Are you bleeding? Are you broken? Are you dead? Notes from a bi-coastal gym rat.

Since the only example I had for teaching was the way I'd been taught, that was how I ran my classes. Quick warm up, moving to combinations on pads and bags, three minute rounds. Are you bleeding? Are you broken? Are you dead? No? Then why aren't you moving? Okay then! It was gas money, a free membership, and kind of fun twice a week.

Eventually, my skills expanded. I started taking was Cycle (or Spinning, depending on your gym's allegiance to Reebok or Schwinn). If you have no coordination, take Cycle classes. This is my wisdom to impart. All you have to do is pedal the bike, and your literally strapped into the clamps, so you have to try really hard to fall off. It's great!
Plus, I wasn't the person teaching, so I didn't have to think about a damned thing while I was in there.

Until, that is, the day that the Cycle instructor's car broke down as I was walking in & the girl at the front desk asked, "Hey, is there any chance you could sub in?" It's like anything else at any other job you could have - do it once, they figure you can do it all the time. After that class, I taught Cycle for three years, and to this day, I do not have a certification for it. Not because I'm not qualified, but because I never got around to plunking down the $350 for the piece of paper. oh yah. It costs to be an instructor. And that wasn't even a national cert. Pilates? Yoga? Minimum $1k for proper credentials.

Somehow, in the space of a year and a half, I'd gone from the girl that couldn't run a mile her senior year of high school to someone that could teach a Cycle class then walk to the next studio & teach a kickboxing class and not die. I learned that I could handle myself and teach other people to do the same - I even ended up doing a couple of seminars in self-defense & rape prevention techniques for several of the dorms at my college. I'm still not entirely sure how this happened, truth be told, but um, there I was.

Eventually, I ended up working part time behind the front desk. I learned sales, I learned management, I picked up on operations. No matter what you might think from the appearance, a gym is, at its heart, a business. It's a service oriented business, however, which allows for a good amount of fun in the meantime.

When you get down to it, the atmosphere in a gym is just that like that of any restaurant or bar, except you work out instead of eat. No, seriously. We have our people that sign up & come in once an eon, of course. Then you have those that, well, hang out there. These are people that come in every night not just for exercise, but because their friends are there as well. I can name at least one marriage and several couples that met one another at Amerisports. Some of the stories you'll hear are better than a soap opera, trust me. Entire families would belong to the same gym, and meet up there at the end of the day. One in particular was the Maloofs - two parents, three kids, and a lot of times the parents would leave messages for one another or their kids at the front desk so that someone would know to call home or pick up their younger brother because everyone that worked there knew them. My dog came to work with me & was the gym mascot for a while. When I moved cross country, there were members that found out I was leaving and showed up with going-away presents for me because "Who's going to make me show up for classes now?"

Then I moved. I left the mother ship.

::sniffle:: Bye Mother Ship!

Because I can bench press you, that's why.
(tips tricks for general gym survival)

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