Page 18 of Resistance Training
I am so jealous of every woman he’s had sex with and also so proud of him for everything he’s accomplished and also absolutely furious with him for being such a stubborn asshole but also sad that he’s changed so much.
But also I’m really mad that my knees almost buckled just from the nearness of him.
I hold my breath until he moves away from me.
He gestures for me to follow him across the back of the gym. “In addition to our private sessions,” he says, “I encourage you to take brisk walks for twenty minutes, two or three times a week only, and attend our classes twice a week on rest days. Have you ever taken a yoga class?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Why not?”
Fear of public queefing.“I don’t like carrying around a yoga mat, and I don’t want to use one that other people have used” is what I say out loud. “So I do yoga at home. To YouTube videos.”
“But you do work on your flexibility?” he asks, without looking at me. He’s narrowing his eyes at a guy who’s checking me out from the lat pull-down thingy. His jaw is so tense! The other guy notices Brad glaring at him and gives him a barely perceptibleGot it, dudenod and turns his attention elsewhere.
I enjoyed that tiny interaction very much.
Jeremy never projected that kind of possession or protection of me when we went out. He was too caught up in how we looked together. Brad and I spent most of our time alone together, but when we ventured out in Seattle he always walked on the street side of me and opened doors for me. We never talked about it, but I found it really sweet. Not one guy that I’ve dated has ever done the street-side alpha-male walk with me, I always noticed.
“Yes,” I reply. “I should have added flexibility as one of my strengths. So I’ve been told.”
Brad stops in his tracks and then gives me the side-eye before alpha-male-walking me to a private workout room.
It’s very satisfying.
The private room has the same kind of glass door as the others, but more of the door is frosted glass, for more privacy. Once again, I enjoy how not-weird it smells in here. And it doesn’t smell like Febreze either, which is a big plus. He adjuststhe lighting to make it brighter, but again, I like that it’s not the cool white LED lighting you’d expect. I feel alert, but not like I’m at the dentist. There’s no music playing, and that is a little awkward.
“You can hang your jacket and shoulder bag up on those hooks,” he says, nodding in the direction of the coat rack next to the door. “This will be a slightly shorter session, since you were late, so we’ll warm up for five minutes and then I’ll have you do three blocks of four sets with ten reps per set so I can assess your form, finish off with stretching. We’ll be doing upper, lower body, and core at each session. This will keep your muscle growth balanced and progressing consistently.”
“By lower body, you mean my butt?”
“I mean your glutes, yes. We’ll be hitting your gluteus medius, minimus, and maximus.”
“That sounds fun.”
“Not if you do it right.”
“What exercises do you do foryourbutt?”
He ignores that very serious question and stares down at my shoes. “Are those the only shoes you have for working out in?”
“No. I didn’t have time to go home today, and this was all they had at the downtown Target.” I sweep my hand down my torso and then up again, to accentuate my chest area. “Thanks for keeping it so cold in here, by the way.”
“Time to warm up,” he says. “Arm circles.” He does forward arm circles, facing me, five feet away. “You have cross-trainers at home?”
“I have running shoes.”
“You’ll want shoes with a stiff, sturdy base and a snug fit for strength training. That will help with alignment.”
“Wanna go shoe shopping with me?”
“Backward,” he says, circling his arms backward and not answering.
I know I don’t have to ask him if he remembers all the times I dragged him to the mall to go shoe shopping with me in high school. He was a good sport in the grumpiest way possible.
“High knees,” he says. Then he leads me through leg swings, butt kicks, walking lunges. He explains that we aren’t getting the heart rate up, we’re activating the right muscles to prepare them for movement patterns and to prevent injury.
“Great! Thanks, Brad.”
