Body by Rikers: Getting to Know My Trainer, The Ex- and Future Con (thepoliticker.observer)
Illustration by David Saracino.
A few months after I became a member of a cheap gym in Hell’s Kitchen, it
dawned on me I had visited the place only once—when I signed up. I needed
professional help. The trainer occupies an odd position in our lives: despite
often being someone you would have never met outside of the gym, he’s privy to
your tenderest intimacies and physical vulnerabilities. Like a parent or
spouse, he criticizes your smoking, drinking and eating habits, and you
actually feel guilty. You’re his boss, sort of, but he’s also yours. I’d long
thought of trainers as an indulgence of the well-to-do. Paying someone to
perfect my body seemed a sexy soupçon of vanity and sloth, as decadent as
having a private chef. Then again, I told myself, maybe my suffering would
lend the endeavor just enough wholesomeness to preserve my radicalism. Plus,
the first session was free. “Do you work out?” my taskmaster, Bashar, asked
me, 15 minutes into our introductory session, as I struggled to bench-press
the bar. Since I had not done anything more strenuous, for years, than bounce
along on the elliptical for the duration of a …
