Fitness at Home : Personal Coach Specializes in One-on-One Training Plans

SAN DIEGO —  Several years ago, Gayle Forster was getting sweaty in a gym. She was really pumping hard, doing push-ups, when a girlfriend popped the question.

“Gayle,” she said, “I thought that was supposed to build muscle in the waist. Is that why you’re doing it? Does it build muscle?”

“You know,” Forster said with a worried frown, “I don’t even know.”

Thus began a series of phone calls to Fitness Unlimited and its president, Doug Federman. What followed may mark a new frontier in the ever-changing world of fitness and health: an exercise house-call program.

For $15 to $50 an hour, Federman goes to people’s houses to “work them out.” He stands there. He sits there. He gets down on the floor and does push-ups there, with his oh-so-agreeable clients. He hardly breaks a sweat, but boy, do they work hard. They’d have to, to live in the kind of houses they have.

No Smelly Gyms

Most of Federman’s clients are affluent. Two interviewed by The Times live in elegant abodes, one in leafy Scripps Ranch, the other in Mission Hills. Federman comes in, and in the privacy of their own tax write-off, the clients get a strenuous hourlong workout that is strictly “one-on-one.”

They don’t have to drive to a smelly gym.

They don’t have to fight for space on a dizzying array of equipment that no one understands and few can explain.

They don’t have to look for instructors who seem to never materialize.

They don’t have to fight off hustlers in what some charge are not fitness centers but predatory “meat markets.”

This is what they like, they say, about the house-call approach.

Forster enlisted in Federman’s program, one of only a few in San Diego, mainly because she didn’t know, or didn’t understand, what she was doing or ought to be doing for the sake of getting that perfect bod.

“It was all very confusing,” she said, lifting 41-pound weights in a Mission Hills living room that looks more like a cover for Architectural Digest than a haven of body building. Forster is a commercial interior designer who spends much of her free time weightlifting. “I pulled a hamstring a couple of times,” she said, “when I didn’t warm up properly.”

Ah, but that was in a gym, which, Federman says, due to volume, offers only equipment, facilities and a chance to meet strangers.

“It can’t offer much more,” he said. “It just wouldn’t be possible.”

Avoiding Injury

Injuries, or how to avoid them, said Federman, a 27-year-old exercise guru, are one of the main reasons a one-on-one approach works better than Richard Simmons set to music.

“Novices get injured all the time,” Federman said. “People may be motivated, but they start out trying to do too much at once, and any number of things can happen. They get hurt--that’s the worst--or they get so darn sore they can’t move the next day, and suddenly, the motivation is gone.

“ ‘If exercise is this painful,’ they say to themselves, ‘it’s not for me.’ Well, it doesn’t have to be painful. I’m here to show it can be fun.”

Patty Gorman, 32, had a different reason for wanting the house-call approach. Hers wasn’t so much a need to be educated or how to avoid the gym scene. As the mother of two girls, ages 3 years and 6 months, Gorman was reluctant to leave the house. She had post-pregnancy body fat that, admittedly, flustered her more than others. Still, it was there. Something had to be done.

A call to Federman has Gorman working out (working in?) three times a week, in the comfort of her Scripps Ranch estate. On a recent afternoon, with her 3-year-old looking on, she pedaled a stationary bicycle (for cardiovascular work) and stretched through a series of floor exercises. “Trimnastics,” she called them. She heaved and hoed, huffed and puffed, flexed to improve flexibility and did lots of muscle toning.

Must Stay Home

Gorman used to run. A lot. She knows running mothers who manage to “feed their addiction” even with a baby.

“They run while pushing a stroller,” she said. “But with two kids in the house, I have no option to leave and go running. Two really limits you. Maybe you can pull off something bizarre like that with one, but anything done on a regular basis now has to be done in the home. This approach would not necessarily be my first choice, but with kids, it’s the only choice.”

Gorman, now on leave from teaching at Patrick Henry High School, gained 45 pounds with her first baby, 35 with her second.

“I felt extremely depressed,” she said. “I didn’t do any regular exercise during pregnancy. Maybe I should have. . . . I tried not to eat like a horse, but nothing seemed to matter. I looked really big.”

