Wax on, wax off

I had an interesting experience today. I was at my favorite day spa getting my eyebrows done (what--you think these babies wax themselves? Greatness takes effort.) by my favorite esthetician who happens to be the friendliest most bubbly person I have ever met (shout out to Sara C. and the rest of the Nilou Day Spa staff—woot!), when she made a comment that really struck me.

“You know, you and I essentially do really similar things. Our jobs are about making people feel good about them selves,” she says as she rips a wax strip away from my face.

I am proud to say I resisted the temptation to point out that both of our jobs also involve people paying us to inflict all manner of pains on various parts of their bodies. Instead, I left her a nice tip and walked back to my car considering the insights she had offered.

Day spas, nail and hair salons, massage parlors: we immediately connect these types of businesses with pleasure. We go into them wanting attention and walk out looking (but more importantly, feeling) better than when we walked in. This, too, should be the order of events for a workout with a personal trainer.

The notion that personal trainers are little more than glorified slave drivers bent on torturing their charges into a perfectly sculpted six pack with limbs is especially troubling to me because all too often it’s true. Watch any of the wide variety of reality shows centered around weight loss or fitness and you’ll see the stereotypical, hard bodied trainers doing stale, traditional exercises and screaming their faces off at their miserable clients. As far as we have come in the industry, there is still an unfortunate lingering of the “no pain, no gain” mentality. What is important to realize, is that not all personal trainers have this mentality anymore.

Think of the attitude of a trainer towards his or her clients as falling on a spectrum with ends labeled “torture” and “indulgence.” A good trainer will not only achieve a balance of the two (therefore falling in the middle of the spectrum), but will also maintain a strong enough relationship with his clients that he can move between the two extremes according to his client’s needs on any particular day. In short, a trainer should be able to adjust his approach to a workout at a moment’s notice in order to ensure his client leaves feeling absolutely the best he or she possibly can.

I wish there was a way for my esthetician to do this, but I don’t’ think there’s any feasible way to “indulge” a Jewish girl with a unibrow. Hey, torture or not, my eyebrows look amazing and I'm feeling pretty good. (Thanks Sara!)