The Dreams of Shetland Ponies

I can’t move my arms. Really. I had to pop three Tylenol just to be able to type.

In a fit of madness, a few weeks ago I decided to hire a personal trainer. My buddy uses this trainer and my buddy is sleek and lithe, like a thoroughbred horse. I, on the other hand, resemble a Shetland pony.

Lockdown has made it entirely too easy to reach the refrigerator–and also entirely too easy to not exercise.

Before I turn into Jabba the Hut, I decide to do something.

The trainer greets me at the door. She is blond, she is perky and she is very pretty. I immediately distrust her.

Because of the pandemic, it is just the trainer and I in the room. When you’re torturing someone, it is probably best not to have witnesses.

“I think Pilates would be good for you,” she says at our first meeting.

Bring it on, I think. I’ve been doing yoga for 40 years, Pilates will be a piece of cake. We walk around the gym and she has me do a few stretches. I smugly show her how deeply I can bend and twist.

“Now I know what you can do,” the trainer says as I walk into the gym for the second visit. If she had a tail, she’d be twitching it like a cat about to pounce. My distrust mounts.

First of all, no one mentioned that Pilates uses contraptions. Large contraptions with springs and weights and probably pools of blood that they wipe away before the next victim arrives.

I am dripping sweat after the first minute.

They are called personal trainers because they know how to personally inflict the most pain.

“How are you doing?” she asks every few minutes. I would show her a thumbs up but I’m gripping the contraption for dear life. I smile like someone walking to the chopping blade.

“I’m going to really feel this tomorrow,” I tell her as I crawl off a contraption.

“Not tomorrow,” she says. For a moment, my hopes rise. “You’ll definitely feel it the day after.”

She’s right. I’m moaning before I even swing out of bed. I feel like King Kong picked me up, pummeled me and then smashed my poor twisted carcass on the ground.

For a moment, a thoroughbred physique seems the impossible dream. And realistically, it probably is.

But even Shetland ponies can dream.