Ball bearings.

I’ve had some (concerned) inquiries about the continuing saga of Leah the Fitness Nazi, and my interesting combination of sadomasochistic and homicidal gymnastic tendencies.

Leah herself is just fine, I’m sure you’re relieved to hear, and has not been entered into the Fitness Protection Program as of yet. Partly contributing to my softening feelings toward her is the fact that over the last month, my workouts seem to be a little less suicidal than when they first began. They haven’t gotten easier (in fact, they’ve gotten progressively more advanced), but my body has grown more accustomed to its new routine, and I’m quite a bit stronger. While I’m still pushing myself to exhausting limits, the next day I no longer feel as though I wandered into an Iron Maiden that was two sizes too small. I daresay that I look forward to my workouts while I’m sitting behind my desk at work, and days that I can’t get to the gym make me a little stir-crazy.

So you could say that my new fitness routine is starting to agree with me. I don’t know if having a personal trainer is absolutely essential to such a drastic lifestyle change, but I do know that it somehow causes some part of your brain to regress in such a way that you always want to please your trainer, like a puppy. It’s a little embarrassing how pleased I felt when I was able to tell Leah that I had increased some of the weights on my own when I felt they were getting too easy. That good feeling dissipated a bit when she looked at me and smiled as if she were mentally patting me on the head while plotting new ways to bring me to my knees in pain, since the weights clearly weren’t accomplishing that anymore. I practically saw the moment when her pupils turned into little exercise balls and a light bulb appeared over her head.

Exercise balls are really an all-over workout. They can be used for any number of “looks easy, doesn’t it?” exercises, with the added benefit of keeping you so distracted at the thought of losing your precarious balance that you spend your entire set imagining a Rube Goldberg-esque chain of events that starts with the ball suddenly flying out from under your weight and sailing toward a display of Power Bars and ends with several broken windows and a really pissed off Spinning class.

Leah had me spend some quality time with one of those balls today. The exercise involved a sort of push-up with my hands on the ball, and my feet out behind me. I thought this was fine. She asked me to keep the ball out in front of me, rather than directly beneath my shoulders. I thought this was a nice challenge. She asked me to make sure and keep my hands (and weight) on the top of the ball, rather than angled toward the front. I thought this might be harder than I anticipated. She asked me to raise one leg off the ground while doing it. I thought I heard angels crying. She asked me to do three sets of ten of these. I became suddenly positive about the angels, and I think I may have actually seen one or two.

I saw this really terrible horror movie once where a basketball would roll into a room all by itself, accompanied by ominous music, and when it had cornered a person up against a wall, it would be hurled with unseen hands toward the person’s head, smashing it like a pumpkin on Halloween. I’m pretty sure that role was originally written for an exercise ball, but the exercise ball had a better agent.

So yeah, I hurt again tonight, but I’m comforted by the fact that today marked my almost-one-month anniversary with Leah. She took my measurements again, and smilingly informed me that I’m losing inches all over the damned place, and that I had lowered my Body Fat Index by four percentage points. “You should put this on your fridge,” she said as she handed me the printout. I wondered briefly if any of her clients ever actually hit her, and then scolded myself for thinking such thoughts, mostly because I’m pretty sure she can read minds.

What I’m most pleased about, however, is the knowledge that I’ve moved up a little on the ass-kickage pyramid. I’m stronger than I give myself credit for, and feeling stronger every day. I’m a long way from being able to take Leah in a fight, but I’m pretty sure I can handle that chick on Treadmill #5 who always wears those ridiculously long, dangly earrings during her workout, because she apparently got distracted on the way to her cotillion.

I would love to see what Leah could do with that girl.