The Gym

When I retired in Carson City, Nevada, I decided to join a local gym. For many years I had neglected my body, working twelve and fourteen-hour days, climbing the corporate ladder until I became President of my company.

I went to the gym diligently for a couple of years and then I was sick for a while and my wife also had some medical problems so I slacked off to the point where I was hardly going at all. Well, we both got better and it was time to return to the gym, but this time I wanted to do it right. So I hired a professional trainer. He is a young man, probably 50 years younger than I am. He is over six feet tall and very muscular where as I am about five foot eight and shrinking.

I have a one-hour lesson with him once a week and go twice more each week to practice what I have learned from him. He is relentless in making me do 15 reps. of each exercise and makes me do each exercise three times. When I am finished with the exercises, he has me go to a stationary bike and peddle until my heart rate is up to 105 beats per minute and than I can go home.

The last time I was at the gym with my personal trainer, at the end of the session, when I could hardly move, he suggested that next week, we would work out by doing a little boxing in the ring that sat at the far end of the room. Well, I was pretty proficient at boxing, having won the intra collegiate championship in my weight class at Cornell some sixty years ago. So I said to my trainer, that I did not think that was going to happen. He asked why and I said, “I don’t want to hurt you.”