Get Fit Now!: The Trainer Tells All

At first, I loved training people. My goal wasn’t to just stand there and talk to people and collect their checks. I thought I could help them, make them healthier, make them feel more confident. I was working some days 6 a.m. to 10 at night and I didn’t care. I was changing people’s lives. I was sure of it.

But it didn’t take me long to discover that the Main Line is an unusual place. I’d grown up in a middle-class home in the Philadelphia area. I’d never been exposed to wealthy people. And suddenly I was around them all the time. The amount of disposable income on the Main Line was remarkable. People would buy 20 sessions with me and drop $1,500 on the spot. I used to be shocked when my birthday rolled around and clients would give me a $500 check, or $250 gift certificates to restaurants in Center City, or bottles of wine, or cases of cigars.

Then there was the plastic surgery. I saw face-lifts and pec implants, even calf implants. And the boob jobs … so many boob jobs. Women would be flat-chested one week and then come in with these gigantic grapefruits the next. I was setting up one female client on a machine once, and just as I locked the strap around her chest, she stopped me.

“Whoa!” she said “Whoa. You can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Just unstrap me.” So I did, and she stood up and grabbed her boobs. “Because of these. I can’t have them compressed.” Then she started massaging them, right there.

Women would squeeze their bodies into such tiny little outfits that the place looked like a dance club. Some of them trained in high heels. The jog bras were all Barbie Doll-size, so just about everything was falling out. One girl would wear a white see-though body suit and then stretch right in front of the trainers’ desk. Every day. Same outfit. Same spot. And they had these ridiculous expectations: “I’m getting married in two weeks, you have to get me in shape,” or “I need to wear a bikini in a month,” or “You have to make this arm fat/tummy fat/ass fat/bra fat go away.” I tried to explain to them, you can’t just do sit-ups, you need to do overall conditioning. But they didn’t want to hear that. “I am paying $75 an hour,” they’d say, “and I want you to make me skinny for my son’s bar mitzvah tomorrow.”

This mentality, this privileged mentality, comes with the Main Line territory. So many of these people seemed to think that they could get away with anything. That they didn’t have to make any excuses for their behavior, especially not at a gym when they were paying to be there.

One afternoon, I was walking through the gym and heard a weird clicking sound. I looked over and saw this guy, probably in his late 60s, sitting on the leg press with his shoe off, foot up, clipping his toenails. I walked over and said, “Yo, you can’t do that here.” And he said, “Why not? There’s no sign that says I can’t.” And he just kept on clipping.