FitnessFixation.com

Yesterday morning my kid and I were sitting around waiting for her dad to come and pick her up for her days at his house. We had about an hour, and I was itching to work out. I turned to her and said, “Do you wanna go out to the gym and train me?” (Our gym basecamp is conveniently located behind my house.)

“Uh, sure!” she said. She put on her rainboots and we went out back.

I jumped rope to warm up while she pondered the workout. “Wow, it’s hard to think of stuff to do,” she said. “Yeah, my job isn’t so easy a monkey could do it,” I replied grinning. “Okay, put down the rope,” she commanded.

“Do two push ups, two punches on the heavy bag, and two squats with this medicine ball,” she told me. “How cute,” I thought. “Two reps. Guess it won’t be a tough workout.” I did my push ups, ran to the bag, hit it, and did my squats. “What’s next?” I asked.

“Now do four of each thing,” she said. “Ruh roh,” I thought, realizing evil might just be genetic. We did six reps, eight, ten, then eight, six, four, and back to two. By the time we finished I was sweaty, happy, and totally gonna make my clients do the exact same thing. Maybe a monkey couldn’t do it, but my seven-year-old kid came up with a kickass program. “Now let’s do a lap around the block,” she said.

She ran alongside me in her little rainboots, managing to both keep up a good pace and talk without stopping the entire time. I was impressed by that alone. “Phew! I’m getting tired!” she said. “Yeah, it’s hard…” I started to explain, but then she instructed me to run with high knees, then kicking my heels towards my booty, in the process also buying herself a break. “Brilliant,” I thought.

We went back into the gym, and she told me to do overhead presses with the bar. “It’s so funny, you are suffering and I’m just standing here,” she said. I welled up a little. “You are a real trainer now,” I told her.

She had me do two more exercises she made up that I will totally use—one thing with bicep curls and squats, and a sit up with the medicine ball that is really good—and she encouraged me to go faster. She giggled a little. “You get such a funny face when you lift weights,” she laughed. “Shhhh. You can’t laugh at the weightlifting face,” I said, even though everyone else does. Then she stretched me out (”okay, your fingers are little ants, and the food is right there, just out of reach. Run towards the food, ants!”) and I suggested we end the session with a dance party to her favorite songs. She concurred, and then her dad arrived. It was one of the few workouts of my life that was over much too soon.

I don’t know if this is one of those stories that is just cute to me because I love my girl more than anything. But when I got into fitness, I thought maybe it would help her feel athletically capable in a way I never was as a kid, because she’d see me exercising and feel like she could do it too. Fast-forward, and I guess I now know it has less to do with her observing me and more to do with this all being part of her life. She’s drawing program design from her martial arts classes, her time spent playing with me in the gym, the little bit of P.E. she gets at school, gymnastics and sports camps. I ought to put her on the payroll. She only charged me three dollars! Hope word doesn’t get out about that, she’s totally undercutting me there, and she’s a good little trainer.

The other day she told me she was going to teach herself basketball and practice until she gets good so she can beat the boys who said girls can’t play. She said it matter-of-factly, not angrily. She has complete confidence in her athletic abilities.

Near the end of our session, I told her she had designed an awesome workout, and I wanted to use it with the people I train. “Would it be okay if I credit you?” I asked with a serious face. She looked up proudly, flushed, and looked down. “Well, sure, it would be great,” she said shyly. Her grin was huge.

I miss her and I can’t wait for our next session.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 16th, 2009 at 11:43 pm and is filed under body building, exercise, feelings, love, parents, relating, reviews, sports. 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.