I wrote the following story for The News & Observer and Charlotte Observer. It appeared in both papers on Dec. 11, 2012. It appears here, with links.

You know you need to get in shape. In fact, you’ve known it for a while.

Maybe it’s time you bit the bullet and asked for help. Maybe it’s time you sought out the services of a personal trainer.

“If you’re in need of a personal trainer, it’s probably because permanent changes are overdue and need to start happening immediately,” says Taylor Carpenter, with TaylorCarpenter Personal Training in Charlotte.

A personal trainer can fill several vital roles – tailoring a workout regimen to your needs, making sure your form and technique are good. Perhaps the biggest advantage: a personal trainer provides: accountability.

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Certifications

Here’s a rundown of some of the more common personal trainer certifications and what they require.

Here’s a quick guide to some of the more prominent personal trainer certifications, including format of courses and recertification requirements.

• American Council on Exercise (ACE). Nonprofit, online and live workshops, recertification required every two years with 20 hours of credits.

• American College on Sports Medicine (ACSM). Nonprofit, online and live workshops, recertification required every three years with 45 hours of credits.

• National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM). For-profit, online and live workshops, recertification required every two years with 20 hours of credits.

• National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA). Nonprofit, self-study through workbooks and CDs, recertification requirements vary.

• Aerobics and Fitness Association of America (AFAA). For-profit, online and life workshops, recertification required every two years with 15 hours of credit.

• American Fitness Professionals & Associates (AFPA). For-profit, online study, recertification required every two years with 16 hours.

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Izzy Mandlebaum?

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Take a group class. I can go to the gym, exercise for an hour my own and feel like I’ve gotten a good workout. Or, I can take an hour-long class and emerge grateful I can still move. Prime example: I’ve become a bit of a weather wimp as the years advance and am less enthusiastic about riding by bike in 20-degree weather. So I started taking what my gym, Lifestyle Family Fitness, calls an RPM class, what other gyms might call a spin class or group cycling. The first class I wasn’t sure I’d last through the first of five tracks. Out-of-the-saddle, climb a hill! Out-of-the-saddle, climb a mountain! Stay-in-the-saddle, climb mountain! Sprint! More gear! Attack! Nothing lasts more than 30 seconds, it’s constant change. And it is a great workout. After three weeks I ventured out on a ride and was surprised by how much stronger I was. That wouldn’t have happened riding an exercise bike while reading “Outside.”

Get a personal trainer. Same thing. I can go to the gym, play around for an hour on the weight machines, leave feeling sore and thinking I’ve done my job. Or, I can explain my fitness goals to a personal trainer, have him devise a training schedule for me, then have him run me through it once or twice a week. My wife and I hired a trainer who devised personalized routines for us based on our individual goals. After our first workout I was beat, the next morning I was sore in the oddest places. Ditto our second workout. And it doesn’t matter whether I’m working out with my PT or on my own, the results are the same. He’s created a series of varied workouts that each torment my body differently. Again, a much different experience than me going to the weight room and noodling on my own. That said, it’s important to find a PT that works for you. A tip or two from Consumer Search (a division of About.com, which is owned by The New York Times). Recognize that this is a business transaction. Find out up front how much it’s going to cost and what you’ll be getting for your money. And if you’re contemplating a PT from your gym, scope out the available PTs to see how they work. Watch how they interact with their clients. Does their approach work for you? Remember you’re paying this person to help you get into shape, not to hear his/her stories of glories past.

More later in the month.

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Rowing the Atlantic seems a ridiculously over-the-top, Survivoresque thing to do, a true product of our obsessive society. Yet the first crossing occurred more than 110 years ago. On June 6, 1896, Frank Samuelsen and George Harbo left Manhattan and rowed (and rowed and rowed) for 55 days and 3,250 miles before landing on the Isles of Scilly (about 45 miles off the coast of England; they kept rowing, to France). The first solo row was in 1969 by Britain’s John Fairfax. Since then there have been multiple crossings, although the number of people to have rowed across the Atlantic is still said to be fewer than the number of people shot into space, fewer than then number who have stepped foot atop Mount Everest.

Nutty as the idea seemed before today, the thought of rowing for 55 days — 55 days and 13 hours, or nearly 80,000 minutes, to be exact — seemed nutty with sprinkles after today’s inaugural row, which lasted 16 minutes and 50 seconds. (Backcountry.com’s The Goat suggests the litmus test for whether you’ve got the right stuff to row the Atlantic is to spend 16 hours on a rowing machine. If you’re just getting warmed up, send in your resume.) But I’m assuming that would be 16 hours without Kelby at your side.

Kelby is my recently signed-on personal trainer. He is why I can barely lift my arms right now to type, why getting up from the desk for coffee seems an ambitious task. He’s also the reason I won’t be sending in my application to row the Atlantic.

As I discovered with my running coach, you hire a personal trainer to make you do things you wouldn’t do on your own. Like balance atop an upside down Bosu ball and play catch with a medicine ball. Or do pushups with your arms constantly changing and unstable positions. Or do lunges the length of the gym carrying weights. And after doing all that, put in 5,000 meters on the rowing machine. And not 5,000 leisurely Victorian paddle in your Sunday finest. 5,000 meters of peppy intervals.

“OK,” Kelby began, “you want to get this number around 25.” He was pointing to a small digital readout at the front of the machine, and the number he wanted at 25 now vacillated between 30 and 34. It was my strokes per minute, and it indicated that while I may have been enjoying myself on the pond, I was not getting much of a workout. I pushed and pulled it up a notch.

After a thousand meters our attention turned to another number. This number currently fluctuated between 2:35 and 2:45. It represented my speed, though the rising pounding in my ears prevented me from hearing exactly how. “We’re going to do intervals,” Kelby said, “and I want you to get this number down to 2:00.”

