NAked Warrior - ZANDERBILT

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I R O N E S S A Y S WHAT NOT TO DO HOW NOT TO TRAIN Fitness-Themed Reality TV Strikes Out Whenever I think fitness-themed reality TV cannot possibly sink lower or become any lamer, I am proven wrong. Who would have thought the sheer cruelty of the “Biggest Loser” or the idiocy of “Celebrity Fit Club” could possibly be topped? Yet now we are presented with a new contender for the frivolity title: Workout! (On Bravo, Tuesday night at 9 pm EST) The show’s protagonist, Jackie, claims to possess a 3% body fat percentile. She doesn’t come close: try 13%. She professes to have “97% Attitude” (chutzpah) and trust me she doesn’t. She is a gawky, giraffe-limbed woman with a muscleless, albeit lean, physique. In one ad she perches spider-like atop a man doing a pushup. At the end of the TV ad she strides boldly towards the camera, flings her arms wide while wearing a skintight outfit as if to say “HEY! TAKE A LOOK AT THIS! WILL YA!” The weird part is there is no “there” there. This 39 year old couldn’t take 12th place in the easiest class of any local female bodybuilding competition held at the local high school in the gym auditorium. Mysteriously, Jackie is a fitness superstar; unfathomably successful, she is the in-your-face Queen of Mean. She lives in a million dollar home and works her “magic” at a trendy Hollywood muscle emporium called Skysport & Spa. Jackie preposterously portrays herself and her modest gym as “The finest fitness facility in the city staffed with the top fitness trainers in LA.” Her fitness pronouncements, profoundly arrogant and at the same time aggressive and challenging in tone and timbre, roll off her tongue with astonishing ease. Her claims have no basis in reality and one is left wondering if perhaps she is afflicted with some deep-seated delusional psychosis. One would also hope she was being purposefully outrageous in the same way a highly paid professional wrestler rants into the microphone during a Smack Down interview. One gets the strong impression that Jackie actually believes her bravado and rootless claims. In the through-the-looking-glass world of commercial fitness, a parallel universe exists For complete information on Marty Gallagher’s The Purposeful Primitive, or to purchase the physical book, visit http://www.dragondoor.com/b37.html now 64
65 T H E P U R P O S E F U L P R I M I T I V E wherein glitz, flash, fast footwork, fluff and filler are easily and repeatedly mistaken for substantive, tangible, measurable results. But I put too somber a point on this unintentionally humorous show. Workout! is sublimely funny, a regular fitness Fawlty Towers with Jackie as Basil Fawlty. The Skysport Spa resembles any weight room in any local-yokel racquet and health club found anywhere across the United States. Nothing special. Neanderthal powerlifters (of whom, in the interest of full disclosure, I admit to being a tribal member) would call Skysport a “Fern Spa.” Unimaginable, unintentional, laugh-out-loud lows are repeatedly achieved by Jackie and her squad of sycophant minions. Antics abound as Jackie and her touchy-feely trainers interact with the dazed-and-confused clientele…there is the girlfriend who bites and leaves marks, the eternal after-hour booze consumption, the limos, the never-ending litany of pompous platitudes and fuzzy fitness philosophies screamed with a harshness reminiscent of a Stalinist-era political commissar; it all combines to create unintentional slap-stick of the highest order. To put a finer point on it, clients are under-trained in the weight room with ineffectual soft-ball routines; then over-trained in cardio with mindless ‘boot camp’ enduros. All clients are then starved to within an inch of dying. I had thought the Nazi prison guard female trainer on The Biggest Loser was the benchmark for incompetent sadists masquerading as competent personal trainers. Jackie makes a determined run for the arrogant ignoramus title. What can you say about a woman so obviously ignorant yet incongruously successful? As Oscar Wilde once quipped, “She speaks with the easy assurance of the blissfully ignorant.” The setting is Beverly Hills; specifically a private training studio perched atop a 12 story office building. High jinks ensue. Jackie continually refers to her squad of adolescent-acting sycophant trainers as “the best personal trainers in Los Angles.” Again, this is mystifying: none of the group appears to have any muscle whatsoever nor are any of them particularly lean. Jackie’s muscle manifesto consists of mindlessly beating the piss out of any client unfortunate enough to cross her path. Her motto should be, “Do as I say not as I do.” Don’t hold your breath waiting to see her participate in the mindless boot camp exercise sequences she loves to dish out. “I’m going to break them down. I am going to see who really want this!” Wants what Jackie? She periodically intones profound asides to the camera while in the background an obese woman cries and writhes in pain. She never ever joins in any of the pain-train exercise routines she dishes out. She barks fitness platitudes interspersed with ridiculous exhortations. Her stated goal is to “run them until they fall down or throw up.” How easy is that? I could have Reilly, a 5 year old neighborhood kid, sit on his little plastic yellow chair and put adults through the most grueling “Mother-May-I” boot camp imaginable: “Mother says For complete information on Marty Gallagher’s The Purposeful Primitive, or to purchase the physical book, visit http://www.dragondoor.com/b37.html now
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NAked Warrior - ZANDERBILT

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