I want to do, rather than things I feel like I should do, especially when it comes to things like exercise or one-on-one situations. Ultimately if I am not committed to or excited about something, I just won’t want to do it and it will be torturous and awkward for all parties involved. Poor Mike. I hope he got more enthusiastic clients after me.