I got that body

By Joshua Santos | gargoyle@flagler.edu

I have been working out with a personal trainer every morning for the past week and a half. I am not much of a healthy person. Up until I started working out, I was a pack a day smoker, more than half of my liquid consumption came in the form of malt liquor, and the closest I had ever come to stretching was me trying to put my skinny jeans on in the morning.

Well, thanks to my personal trainer Tamilee Webb, who I found in a box during the church garage sale held in the Gazebo as a freebie for buying a Jim Carrey VHS for a dollar, I can finally say I got that scientific fitness body.

It first began during a hazy morning where I realized I should probably get to working out to have material for this paper.

I pop in the tape, Tamilee comes out of what looks to be some college scientific hall. She is super stoked to get to work out. Her porcelain white and robot-like smile seemed a little too enthusiastic for my taste. I really just wanted her to stop talking so I could go back to bed. But I persisted, then scientists began strapping electrodes to her body and taking energy readings from her work out. The results were displayed in the form of weird vector graphics on an old computer monitor that looked to be out of an old sci-fi film.

Obviously, Tamilee went to great lengths to ensure that her workout would be scientifically proven to make me sweat, and help me get those abs, arms, legs, and buns I didn’t know I actually wanted until she convinced me otherwise during her demanding routines.

I did the whole half hour routine the first day, much earlier in the morning than I would have preferred to be sweating. Then, I realized I had my whole day ahead of me, and I still had energy. I did not crave cigarettes that day. I was excited to get work done. Everything was going eerily too smoothly.

As the week progressed, I would alternate between doing the fifteen-minute work out and the whole 30-minute program, depending on who was sleeping on the couch in my living room at the time. Hippies are the worst.

I woke them up at 7:30 a.m., full work out get up, jogging in place and stretching every part of my body. Needless to say they were weirded out, which I’m guessing is why they gave our household lice that week. Thanks to them, I lost a year and a half’s worth of hair in fifteen seconds.

The following day, my roommate brought a homeless man to stay overnight without consulting the chamber. He slept on the same couch that night and once again, I woke up at 7 a.m. to get that body. It was not so much as creepy as it was just bizarre that this man who calls himself Dragon woke up for just a few seconds. Without hesitation or asking why, he just commented “That bitch is hot.” He then rolled back over and napped some more. I finished the whole half hour that day as well.

By the third day it was getting kind of ridiculous at the amount of people sleeping in our living room. I do not enjoy waking people up, but at the same time, that is where the only TV and working VCR player in the house is located. Excuse me if I like to work out in a very questionable fashion every morning.

There was only one morning where I had the living room to myself for the workout. Besides that, I pretty much had an audience each time, watching me use cans of pinto beans instead of weights, a towel instead of a mat, and me flailing my arms and legs around trying to keep up with a cyborg workout human.

I did not have to switch up my diet, mostly because I cannot afford quality food. I survive off a single can of beans and a cup of rice a day. Sometimes when I am lucky and the household has eggs, I can make a sandwich for breakfast. Lukewarm tap water and black coffee are the only things available to drink.

I figured out that the whole 30-minute routine was probably burning off all the calories I consumed in a day, leaving me tired around 1 p.m., where I then would fall into a nap coma against my will. The 15-minute routine was just right.

So what did I learn from all this stretching, curling and sumo squatting with Tamilee Webb for over a week?

No matter how cliché it sounds, life is all about will power and the energy to burn repeatedly as one leaves the hot coals burning for a never-ending fire that should not be put out inside of you.