The Tormentor

I've been working out with Dawn the Tormentor fairly consistently for the last four years.  Look at her, over there on the right.  She looks dangerous, powerful, deadly -- right?

She's great, of course, despite her having tried to kill me approximately twice a week for four years.

I may be the only person who hired a trainer and then gained weight for two years. 
Dawn never gave up on me, though.  Even through those two years, she called upon me to ask things of my body that I thought were long past it.  She adjusted when my feet were killing me because of plantar fasciitis or when my hips or back were out or my neck had a pinched nerve.  She never let up on me, but she adjusted my workouts, went with the flow, thought of new things.  She pressed me to do more than I thought I could without ever making me do more than I should.

There were days when I left the gym after half an hour when I thought my legs had turned to jelly and would never support me.  Those days still happen. But they happen less often now.  Instead, I leave the gym with a different life and a different me --  with biceps and triceps I can feel, strength in my legs for bicycling, a lower resting pulse rate, and about 150 pounds less of me to go around.

And she continues to torment me.

Friends tell me that by referring to my beloved trainer as "Dawn the Tormentor" I'm allowing myself to continue to have a negative attitude toward exercise and working out. They say I'm letting my saboteurs have a field day.  I don't think so. 

I hope, as a coach, that I will be even half the Tormentor that Dawn is.  If I can work with people to hold them to their best, most magnificent self, even when they don't believe they've got it in them, even when they're ready to settle for less, if I can push them past their comfort zone into their growing edges, even if it makes them a little sore, then, just maybe, I'll be in Dawn's league.