FitnessFixation.com

Sometimes people I train have the nerve to move and have to attend other bootcamps, or they possibly saw other trainers before they met their one true love (that would be me… no, stop laughing, occasionally people do like training with me, fuckers) and I am the kind of person who believes people should sow their wild training oats. If they have to work out elsewhere, FINE, I only ask neutral questions like, “what did that other little slut trainer do with you, hmmm? Did your wussy other trainer make you do this though? I didn’t think so. Don’t you wish your other trainer was a freak like me, don’t you?” Anyhow, because I am clearly so needy, people will send me stuff about these other trainers like their newsletters and shit like that so I can mock it. In this way, it has come to my attention that one trend in trainers out there is many of them believe they are imbuing some spiritual guidance in addition to sore muscles, and once they’ve gotten people to sign on for some fitness they also present themselves as mentors or life coaches.
This is not an overall dig at life coaches or even those that are also fitness professionals, and if you want both those services in one, grrrrreat, I’m sure you can find it. Some practices like yoga and some martial arts have a spiritual component, and while anything especially spiritual gives me the heebie jeebies, I can see a benefit, even if I’m too dense to get it. But I just want to assure anyone who might be looking for such a life coach that you will not find one in me. Sure, sometimes I make people call out their spirit animal in class, but you know when I do that I’m fucking with you, and mocking the whole whitey-going-to-the-sweat-lodge uber-zen kumbaya ass-fuckery of it all. It may be a special product of the area I live in anyway.
Why do I not consider myself a mentor of sorts to the people who come my way? I want you to know that if you are having trouble hearing the rest of this, it’s because the people I train have just spit out their drinks and are laughing loudly at the thought of me being a life coach of any kind, and trust me, if I fancied myself one for a second I think I might get some seriously amused clients up in my face. Um, reasons: The vast majority manage their lives better than I do, thanks, and also (related) I might know a few things about squat form, but I’ll be fucked if you want to follow my example in how you live your daily life, and I think it’s the special arrogance of my profession that inspires people to believe they have tons more to offer than a sweaty time. Just because people ask for your help in getting in shape does not mean you have much to offer in how mindful they should be when they are sitting on the toilet or getting into an argument with another driver. I detest that kind of woo woo voo doo guru; it’s just a bunch of people who like to fancy their jobs more meaningful and themselves more important than they are. The only one true way is right up my ass, HA.
So all that said, you can understand why the meaningful after-school special posts make me feel creepy. I do have my own way of living my life, and sure as shit it’s not for everyone, it hardly works for me at times. But one thing I seem to value is a sense of adventure, by which I do NOT mean jumping off a bridge attached to a bungee cord or staring down tigers in the Andes, and if you happen to see one something is amiss because I believe they are not native to that place. But I was part of starting a business that now makes my living, and that has certainly been an adventure, HA HA. I thank something greater than myself every day that I’m too stupid to worry much about where my next client is coming from, and also that I have a business partner who is infinitely and wonderfully more practical than I am, and who makes me focus up and points my steamroller ass towards a reasonable goal when I go off in forty possible mental directions at once, accomplishing exactly nothing.
But I do like the little possibilities that come my way, and I like the adventure of meeting new people, and shit like that. This is beginning to sound very icky, but as a shy person (for reals, or at least I was) it is kind of great to get to know new people and find out what makes them work hard and make connections, I live for that. I also moved to an apartment in a neighborhood that is impractical for me in some ways, but I just liked it, and I never lived in this neighborhood before so I wanted the adventure of that. And I’m hoping to travel this year, and therefore I probably will. And take up new activities, and if I can get my work life under control I’ll probably do that too.
How is this all going to come full circle to fitness? So very glad you asked. In part, getting into this fitness stuff later in life made me realize any ideas I had about my limitations might be stooopid, because I believed I was very unathletic and then whoa, here I am. Actually being a personal trainer was not in the game plan for my life by the longest of long shots—ten years ago, I would more likely have believed I’d be the next Pope than a fitness pwo-fesh-o’nahl , so really, I now have a healthy dose of “anything can happen” and you can’t really plan for too much with any certainty, and for once I don’t mean that in a fatalistic “I could drop dead tomorrow” kind of way—though for the record, I could, I might even get ebola. There’s weird twists to life and trying out a crazy gym that sounded interesting turned out to be a whole different career for me, imagine.
Getting stronger and working on athletic stuff and risking looking like a sporty asshole in front of people contributed at least to the confidence I have when it comes to doing other things. I don’t go into situations with the same old fear of failure I had in the past, now it’s just a gentle roar instead of being a bajillion decibels, and I sometimes do things despite the fear. Plus I have more of a fundamental belief I can hold my own, and just overall a kind of crazy belief in myself that borders on idiocy at times, god love it. It might be smarter to believe aliens will save us from global warming than to actually trust I can accomplish the things I attempt, but hey, sometimes luck and the goodwill of others prevails and then I can take credit for it, it’s all me, HA. That faith in myself, it’s tiny bit shaky right now, but I imagine I’ll recover it again, because I will.
None of the above is new or groundbreaking in any way, and I have even said it before myself, but too bad, that’s why this is my blog and I’m the big creep in charge here, and I wanted to say it.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 24th, 2010 at 2:25 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.