Visualise the ‘commando’, from the Biggest Looser Club, Australian TV series, in looks. Only no tattoo’, so more what this 62 years old could relate to.  This man, at a guess, about thirty, maybe forty, tanned,  khaki shorts, singlet, short sleeve shirt, socks  and bush walking boots. What else would my commando, angel, be wearing?   He walked to the little bridge above where I was swimming, watched me exercising, and then began to guide me verbally by demonstrating the movement I needed to make to increase my fitness. He stood, up there on the bridge, moving his arms, to explain his description of the movements.   I looked at him and at a glance knew this man knew about fitness and exercise.

He was muscular without the excess bulk of the body builder and his attitude was helpful, not yobbo show off my strength style.  I could see his six-pack of chest muscles under his shirt. He was of tall stature and his arms and legs were pure muscle under tanned skin, and he had stopped on the little bridge over the area where I was swimming against the rapids to give me a personal training and motivational talk,  LOL, and I was loving it and taking it all in.

 He understood about injury, told me he was a mountain climber and cyclist and how it had taken two years to get his hands strong enough to support his weight so he could climb.  He spoke about bone density, talked a little light science, which has also, always interested me. He spoke of the effect of weightless in space on bones and how the density decreased (all this I knew), and how to rebuild bone strength through exercise, (right down my ally here, keep talking, I am thinking), I was glued to everything he said, and he was interested in me and my story of recovery.

I should add, this was not a pick up, the difference in our age and body attractiveness would make that rather clear, this man was genuinely interested in training and understood, injury recovery and I was learning so much. 

We spoke about running style and I told him of my little, “2 x 60 second, 2 x 45 second and 2 x 30 seconds bursts in a 30 minute walk”.  He said. ‘this was perfect’, it was about doing bursts of energy for as long as this was a reasonable exertion then to slow down and keep exercising at a steady pace till full recovery then to do another short burst of increased effort.  He said it would not matter if I never ran more than 1 minute or if I never ran more than the six bursts of energy, in one session it was more that I maintained the same amount of energy output and effort in those bursts.

He spoke about how when anyone is training for high intensity effort, (I start thinking of my friend Sharon training for marathons), he said there will always be injuries in this sort of preparation and training. He said you have to work with learning how to ease back when you injure yourself and know how much rest you need, to recover and to know that your fitness is increasing despite the injuries along the way. 

The main injury risk, he said, was in these elite sports, the intense training caused injury and that sometimes led to a degree of inactivity that then causes a loss of stamina and fitness and this was his interest and the field he was interested in perusing. 

In his own elite sports interest of maintain climbing, he had needed to learn about recovery from personal injury and as a result had gravitated to becoming  involved in helping others recover from injuries and prevent injury in others by showing them how to modify their training and performances, to prevent injuries in the first place.

Then he went to the steps and performed several exercises there,  explaining what he was doing and telling me what parts of the body they would help and  emphasizing how they helped build  bone density. Then he went to the little bridge rail and showed me press outs, which I told him I already did. Then he showed me a reverse form of the same exercise and one that involved a knee lunge. 

I told him that due to arthritic knees and old knee injuries, I had never been able to do knee lunges in the past, but I agree, it is time for me to try again.He then showed me squats, leg raises, and I told him I did these, with great difficulty on dry land, but I did them a lot, very easily in the water. I began doing exercises in the water where I draw my knees up under my chin then kick them out straight to show how I work my abdominal muscles while I work out in the water.  Then we both talked about jumping and I said I jump 50 times a day, he was pleased, he also knew this is helpful for bone density.  He understood a great deal about bone density.

He told me of how when he watches people running marathons, most are wasting too much energy on the upper body movement. I told him I had read how to run and the things I read said to take it easy and not swing your arms back and forth from the shoulders, but when I ran, that just seemed to happen.  He then showed me how; when I ran, I should thrust my leg forward from the thigh, and allow my upper body to just follow.

Then he showed me how I was probably leading with the action of my upper body (he was right), using too much upper body effort, and I was just allowing my legs to almost follow, the momentum built up from my swinging my shoulders from side to side.    So I learned a valuable, ‘how to run, technique’ that made sense. I recalled back when I had my tread mill, having read something similar on the Biggest Loser web site on ‘how to’ run, and how I had modified my fast walk, (back then I did not run), to a thrust the leg forward, using my thigh muscles , motion. 

Once he had left, I felt like I had just had a fantastic private fitness trainer of the very best standard. I went for a long swim, just relaxed and enjoying the wonderful pool and scenery and would you believe, his fitness talk had almost cleared the pool of those who like to sit around and talk, so I had almost an entire stream all to myself to swim back and forward in, a total feeling of peace.When I walked back up the steep hill,  I always think about how I make it up that very steep hill in one go now, where as two years ago, I had to stop to catch my breath and was thinking about needing a motorised buggy soon, due to the pain in my past injured and arthritic feet. I decided it was time for that, ‘short burst of intense activity’ and so I broke into a very fast, jog.

 I thrust my leg forward from the thigh stretch out the length of each stride, I didn’t time it, nor keep it up for long and slowed down as I became out of breath, thought about stopping to fully catch my breath, but then remembered, ‘no it’s a slow down to recover, not a come to a standstill’, so I kept on walking, recovered by the time I was at the top of the little rise and turned the corner to the level path to enter the camp grounds and had my cool off on the flat walk across the camp ground to our van.  

So today I had a wonderful gift  of a private lesson, motivation and encouragement from my very own mysterious, didn’t even think to ask his name,  hubba hubba looking,  personal trainer on the bridge above me, LOL, J.  Life is like that. Be ready to grab hold of any arm reaching out to give you a lift up and climb to your goalsJ, the information he generously shared with me will help me towards mine.

One more thing he showed me and told me was important.  He showed me how to do many of the exercises he did, with a little sideways twist.  I then began twisting as I was exercising in front of him in the water and saw he approved. He said many people forget to do that.  
I know where back injury is concerned, it’s those little sideways twists done when we are not warmed up, that can cause the greatest injury and so I now will make sure that I careful, and while warmed up, and not suddenly, include a wider range of movement for my body.I am VERY grateful and appreciative of everything that’s happened this week., My man, I love,  is well, I have wonderful supportive friends, in here, who are reading this right now, J, yes YOU, THANK YOU , J. and I had a gift of a personal training session, the best I have ever had. THANK YOU.

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