Federman understands the need of some women--many of his clients are women--to get back in shape after pregnancy.

“They can really get down on themselves,” he said. “Unnecessarily so.”

Having taken the initiative, many prefer the intimacy of home to the raucousness of a fitness club. Using this approach, Gorman has reduced body fat (her major goal) from 25% (a norm for women) to less than 21%. She would like to trim even more. She has learned from Federman and his wife, Linnea, (who aids in the house-call approach) the virtues of losing fat as opposed to weight. Both preach the virtues of the best-selling book “Fit or Fat.” It is, primarily, a paean to exercise as opposed to deprivation dieting.

Side Benefits

Federman agrees that the principal virtue of the one-on-one approach is psychological. A client is likely to feel more motivated with a caring instructor who isn’t splitting time with dozens of others. A person going to a gym, exercising incorrectly and not being counseled, is, he said, a candidate for quitting quick.

Gorman has learned more from the program than how to get back in shape after pregnancy. She has learned, she said, the value of educating children about healthy nutrition. Only rarely do her kids sample the indulgences that having a sweet tooth demands.

Forster’s motivation for a different style in keeping fit was born of a similar kind of frustration. She, too, felt trapped, not by children (she hasn’t any) but by the knowledge that she had no knowledge.

“My frustration level was so high, not knowing how to use the equipment--properly--that I had to do something,” she said. “That’s why I went to Doug. That’s been one of the main benefits of instruction.”

Forster values exercise as “an excellent release,” prizing not only the physical attributes but the better self-image and clearer thinking that follow almost inevitably. She also is a vegetarian who values the “spiritual high” that accompanies such a regimen.

In a sun-dappled living room, with sloped ceilings of raw cedar, Oriental rugs, tall plant, and an elegant hearth, Forster lay on the floor on her back, her feet propped up on a weightlifting bench. She put her hands behind her head, and using them only as a brace--her neck lifting her body off the floor--she engaged in a series of sit-ups done “the right way, the good way.”

“You get much more motivated doing it this way,” Gorman said, “talking directly to someone, rather than peering over someone’s shoulder in a noisy class.”

Matching Personalities

Federman, whose Fitness Unlimited employs exercise physiologists and nutritional consultants and computer analyses for the teensiest detail, kneels, sits or stands by his clients, urging them on.

“Very good,” he said to Forster. “All right, lookin’ good . . . Way to go! Really gettin’ better now.”

Federman’s attitude is as positive, and as charismatic as that of a game-show host. He gives off the feeling that anything is possible, no matter how jaundiced or jelly bellied you’ve become. Attitude, he said, is the biggest obstacle or inroad to an exercise worth doing.

With Federman standing only a few feet from Forster, his arms swaying like hers, his voice offering quiet, almost purring, support, an observer got the definite impression that, occasionally, this approach could get awkward.

Trust is a big component, he admitted, trust being a two-way deal. Given the private nature of the program, he interviews and screens clients beforehand. If someone rubs him the wrong way or he senses that the matching won’t work, he reserves the right to refuse service to anyone.

“You’re as loose as a Gumby!” he said smilingly to Forster. “Wide and smooth. All right--exhale! Right back up again . . . Goooooood!”

“This is really working,” Forster said. “I’ve been wanting to build my biceps up. People have always teased me about my broomstick arms. I got sick of it.”

Federman likes to work with people, and he plans to work with Forster roughly three times a week for six weeks to two months or more. As soon as he’s satisfied that they know what they’re doing and don’t need him anymore, he cuts them loose. Forster now goes to a gym and doesn’t find it intimidating or threatening. She can use the equipment correctly and spots dozens of others doing it incorrectly, as she did before.

Federman maintains 12 to 15 house-call clients at one time. Otherwise, he’s working with corporate fitness programs, such as those at GA Technologies, Genesis Corp. and the state Department of Forestry.

“Aside from the obvious convenience factor,” Gorman said, “there’s the confidence of knowing you’re doing it right, doing it well. You eliminate the value of exercise while doing it incorrectly. Besides, this way, it’s fun .”