Getting up close and personal
A BRIGHT, shiny, stainless steel gym has opened about half a mile from me, like many it has glass walls and an open plan. At night it’s like looking into an aquarium. My neighbour drives the half a mile in her four wheel drive, then gets out and runs on a machine for half an hour watching scenery change on a TV screen, and drives back. It’s a strange sport.
A friend of mine in London has just qualified as a personal trainer. I asked her what it meant. She said it meant being a mentor and a motivator. She just has three regular clients. Two are recovering alcoholics, one is a depressive. The last one doesn’t seem to want to get fit at all. He just wants the company and she takes him for a walk every day in the park. It struck me that personal training, keeping fit, has become the new therapy.
She charges between £50 and £100 an hour depending on who the client is. She is on call. The alcoholics often need a fix of endorphins, when they would normally reach for the bottle they reach for the phone and Nicky. She takes them for a run. She is obsessed by running, doing the marathon across the Sahara every year. She cannot stop running, it’s an addiction. She too is a recovering alcoholic and depressive.
Nicky has more prospective clients than she can manage. Some want to lose weight, some want to get fit, some want to feel better about themselves, but she says that most of them have other issues. The three men she has on her books are also lonely. Their marriages have broken up, they have stressful jobs, they are successful but their lives are not happy.
She is discreet, she doesn’t tell me their names or personal information but she does tell me that she is there to help at the end of a telephone when they are feeling low. She designs diets for them, helps them with their shopping lists, gives them targets and incentives to meet. She gives them her total attention and she believes that she is doing them good both physically and psychologically.
I asked if she worries that they might become dependent on her. She laughed, looked at me and said, “Well, it is my income”. That then is the danger. Like being in long term therapy one can become dependent on this other person to make decisions for you, give structure to your life, listen to you. But it’s not a natural relationship, it’s a relationship built on a professional inbalance. One person is being paid to be there for you. It’s common for clients to form emotional attachments to their therapists, to fall in love with them. I wondered if it was the same for personal trainers. “Yes,” says Nicky. “I think it can happen.” You spend a lot of time with someone. They confide in you, trust you, are often at their most vulnerable with you. It’s always a possibility. It famously happened to Madonna whose personal trainer, Carlos Leon, fathered her child Lourdes.
What is true is that it is a growth (or should that be reduction?) industry. Going to the gym, is not for the fainthearted. It means being seen in your kit and having your fitness level exposed to others. Many people feel too shy and ashamed to reveal their bodies in this way. It can get quite competitive on those running machines. Having someone quietly come to your home is a much gentler option, but the wise will question why they prefer a member of the opposite sex as a trainer and what exactly their motives and needs are. With five million Americans now employing personal trainers it is big business, but on the whole the profession is unregulated.
Personal training can also mean personal injury. Doctors in the UK have been reporting increased accidents, pulled muscles and in some cases raised blood pressure from the use of trainers.
Keeping fit means taking care of your heart in every sense. Before you get up too close and personal, check qualifications, references and watch your trainer at work with other people. They are after all selling a service… and you can always go for a walk while you think it over.
