“Just tuck the heart rate monitor under your sports bra. Just like that…good. Now I’m going to put the mask on. You let me know if it’s too tight.” I nodded as she slipped the rubber mask over my nose and mouth and adjusted the straps behind my head. “Ok, I’ll keep increasing the speed every minute. You let me know when it gets uncomfortable.”
When you’re running on a treadmill, with a rubber mask and hose on your face, things don’t become uncomfortable. They start out that way and proceed to get worse. Within, five minutes I was running flat out, sweating underneath my rubber muzzle and listening to the friendly blonde chat with my husband. To top off the indignity, they were chatting about me while I’m inches away with a hose running from my face.
I voluntarily submitted myself to all of it. Of course, I hadn’t known what exactly was in store when my husband and I were told we had to do a physical evaluation before starting our new gym. That’s right. Every new member goes through a complete physical evaluation that is kept on file and used by the trainers to develop your personal fitness routine. You can access it yourself from any of the gym’s computers if you’re feeling lazy and need to be reminded just what percentage of you is fat.
The morning after filling out our paperwork and paying our fees, we returned to the gym and were led to a small, flourescent lit room where we met Marisa, trainer and our physical evaluator. My husband graciously let me go first. (He probably knew I was hoping to memorize whatever he did and slack off on understanding Marisa’s Portuguese.)
The evaluation started with a series of questions. “Do you drink two liters of water a day?” (Does anybody?) “Do you smoke?” “What medical problems run in your family?” etc. Then, I took off my shoes and shirt, got weighed and measured. Marisa didn’t just take my height. She measured around my arms, legs, calves, waist, hips, ribs, everywhere. Muscles flexed and relaxed.
I knew this was serious data collection when the calipers came out. Nothing brings you down like watching all of your body fat get pinched and recorded. I also discovered that nothing gives you body issues like having your body evaluated. I had thought I was in pretty good shape but I began to doubt it with every notation Marisa made. The phrase ignorance is bliss flitted through my head more than once that morning.
When Marisa finished cataloguing my fat, she asked me to stand against the wall, centered in front of a grid painted on it. You know, similar to the one criminals stand in front of for mug shots. Like the criminals I got my picture taken, front, left side, right side, and back, but unlike traditional mug shots my pictures cut my head completely out of the shot. It was a mug shot of my butt. Wanted: my ass for being disproportionately large.
The exam finally ended with the aerobic test on the treadmill. The mask measured my oxygen output in relation to my heart rate. When I finished my husband went through the same process. I feel pretty strongly we should now be cleared for astronaut training.
Despite feeling slightly foolish while doing the tests, I am very glad I had the evaluation. True, I became acutely aware of the places my body likes to store fat, I know that I’m a healthy weight with a healthy lifestyle. Plus, isn’t knowing where the fat is stored the first step in getting rid of it? That’s the whole point, obviously, of doing the physical evaluation. The trainer knows exactly what areas you need to maintain and what you need to improve. A personal fitness plan.
Or at least that’s how I felt until I saw the mug shots.
Up next…
Part II: The Results
