I am always looking for new ways to stay in shape. I recently came across an article in the New York Times touting the new hot thing in personal training workouts. The new rage appears to be customized video and mp3 workouts you can download to your IPOD. The article was from 2006 but I frankly had not heard of this. My Ipod contains my own mix of songs soundly reflecting the fact that I am inescapably stuck in the 80’s.

Having moved into my 40’s with the inevitable slip into the “dark side” in the ability to stay in shape, I was just the gullible , desperate fool at the end of his rope these services were designed for. I am willing to try anything and everything to recapture that lost flat stomach that will never been seen again except in photos stored ironically on my Ipod. These Ipod workouts were designed for the guy that looks at his vacuum cleaner and sees “at home liposuction”. I guess that’s me because I clicked on one of the websites.

This company was offering for 29.95 a month audio and video personal training workouts from a world class “celebrity trainer” that you download to your video IPod or your mp3 player with sound only. Each workout is custom designed just for you. I can just imagine this celebrity trainer going through the questionnaire from Sally in Wichita Falls and recording his grunts and yells into a video or sound byte. ONE MORE REP SALLY! DO IT SALLY! YOU ARE ALMOST THERE! She may forget whether she is in the gym or the bedroom.

If you have video capability you can watch Mr. celebrity trainer make sneering, disapproving faces at you to further motivate you while you listen in your headphones while thinking you could have got that for free at home from your wife or husband without the 29.95 a month.

Research show that there are quite a few of these Ipod trainer companies sprouting up. This is such a goofy idea that these guys will probably make millions. They have invented the”Bowflex of the Ipod”. You will spend about month of listening to some guy you have never met and never will meet grunt and groan and encourage you as you clumsily hold your IPod screen up in front of you while you work out. You will spend a month listening to the same motivational spiel over and over. Your workout will then be archived to your computer as your Bowflex is to your garage never to be heard from again except at your next garage sale. You will also forget to cancel the membership for another 6 months so that’s another 180 bucks they get from you for mass creating a 40 minute workout that I would guess only changes variably for every person and is done by a computer program.

These guys are hoping you will focus on the knee-jerk response that 29.95 a month is better than paying 100 bucks or more a session for a personal trainer. They forget that the very reason personal trainers work is that they change it up, get in your face, come with a different personality every day sweat on you, piss you off , tell you who they are sleeping with, tell you how many girls in the gym they have dated. They tell you who everyone else in the gym is sleeping with. In addition to trainers, they are pimps, hairdressers and bartenders all rolled in to one and if they happen to get you in better shape that is an added bonus. Why would we want to replace them with a video celebrity that isn’t going to give you the Hollywood TMZ type gossip?

People get personal trainers to get in shape or stay in shape. People keep personal trainers because of everything else I just talked about. What classifies someone as a “celebrity trainer.”? Is there a certification for that? Do you pay more for for the video if they train people on the “A list” versus the “D List”? One man’s celebrity is another’s wannabe or has-been.

If they wants me to go for the celebrity trainer hook, they had better get Arnold Schwarzenegger involved. They would do better with “Celebrity Tanning”. When you step out of the booth, depending on your sexual preference, you have Jessica Alba or George Clooney on a video screen telling you how great you look. I would be more motivated in the gym by an iPod video of Jessica Alba saying “one more set and I’m yours tonight”. This would be more motivating than grunts of some generic fitness geek I never heard of.

It takes me back to my early days in Dallas when I had a roomie I was trying to help get in shape. I put him on the “fat pig” diet. Every morning before I left for work I would put a note on the refrigerator telling him he was a fat disgusting slob, and to get that pizza slice out of his mouth. It worked great! He lost 15 lbs in about a month. Then one night he stabbed me in my sleep. Maybe I should go for that celebrity trainer certification.

©2008 Brian Cuban