News

When an out-of-shape lawyer reports for duty

David L. Yas, Esq.
Publisher/Editor-in-Chief
© 2005 Lawyers Weekly Inc., All Rights Reserved.

When you think about it, we'll try anything to talk ourselves into exercising.

There's a stroller that allows me to run while I push my oblivious infant child? Great! There's this new exercise regimen called "spinning" where you toil on a stationary bike while someone with a microphone screams at you? Perfect!

So that's my excuse as to why I could be found recently doing a crabwalk up a hill on Boston Common with a misting rain covering my fogged glasses as a serious-looking woman beckoned me upward.

This new fitness fad is called "Boot Camp." Basically, it consists of a semi-sadistic personal trainer putting victims through vigorous calisthenics for an hour or so of wheezing, gasping and aching. Good times!

This summer, through the urging of my co-worker Lynne (who was determined to punish her body until she could fit into her wedding dress), a bunch of us at Lawyers Weekly were recruited for this six-week ordeal. Our bodies were all in varying degrees of disrepair. Not a hardbody among us.

Our trainer was a woman named Brandi Dion of B&S Fitness. Yes, Brandi Dion. By her name alone, you'd think she was a member of Destiny's Child or something. But Brandi is a serious individual. She would show up at the start of each session, calmly place some cones around and begin directing us through an hour of mild torture.

Boot camp sounded simple. Just twice a week. Just an hour for each workout. No equipment fancier than a few cones and jumpropes.

Simple it wasn't. It became a test of will. Have you ever tried sprinting up and down a hill three times and then doing 20 rapid-fire abdominal crunches? It was during this drill that I wondered whether my stomach muscles might abandon my body in an act of mutiny.

Did you know that there are several different ways to do push-ups, each more grueling than the last? Did you know that if you hold your body in that upright push-up position for a minute or so that it really hurts? I had several moments of introspection when I collapsed on the grass after a push-up session, cherishing each brief second of rest and ignoring the undeniable truth: that I was exhaustedly sinking my nose into a patch of grass that, odds are, was a dog's spot of relief at some point in the recent past.

Then there were the moments of sheer pain. For example, after completing a drill that involved an unholy combination of jogging, sprinting (forward and backward) and push-ups, many of us were too wrecked to even speak. One guy in our group retired behind a tree to misplace his lunch (giving new meaning to Boot Camp).

Strangely, many of us grew addicted to Boot Camp. We compared aches. We invented names for the hellish drills we had survived. We annoyed our co-workers by talking about Boot Camp all the time.

And somewhere along the line, I began recruiting other lawyers for Boot Camp. Some attorneys just guffawed. "No thanks. Much as I'd like to put my body through hell, I have to go to a cocktail party and eat a bunch of cheese. Good luck."

But one day, two trusts-and-estate lawyers named Charles and Chris joined us on the battlefield. Halfway through a death-defying drill where one person (intentionally) impedes another's sprint by holding them back with a giant elastic band, Chuck dropped to his knees in a confused state of athletic agony. "You guys go ahead without me," he muttered. After several minutes of laying prone and dazed like a fallen prizefighter, Chuck re-joined the group, lamenting "I'm supposed to run a marathon in two months. What the heck."

Our beloved Brandi does not have the market cornered on Boot Camp. In fact, an attorney named Charla McMillian runs a program called "Fitboot" that also runs six weeks, but occurs every weekday morning for 45 minutes. McMillian may indeed be the only woman in America who can say she was her law school's graduation speaker and has served in the Marine Corps. Now there's a driven woman.

After graduating Boot Camp, myself and the other brave souls who had lasted (there were several drop-outs) were honored by Brandi with a slideshow, T-shirts and some well-deserved fattening desserts. Many of us, noticing that our bodies and well-being were actually inching toward respectability, even signed up for a second session.