Page 52 of Muscle Cub

The woman who’d been assisting Austin with setting up the stations rotated through each of the exercises, slowly performing the movements as he explained them. He talked us through the proper form, the goal of each exercise, what muscle groups it was intended to isolate, what not to do, pitfalls to look out for… He also suggested alternate movements for anyone with medical limitations without calling out anyone in particular.

In most of the fitness classes I’d ever been to, or with videos I’d tried following online, I usually flailed around for a bit, spending too much time and energy trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

I appreciated how much detail Austin shared. He was evidently incredibly knowledgeable, not only about the content but also about how to teach it. He’d clearly been professionally trained, but as with any subject, he had a passion that couldn’t be taught.

I often felt guilty that I didn’t have more passion for teaching. I had a love for literature. I enjoyed reading, writing, and discussing books. It was easy to see why my parents and teachers had always told me I’d make a good professor. For a lot of writers, teaching was something you did to pay the bills. It was the expected career path, the only one anyone in graduate school ever talked about.

Most authors didn’t make a living from book sales, and almost none of us had a bestseller right out of the gate.

I’d never expected that. I’d been prepared for the opposite to happen—to languish for years producing work that would go unnoticed and would make a few months’ worth of income compared to my teaching salary if I were lucky.

So I hadn’t been surprised when lightning hadn’t struck a second time. I’d tried not to let anyone see how disappointed and embarrassed I was by my second book’s performance, and I’d simply gone on teaching.

I’d gone on enduring it.

Austin was not enduring this class. He was living for it.

He was a natural coach.

I’d been in boot-camp-style classes before, where some action-figure lookalike yelled at everyone like we were in some kind of basic-training hell.

Austin may have bellowed with the volume and the energy of a drill sergeant—and he definitely made suggestions to a few people to improve certain aspects of their form—but as I listened to him calling out individuals, I noticed something telling about him.

The content of his yelling was mostly encouragement: “Killer intensity, Mary Beth! Way to get after it, Xena! You got this, Scout Master!”

For a substitute, he sure knew a lot of people’s nicknames. I had to wonder if he might be making them up on the fly.

I hoped he wouldn’t single me out, but when he finally did, it was positive. “That’s a real nice deep squat, Prof. You’re making it look easy!”

I was surprised by how much his praise affected me. If my face hadn’t already been so flushed from exertion, he might have seen my blush.

I went from just wanting to survive—to endure this—to wanting to impress him.

Even still, when Austin blew his whistle, I was damn glad it was over.

I’d done it. I hadn’t crapped out, I hadn’t let him down, and I hadn’t made a fool of myself.

“Okay, that was round one, guys,” Austin said, applauding us. “Three more rounds to go.”

Wait. What?

In response to this bombshell, some people whooped and others clapped. I groaned.

Austin flashed a wicked smile. “The actors on the show do this every day, y’all. Imagine how freaking ripped you’d be, right?”

What the actual fuck?

There was no way in hell I was going to make it through a second round. But then, I thought the same during the one-minute break—that felt like five seconds—before the third round started.

Through some miracle of time or the haze of endorphins, that round ended too.

I kinda felt… capable.

I kinda felt strong.

And by the halfway point of the fourth round, I thought, Maybe I can do this. The repetition of the exercises had cured a lot of my initial awkwardness. I knew what to expect. I could anticipate and steel myself. I knew where I might falter, how many reps I’d managed before, where to dig in, when to access that extra strength that came from my will—from my soul—not from my body.

Ben didn’t seem to be faring much better than I was. Sure, as far as the weights were concerned, he had the physical strength from his years of construction work, but the real challenge was the cardio aspect.