Big Rubber Balls

I happened to be in the gym with Doug The Dog over the weekend, when we had the dubious privilege of being accosted by a personal trainer. There's a steady stream of personal trainers at this gym (and probably most gyms), a startling number of which are blonde women with an IQ of approximately 47. The same people who buy a lifetime membership to a gym that they will probably use twice, before deciding that exercise is something other people do, are often prevailed upon to purchase one-on-one personal training when they sign up. You see them being led round the gym in their ill-fitting workout gear, invariably wobbling with several years of accumulated lard.

Now I have nothing against people consulting a trainer per se, nor do I mind fat bastards coming to the gym - as I've said before I have respect for anyone who makes the effort to work out consistently. What bothers me is that these poor fuckers are trusting themselves to trainers who in many cases haven't got the first sodding clue how to get them what they want. No matter if it's a thirty year-old bloke who wants more muscle or a fifty year-old woman looking to avoid osteoporosis they're going to end up with basically the same workout, and it always involves balls.

I've read in many places that squats are the single most complete exercise that you can do. You don't have to go heavy - it's just a great all-round exercise. But do you ever see a personal trainer introduce anyone to squats? Do you bollocks! Chances are that the first thing they'll do is go and get the big red rubber ball and have their client make a dick of themselves with some stupid made-up routine. Personally I believe trainers pass the time by seeing who can make someone do the most ridiculous movements in public.

So, back to our trainer. Obviously they don't put the bite on you right away - they work up to it, with questions like "Have you ever worked with a personal trainer?" and "Do you know what your body fat is?" but you can see it coming a mile away. In this case the trainer in question may have been struggling to reach the lofty heights of a 47 IQ, given her inability to subtract one number from another and calculate a target heart rate. She eventually got around to offering each of us a free evaluation, where we would get baseline measurements for all sorts of things. Only a complete retard would fail to realise that this data is utterly useless unless they go back repeatedly for paid sessions and get re-measured. It's a hook, to get insecure people to pay for training they don't need at exorbitant rates.

I've come to appreciate that people who pay for training aren't actually buying the training; they're purchasing absolution. Trainers know this and they make sure the session isn't demanding, so the client keeps coming back, laboring under the sad delusion that a few minutes of undemanding exercise twice a week is going to erase the cumulative effects of fifteen years of donuts. You notice that the trainer spends more time chatting to the client about how their weekend went than pushing them to work harder. Eventually even the most deluded client realises that they have made zero progress, and quits, but a lot of money changed hands in the meantime. One of our trainers is a fabulous blonde specimen who ends each session by putting the client on his back (it's usually a man), wrapping herself around one leg and stretching his hamstrings. What this is supposed to achieve I do not know, other than spontaneous and embarrassing wood for the client. It certainly keeps them coming back though. It's practically a "happy ending".

Not surprisingly I declined the opportunity to have a free consultation. Doug, on the other hand, signed up. His motives are not pure, though. Doug doesn't need to know his body fat, biceps circumference or target heart rate. He just wants to see if he can get a shag. And who can blame him - after all, it's certainly exercise.


Copyright 2007 Edward Bison