Sometimes It's Just About Kicking Some Ass

Today I am going to rant for a minute mostly because I can. For anyone who doesn't really care, go ahead and skip straight to the workout. For the rest, I appreciate the levity and will attempt to be brief. Today was one of the days that I hated my job and possibly society as a whole. Generally speaking this is not the case. I have a pretty good gig as a trainer and the pluses consistently out weigh the drawbacks. What they don't tell you when you get started though is that you need a psych degree rather than a passion for fitness, competition, or life. My clients on a day to day basis are relatively regular people. That is if you passed them on the street. God help anyone who actually has to engage them in conversation. For instance, today I was informed by one of them that the reason that he is fundamentally unable to lose weight is that he finds himself living out a scene from "My Best Friends Wedding" over and over in his mind. I had to indulge his thought process, mostly because we had already discussed the weather and I didn't even want to touch the concept of a food journal for fear that I may just start crying uncontrollably. He informed me that his ex love interest is pursuing a twenty two year old and he is pursuing his ex, but who is pursuing him. I wanted to tell him that by the look of things it must be Mrs. Fields, Ben, Jerry, and potentially the Hamburglar. What the hell does this have to do with your calorie intake? Why did you just quit your set of 12 after completing 5 and 1/2 reps? Why are you shocked that your results are as poor as they are? To ice the cake , this gentleman informed me that there was no need to worry over the science of weight loss because he was a fighter and a survivor. That's right folks, a fighter as well as a survivor. This is where my head nearly exploded. It may have been that my client the hour before had informed me of his difficulty in training his newly adopted, special needs(downs syndrome) pug to sit. This gentleman's frustration that a mentally challenged puppy didn't learn to sit in the first week probably didn't help matters. Neither did the fact that he referred to himself as resilient while discussing his returning of the dog to a shelter. Here is my point in all of this madness that I will not force you to re-live with me any further. It is vitally important that you stop lying to yourself or anyone else. It takes real, legitimate effort to duly earn the title of fighter. In order to be resilient, you must first try! Don't get caught on the bull shit of the weak. We can not just go around wearing titles like "fighter", resilient", or "survivor" because they sound good. It needs to be because we have earned them otherwise we devalue the efforts of people who did pay a price for these titles and bear the scars to prove it. There are still circles where things like the true will to win, will to compete, and the will to contend for our personal best still matter. Please don't take the meaning away from these words as well. I wish that there was a way for me to transfer the mentality I see with many of the women in the roller derby community to the cream puffs I call clients. It does take courage to skate into a pack of aggressive women at top speed knowing that there express desire of the moment is to inflict enough pain in order to stop you. It also takes courage to love a sport with little mainstream visibility, no compensation, and a season that seems to never quit. It takes courage to commit to a sport at the level most of you do. I haven't seen passion like this in a long time and I hope it will be contagious and spill over into our regular lives. Keep doing a good job and let's go to work!

5 min. warm up
Stretch
2x 10 squat thrusts (burpees)
2x 10 speed skater jumps
2x 10 fire hydrants
2x 10 lateral leg lifts
2x 10 tricep dips
2x 10 bicep curls
25x 5 sec. ab press
ABC leg lifts ( lay on you back, draw the alphabet with your legs straight beginning at a 45 degree angle to the floor)
2x 25 bicycle crunches
5 min. cool down
Stretch

If you have any questions other than does mixing vodka with Pedialyte make it a healthy drink, feel free to ask. By the way the answer to the question above is no!

J