The first interval was 30 seconds; after 27 seconds of cranking it up, I finally got it down to 2:00. “A little faster next time,” Kelby said. After a 500 meter recovery, I got it down to 2:00 after 15 seconds. I’ll get it within five seconds the next time, I swore to my sweaty self.

“Now, we’ll go for a minute,” Kelby said. And after two, minute-long intervals he upped it to a minute and a half, although he forgot to check his watch and “we” ended up going a minute forty-five. After topping out — or was it bottoming out? — at 1:55 I was ready to coast into a slip. “Warm down,” Kelby instructed, and with that he talked for another five minutes about the workout while I continued warming — and wearing — down.

I hadn’t doubted that the rowing machine would be a good workout, a good full-body workout (see below). I was surprised, though, that I was spent after just 16 minutes and 50 seconds. I love a good, efficient, compact workout; I’ll be back on the rowing machine.

I’ll leave the Atlantic to the Katie Spotzes of the world.

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Benefits of rowing

• Low-impact
• Works a variety of muscle groups, if done properly: thighs, stomach, hips and torso, chest, shoulders, back of the upper arms, forearms and shoulders. chest, forearms and calf muscles
• Good cardio
• Burns calories. In my 16 minute, 50 second workout, I burned 189 calories. A 170-pound person rowing “vigorously” for 30 minutes would burn 345 calories.
• Common equipment in most gyms
• Which is good, because you should expect to spend a minimum of $300 for an OK machine, upwards of $1,000 for a sturdy model.

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Right, I gasped to myself. And you can pick up my lung when I cough it up.

It was my first “coached” running workout and a whirlwind of thoughts rushed through my oxygen-deprived brain as I did the third of my four prescribed 600-meter sprints (bookended by a pair of 1,000-meter dashes). Will I be seeing that tuna wrap I had for lunch again? was foremost. Why am I doing this? was a close second. By “this,” I meant hiring, at age 54, a coach to drive me, push me and to make my body feel like it hadn’t since I’d last crossed paths with a coach in high school some 35 years ago.

Quick background: Back in my 20s, I ran — a lot. Mostly 10Ks, about 30-35 miles a week. When I turned 30 my back and knees simultaneously quit; I turned to swimming, cycling and other less-pounding pursuits. Then, last fall, the bug to run, which had never entirely disappeared, surfaced when I started reading about where running was headed. Out were the days of long, meaningless training runs intended solely to rack up miles. Today, the smart runner runs less but makes every mile count. Less emphasis on long pounding runs, more on interval training. I was also inspired — as have been countless others — by “Born to Run,” which, among other things, repudiates the heel-strike movement of the ‘70s in favor of a running stride emphasizing a forefoot strike.

I enrolled in the Fit-tastic walk-to-run training program, which promises to take non-runners and make them capable of running a 5K in 12 weeks. My plan: Prove to myself that I can still run a 5k, then go back to cycling. After three months of training I figured my knees and back would renew their protest and force me back into less impact-insistent activities. Three months of knee and back cooperation, that was all I asked for. Then they could protest all they wanted.

Oddly, that didn’t happen.

In fact, I regained my dormant running form and did pretty well in my 5K return, finishing third in my age group in my first race. I kept running through the winter, upping my mileage. In April, I did a 12-mile trail race. Inspired, I enrolled in the Fast Coaching half marathon training program over the summer. On Labor Day weekend I exceeded my expectations, running the Virginia Beach Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon in 1:45. I was happy, my knees and back were happy. What next? I thought.

The Second Empire Grand Prix 2010 Fall Series, it turned out. The series is a collection of eight races, ranging from the mile-long Magnificent Mile to the Anna’s Angels 10-miler. Most of the races, though, are 5ks, which set up the obvious scenario of trying to improve with each successive race. That meant doing a lot of the “smart” training, with long runs interspersed with intervals, that I’d been reading about. And that planted the seed of hiring Coach Tim.

Back in the ‘80s, Tim Clark was a competitive runner. He’d nearly broken the 15-minute barrier in the 5k, did 31 minutes and change in the 10K. Tim knew about effective training, and what he knew he’d been passing along to others for the last 15 years. (Tim had coached our Fit-tastic group.) And because Tim had been a competitive runner, he knew what it took to meet a goal: someone riding your butt, indifferent to the fact you were beet red, out of breath and about to come un-wrapped.

Coaching adults, even ones who are paying you, is no easy task. First and foremost, they are adults. They take grief daily on the job; they aren’t up for more, well intended as it may be, come playtime. The trick, then, is to be encouraging and demanding without coming off like a high school football coach. You don’t handle a sulking adult who balks at doing that last 400-meter interval by getting in their grill and questioning their manhood. Rather, you do what you would do with a challenging employee: you gently tell them they’re doing good, then throw in the “but” — “but you need to do better.” Especially if they hope to achieve this dubious goal of being 18 again.

At first, I wasn’t entirely sure why I’d hired Tim. Because everyone is doing it? (The American College of Sports Medicine says taking on a personal trainer/coach is one of the top 10 fitness trends for 2011.) I didn’t have long to mull it over; the first question Tim asked was, “What’s your goal? What are we shooting for here?” So I made one up on the spot: I want to break 21 minutes in a 5K. Tim created a workout routine aimed at helping me do just that. And that’s when I realized how Coach Tim differed from Coach Lucifer back at Gateway High: When you’re in high school, the coach gets you to do what he wants you to do. When you’re an adult, a coach helps you achieve what you want to do. Therein lies the danger of hiring a personal coach:

Be careful what you ask for — a coach will make you work for it.

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