Personal Trainers

I am cross-posting this to the blog from the FB group Sparking seniors and friends.  I wrote it in response to a question one of the group members asked.

Personal Trainers

You asked how it was going with the Personal Trainer. Someone suggested this might even be a luxury. I agree. Sometimes a necessity, but at my phase of life, it's definitely a luxury!

The first one I ever hired was not even for me. It was for my then teenaged son who was having some health issues. He got amazing results. Enough so that I considered hiring one for myself.

I was at an incredibly high level of body fat and was working at losing the weight. I don't even remember her name... Tammy? I was in my late 40's, maybe, at the time. She met with me once a week for four weeks, I think it was. Each time she introduced me to a new workout, and when our engagement was ended, I had four different workouts to do in rotation, to continue to work on my fitness.

Then there was Alicia (not my sister, another Alicia). Similar drill. Ended up with 6 workouts in her rotation. We only met once month for 6 months, then she moved out of state. I was bereft!

Before the next personal trainer, I hired a swim instructor to help me "make the cutoff" in my first Olympic distance triathlon. Her name was April. She gave me drills and exercises to do in the pool to work on my efficiency (which also increases one's speed in the water).

Next personal trainer was Dalton. I called him "the boy Wonder" because he really was a wet behind the ears kid, but he knew his stuff. He was the first trainer I hired not to design a workout or set of workouts for me, but to just keep me accountable and work me out, once a week. I hired him to "keep me fit over the Winter".

There was a gap after that while I pursued running, and biking, and swimming, outdoors, and quite apart from the gym work. During the height of my triathlon "career", I wasn't working with trainers. But then came 2016, and three falls over the course of Winter. Out of concern for concussion symptoms, I was forbidden outdoor cycling.

I turned to trainers again. I hired BJ, who had lost weight herself and participated in obstacle races. I told her my tale of woe and said, "I don't want to lose the awesome" (meaning the feeling one gets crossing three finish lines in one race, triathlon). We laid out a plan to get me prepped to run a 5 mile footrace the following September as my end goal (to feel that awesome). She worked out beside me and we giggled as much as we worked. But then she left the employment at the gym I belonged to, that held my contract.

She bequeathed me to Chelsea. Chelsea was another youngster 20-something to my 60-something! But like Dalton before her, she knew her stuff. Her favorite trick was to give me a heavier weight without telling me she did until after I'd done my reps with it.

That contract ended, and I was without a coach for a while. Then when I retired, I had this grand plan to up my game in Triathlon now that I had time to train. I hired Gary, a level 2 certified triathlon coach. My triathlon dreams kind of died in burnout, and a few bouts of illness, etc. I decided I would just run for a while. Gary stayed with me, adapting the workouts to my changing goals.

In 2019, my brother (some of you remember him as MobyCarp from Spark) died. Gary kept me working even in the shadow of grief. Up to the pandemic, when I stopped going. For an entire year! To stay safe. I walked outside. Every once in a while, I would lift weights at home. I stopped running races, though, after the NYC 5K in November 2019.

Gary got sick over the 2020 year, but recuperated. He contacted me as the vaccines became available, and I started back with him two weeks after my second shot. And I'm still with him, most of the time twice a week. The workouts have adapted as my goals have changed, even to the point of "I just want to remain functionally fit to live my life, a good quality of life".
Luxury? Yep. But some luxuries are so worth it.

And that is how it's going! I'm not as fit or trim as in the finish line photo (Sept 2018), but I'm keeping the feeling of awesome alive.