The World's Worst Dancer

The World’s Worst Dancer

So, turns out it’s actually quite difficult to be a personal trainer, who knew? Well, all the personal trainers in the world, obviously, but quite frankly this course has been a bit of a shock. I consider myself to be a young(ish) lady of reasonable intelligence  - let’s not forget I won the English prize for form D in year 8, pipping 31 other people to the post – but the sheer volume of learning involved: different muscle types, insertion and origin points, what bone is attached to what muscle… has quite frankly rendered me in tears of despair. I thought you just had to look good and say in a positive tone of voice ‘come on, four more’ when it looked like someone was going to give up? No? Well, someone mis-sold me on this one. And quite frankly I’m blaming Billy Blanks (Tae Bo anyone?)

I had a training day on Saturday for taking physical measurements, with this guy who can best be described as the Gil Grissom of personal training. You know how Grissom always links everything back to the evidence? Well this guy just kept telling us to link everything back to the ‘data’. I never knew that personal training was so scientific, I feel like I’m doing some kind of advanced anatomy/ physics degree. On the plus side he measured my body fat and told me I had 0% body fat on my stomach (thank you CX WORX). On the down side he asked me how old I was and then said ‘so Sarah’s doing pretty well for her age’. Cue 21 year old students looking smug.

‘Sarah’s doing pretty well for her age’. Right.  So I’m not 109, I’m 31… As I said before, I think this still pretty young, no? As my friend told me at the weekend, ‘Men mature, women age’.  So that’s lovely.

In other news, I’m sure I used to be a pretty good dancer. The word ‘amazing’ has even been used on occasion – although admittedly not since Shaggy was last in the charts. And the Vod -Bull was flowing... My sister and I went to a Body Jam last last night and I realised that my brain can no longer compute a simple 3-2-1-stop foot shuffle. It’s even more devastating when I'm surrounded by people who attend my other classes and therefore are accustomed to seeing me at the front, looking like a shining example of precision. Or at least not falling over every few minutes,  bearing an uncanny resemblance to Ricky Gervais attempting to do Beyonce. My sister loved it – ‘you get to look like a d*** and nobody cares!’ Well, I never said I didn’t care…. The class was also full of straight white boys who picked everything up immediately – and managed to look funky doing it.

Yeah. Hate them.

Is anyone else Olympic-ed out? I’ve enjoyed bits (Gymnast’s arms)…. It’s been very useful for motivating my classes (‘who wants a body like Jessica Ennis? Well in that case get lower!!’) but after 2 weeks I think I’ve got the gist. Quite annoyingly the TV in our office is right over and behind my head, and my colleagues insist on having the Olympics on all day. This means that (a) I have a constant running commentary of something I can’t see going on behind my head all day and (b) everyone who comes into the office asks me how we’re doing and who’s winning whatever’s on TV, and generally tries to engage me in conversation about the screen. Er, hello! You can clearly see I have my back to the screen, ergo I CAN’T SEE WHAT’S GOING ON!

Capiche?

Overheard at the BBC

Office Gay eating a jam doughnut (again).

ME: Oooh, what does that face say?

OFFICE SARCASTIC:  That the Paralympics are missing a mascot.