LIFE SAVERS

Life Savers: an Unlimited Personal Training testimonial from one member at our Melbourne studio circa 2009

LIFE SAVERS

This isn't about young men and women who watch and sometimes have to save swimmers who get into difficulties at our beaches. It's a story of what happens when you get so sick of being fat and feeling ill that you decide to get a personal trainer and attempt to rescue your body from its increasingly obvious decline and degeneration.

I am sixty- three years old. I eat and drink too much. My brain seems to be in reasonable condition. I have worked successfully with it for the past fifty years. My connection to the outside world, my eyes, don't seem to be in the same shape, especially since the computer and the internet became my tools of trade. There doesn't seem to be any way they can recover their keenness.

In November I weighed 120 kilograms. Getting rid of the first twenty kilos was easy. I walked and jogged for an hour and a half a day and stopped eating and drinking excessively. I feel much stronger physically and mentally. The body and the mind do interact.

My personality is obsessive so the Save Martin's Life Program has moved into its next phase. I have joined a gym. It is not an ordinary gym. This place offers unlimited personal training for a fixed amount per week. That means that you receive the not so tender ministrations of a man or woman trainer who are unfailingly pleasant, extremely fit and intent upon making you exercise hard and intelligently. The cost per week is less than a meal in a reasonable restaurant. The sessions usually involve two clients to a trainer and last for a very active half an hour.

I attend three times a week but will probably increase the tempo shortly which will bring each session's price down to about the cost of a ham and salad roll.

One of my major life lessons is that nothing is as simple as it looks. Learning to play the guitar, to speak another language, to sing, to play bridge or chess or to truly understand how your body works are all disciplines that involve gaining knowledge and particular skills over a significant period of time. Physical fitness works the brain as well as the body. You have to learn a lot of stuff about how your body works and you don't learn it in five minutes. You don't know how to hold your body to maximize the outcome of a particular set of repetitions, Professional trainers really have the knowledge and the ability to make you strong and fit. Your contribution is to be there and to attempt to do what they tell you to do. I like their view that some muscles of your body have been asleep for a long time (some of mine rival Rip Van Winkle's 40 year sleep) and their first task is to wake them up. Posture is extremely important.

One of the things I really like in Unlimited Personal Training is the lack of attitude in the trainers. Of course they are younger, fitter and stronger than you have ever been in your life (except younger) but there is no trace of ego. They are true professionals whose work involves making your body much better than it was and, ideally, as good as it can be. There is no shouting, no criticism, no time wasting and no favourites. They are always positive and are remorseless about getting you to try harder but it is not achieved by haranguing or criticising you. You chose the trainer and go to the session. The mix is about half men and women. There aren't many body beautifuls.

About ten years ago I went to a large gym and was virtually told that I didn't fit their age or figure demographic. Their manager certainly didn't meet my intelligence demographic. I took myself to another gym along with seven of my senior staff that I enrolled. It was important to me that they be fitter, alert and physically happy. We were happy there for over three years.

Personal fitness shouldn't be about age. It is a feature of most of the Aged Care Homes that I have seen. Even catching a plastic beach ball when you are sitting down involves dexterity and movement. I suppose the next wave in health care, if it hasn't already hit the beach, will be specialised gyms for senior citizens. They and we want them to be alive, alert, energetic and mobile. Sedentary stillness and silence is not the way to go.

Probably the best feature of my gym is that I don't feel silly and unwanted. I am not as fast or as strong as virtually everyone there, but this is not a contest except with yourself. I get told "good" not as a throw away word but as a signal that I have done something right in a set of exercises that is within the context of my limitations. I haven't broken the world record for the triathlon.

I value being told what to do. Exercising by yourself is a wasteful process. You need to be told what and how to do things. That is why tennis, cricket, football, golf and just about every other sport involves lessons and training right up to national team level.

At the moment my life is sensational. I am working hard, exercising hard and am in love. Nothing makes you feel better than that combination.

-Martin