If you were to ask one of my friends to describe how I spend the majority of my evenings, the description you’d get would probably be that of a befuddled fop sipping tea in the tub, re-reading Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, muttering phrases like the following in a faux British accent: “Oh, dear me, Sebastian has fled to Morocco! I dearly hope he doesn’t ruin himself with drink!”
In other words, I’m not usually considered a very intense person. As I finish the fourth week of my exercise campaign with Evolution Fitness, I find myself thinking more and more about something my trainer Sam said: “All of these exercises are good, but if you don’t have intensity when you come work out, your results won’t be that great.”
My friends are right to a degree — I do enjoy a good bath, and I’ve read all the better works of Evelyn Waugh — but I can be intense. It’s intensity that got me through school and allows me to churn out so many articles and helped me quit drinking three years ago. When I set my mind on something, I become very intense. At those times, it hardly matters that Sebastian has fled to Morocco — I need to get to the gym, goddammit! It’s paying off, too, because I’ve lost 10 pounds. That’s a little more than two pounds each week.
Evolution Fitness is a small gym, but unlike some larger gyms where folks mill around cluelessly, people seem to go to Evolution when they’re serious about getting into shape. Everyone’s on some kind of intense, tailored, trainer-monitored program.
Sam seems satisfied with my progress, but it irks him that I rarely call exercises by their proper names. To me, every exercise is a “thingy.” It’s silly of me, given that most of the exercises have names that pretty much write themselves. For example, a squat-curl-press is simply that: you squat, then curl, then press. I’m considering inventing an exercise called the “T-rex” just to piss Sam off.
For more information about Evolution Fitness and its team of experts, visit personaltrainerstoronto.com.
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