Student Becomes Teacher

If you know me and Hannah, you know we love a hotel gym.

That’s why on Saturday morning, despite trying to sleep in, we found our way to the hotel gym for a quick workout before a day full of wedding activities.

This gym was small, as they usually are. There were a good set of dumbbells though, all the way to 50s. Standard for a hotel but also nice when they don’t tap out at 30 pound dumbbells.

We did some obligatory hip stretches and Hannah asked what she should do.

I landed on a hotel workout classic, a quick ladder. One to ten reps of goblet squats and push ups.

Hannah grabbed the 30 pound dumbbell and I (obviously) grabbed the 50. I watched her first squat of the workout and decided I would double the reps to make it harder for myself. I would go up by 2s ending the workout at 20 reps instead of 10.

As you can do with this style of workout, I came out too fast, and was gassed, quickly.

Soon Hannah flipped the script and went coach mode on me.

She finished her round of 6 and said, “I’ll do 6 push ups the rest of the way, my technique is breaking down and I don’t want to do too much.”

On the round of 7 (14 for me), she called out from across the small gym, “not the best push ups I’ve seen you do…”

She was right. They were sloppy. I was rushing. And I was hungry and regretting this morning workout.

I took a good break before the next round and broke my push ups into 4 sets of 4.

“I’m done!” I call out. “I need to quit. I bite off more than I can chew this morning.”

“Probably a good call,” my wife, now coach responds as she finished the workout at an appropriate pace.

That was the day my workout appetite was bigger than I could chew and Hannah was the wise coach in the hotel gym.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain