Lost at the gym? Just look in the book!

Like a cub scout separated from his troop in the woods, I am lost and alone.

Except I’m not stuck in the woods. I’m stuck in the gym, specifically GoodLife Fitness’s Kenaston Boulevard branch, where I now have a free three-month membership as part of our big fitness challenge.

I like the gym. I really like looking at all the amazing fitness machines. "Look," you will often hear me say, "there is a fitness machine." Or: "Hey, look, there’s another fitness machine."

I can do this for hours. I even understand why they have little diagrams of the human body on each machine showing a portion of the body highlighted in red so that it looks as if the skin has been ripped away to expose the muscles underneath.

These diagrams are meant to let you know which portion of your body will be in agony if you actually use that particular machine.

OK, just a little gym humour there. Getting back to being alone, the thing is I have just wrapped up two weeks of working with Jacqueline Vincent, an elite trainer at GoodLife who is known to anyone who has ever read one of my columns as "The Queen of Pain."

The Queen of Pain put me through four intensive workouts specifically designed to get me in shape.

I asked Jacqueline about my current shape and she said: "You’re apple-shaped because you have the belly (she actually poked me in the belly when she said that). That’s where your fat is. It packs around your internal organs and makes you work twice as hard."

Good to know. So we are working to change that. Not only did I learn four complex workout routines from Jacqueline, but we also did two review sessions to ensure I would remember all the different exercises targeting various portions of my anatomy.

Everything she taught me she also wrote down in a cute little red book with silver shooting stars on the cover. The Queen gave me the book at the end of our final session. She said I can ask her anything whenever I’m at the gym, but the basic idea is that I can now use the book as my gym guide.

So that’s what I did Wednesday morning. Me and my book arrived at the gym a little after 9 a.m. and I began my workout, which went like this:

1) Look in the book;

2) Try to figure out The Queen’s handwriting, which is only marginally better than mine;

3) Try to match up the correct exercise with the correct machine unless the exercise does not actually involve a machine, if you can imagine that;

4) Realize someone was already using the machine I needed, then wander around looking for another machine.

So if you had been there, you would have seen a 285-pound guy, his nose in a small red book, meandering apparently aimlessly around the gym, pausing to stare at an exercise machine, then scanning the rest of the gym to see if anyone realized he didn’t have a clue what he was doing.

OK, I’m exaggerating a little bit. Eventually, I pulled it off, by which I mean I did an actual workout on my own without anyone’s help, except for the other people in the gym who took pity on me and explained certain concepts, such as you should turn the treadmill on if you want to get the maximum benefit from the machine.

So I’m going to give this a try on my own ... for awhile at least. But now I truly understand why it’s good to have a trainer. With a trainer, you never need to worry about bringing your brain to the gym, because the trainer will tell you what to do and when to do it. It’s much easier that way.

Also, if you are debating whether to stay in bed as opposed to going to the gym, it’s good to have a trainer because you know, deep in your heart, if you miss an appointment with them, they have the ability to squash you like a grape. So there’s that.

For now I’m going to work out on my own, but I know that at the end of this challenge I am going to have to hire The Queen of Pain to train me for a lot longer.

Because I’m dying to find out what happens at the end of the book.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca