Saturday 19 March 2011, midday
Celebrity Fitness, eX Mall
Last week I decided to get a personal trainer.
It's not easy to find a bossy trainer in Indonesia, especially given their friendly and obliging way with foreigners which works very well at Starbucks but less so as an exercise regime for fat cunts.
A colleague who goes to my gym recommended an experienced trainer, one who sits at the bossy end of the bell curve.
"Ask for Rusti ... you know, like Salman Rusti!"
Rusti speaks very little English. While he can count to 10, he tends to skip the 4 or the 8 (sometimes both) This was demonstrated during our first session as he walked me through my weights, so I started counting audibly in Indonesian to shift him back to his mother tongue.
Rusti is not used to working with foreigners. He rabbits on to me at 100 miles an hour in Indonesian, using serious eye contact and an intense look on his face. In the beginning I kept asking "please speak more slowly" in Indonesian but it had no impact. Rusti would simply respond with a curt nod of his head and continue at full speed.
I decided to just stare back at him, squinting intensely as I hunted for familiar English words like "bicep" or "cardio". I managed to picked out the word "fat" quite often, which is both disappointing and accurate.
During my first session I pretended that fat was the Indonesian word for handsome and would smile weakly at Rusti, like a tranquilized housewife.
Saturday was my second session with Rusti and his first at full pay. I chose to start at midday to ensure that I didn't drink too much the night before.
Nevertheless, I arrived unshaven and hungover at 12:05 and the look of disappointment on Rusti's face was palpable.
For the next 15 minutes I squinted diligently as Rusti delivered the bad news: I drink too much, there is no core body strength, too fat, not enough flexibility, I eat my dinner too late at night and my attitude is very bad and on that note it is not just my attitude that is bad but maybe my whole spirit. Rusti certainly seemed to have identified a few things for us to work on.
"I think we are going to get along". I thought to myself while cringeing.
The session was very painful to the body, but at least it killed the hangover.
Rusti decided to finish up with some kind of abdominal exercise. He asked me to balance on a large fit ball, kind of hugging it face down and keeping my body straight. Due to the language barrier I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I couldn't understand the instructions and it left me awkwardly wobbling as I tried to balance while guessing what he wanted me to do.
I tried various things like using my arms and contracting my stomach, much like a press-up or an upside down ab crunch. Rusti kept saying the word "tahan" with increasing frustration. I had no idea what this meant but worked out that he meant "lower, lower" - the movement which would cause the most pain. So I tried move my hips down to extend my back. This made him say the word more frequently, in an exacerbated tone "tahan Anton! tahan!" so I moved back into position until the tahans slowed.
Learning new exercises is hard enough in English with a new trainer because often they make no sense at first, and often feel wrong.
For my next attempt, I tried a crouching movement. I bent inwards at the hips while pushing down on the ball with my elbows. This elicited even more "tahan Anton! tahan!" and I hoped it meant "good boy", knowing it couldn't.
Eventually my muscles couldn't keep me there any longer and I just slid off the ball, inelegantly landing on my left shoulder.
Rusti made me go through this exercise 3 more times. On each occasion the word "tahan" defined his frustrated mantra while I tried all manner of contortions to reduce its frequency.
Finally, Rusti concluded that my core strength was appalling and it would need to be our focus for the next 2 weeks. At the end of the session I signed a form I didn't understand and we parted ways, each of us a little disappointed in me.
When I got back to my blackberry I immediately looked up the word "tahan" in the dictionary. It means "hold". Then I realised. All the time I was guessing up, then down, then bent, then straight, then twist, then whatever ... Rusty was simply telling me to stay the fuck still.
