My First Experience with Sadism

I should tell you up front, that title is hyperbolic.  But still, I think I met a sadist last week.

For those of you who may not know, I moved recently.  While I’m enjoying the new place there was one big thing about moving that made me sad.  Namely, I had to leave my old gym.  I know this probably seems trivial but I really liked my old gym.  I liked it so much that I seriously considered driving 30 minutes each time I needed to go work out so I could join another franchise location. 

Luckily for my bank account, I came to my senses and joined the one that is within walking distance of my new apartment.  My new gym costs $10 more a month so when they offered me a “free fitness consultation” I decided I should probably do it to offset the increased price.  Welcome to Kyley logic, people.

So last Monday after work I went to the gym for my fitness consultation.  I met with a fitness guru / trainer guy, we will call him Cory.  We sat down and talked about my goals, biggest issues, etc.  Then he used this little thing that you hold out in front of you to measure my percent body fat.

I should probably have realized his true nature when he handed it to me, told me to hold it out in front of me, and said, “just a heads up this this is going to give you a big shock, that’s how it works.” 

That’s totally not how it works.  Cory is a dirty liar. 

So then he tells me I have 28% body fat.  He may have said something after that but I was distracted for a bit thinking about the fact that if you quartered me, over one quarter would be made of fat.  But I digress.  He then tells me he thinks it would be ideal for me to work towards being 17% body fat.  This brings us to sadism clue number two.

After going home and doing a little research I learned that 17% body fat in a woman is like the lowest you should ever go.  Anything under 15% is generally considered anorexic.  I found this helpful illustration to show what I mean. 

You will note, I am basically perfectly in the middle of this scale.  So, while it wasn't sadistic of Cory to advise me on how to lower my BMI (it was actually totally helpful and I would like to get down to like 25%) it might have been evil to tell me to work towards emaciation.   

But now to the really fun part.  He tells me we’re going to do a strength training workout for my lower body.  After a warm-up he starts out by having me do lunges.  Lunges are good, I’m all over the lunges.  Side stretchy leg extend things, on it.  But then he says we’re going to do squats.  I thought I’d be fine with this too.  I thought wrong.

He tells me that my feet need to be like two feet apart.  My arms up and crooked, and I’m supposed to make a motion like I’m sitting down into a chair so it pushes my butt out.  You’re probably thinking “yeah, okay, sounds about right.” 

But have you ever actually tried to do this?  It’s totally unnatural!  Like my body could not figure out what the hell I was doing.  Cory is like “why is this harder for you than lunges?”  And I’m like, “gee Cory, I don’t know.  Perhaps because no one, ever, in any place in the world, has attempted to sit in a chair with their feet this far apart!”

Maybe I need to spend more time at “the club” because frankly the only thing I could equate this to is that whole “drop it like it’s hot,” dance that was big a few years back.  And since I am seldom inclined to “drop my ass to the floor,” as it were, I was doomed to failure.  And then to add insult to injury, he makes me finish this little foray into fitness with burpees which, as everyone knows, were invented by the devil himself.

Long story short, I couldn't walk for like the whole week and I took to yelling at my legs asking them what, exactly, they have been doing during our recent running workouts.  Since clearly they haven’t been working too hard. I realize it uses different muscles, but still, seems like they need to get their shit together.

Anyway, Cory is evil, I’m made up of over ¼ fat, and my legs are next to useless.  It was a good week.