Juice - Eric Walters [9]
At that instant he lowered the bar into the cradle. He sat up, saw me and smiled. There were a couple of big, angry-looking zits on his face.
“Good morning. You have to be Michael,” he said.
“Yeah, I am. How did you know?”
“Coach Barnes told me that he thought you’d be the first one here.”
He stood up. I was surprised. He was really built, but he was short. I was a full head taller than he was. Somehow, when he was sitting on the bench, his muscles all big and bulging, I thought he was taller.
“I’m Tony,” he said, offering me his hand. We shook. His grip was strong and powerful. “I’m the strength coach.”
“We have a strength coach?”
“You do for the summer. I’ve been hired to create and monitor an individual program for every member of the team.”
“You’ll tell us what weights we should use?” I asked.
“What weights, what machines, how many reps, how often and in what order. But I’ll be doing a lot more than that. I’ll be looking at your diet, vitamins and food supplements.”
“That’s great. I was just telling my mother this morning that I needed some vitamins.”
“You do, but tell her to save her money. We’ll supply everything.”
“Everything?” I asked in amazement.
“Everything except for the most important thing, and that you have to supply.” He tapped me on the chest. “The heart. You supply the heart and we’ll supply the rest. So what do you weigh? Around 225 would be my guess.”
“I was 229 on my scale when I weighed myself this morning.”
“Forget your scale. Those bathroom jobs are never very accurate. You’ll get weighed every day here. Turn around.”
“What?”
“Turn around. I want to have a look at you.”
Slowly, feeling very self-conscious, I turned.
“Thick chest, good-size arms, pecs are big, your legs look a little flabby.”
I felt uneasy, like I was a prize horse.
“How much can you bench press?” he asked.
“I can do 210 pounds,” I said proudly— that was more than anybody else on the team, including the seniors who had graduated.
“Oh, don’t worry about that. We’ll have you pushing some real weight soon enough.”
My jaw practically dropped open. What did he mean by that?
“If you follow your program, you’ll be hoisting closer to three within twelve weeks.”
“Three? Like in three hundred pounds?”
“That’s a minimum goal for somebody who’s going to weigh in at 260 pounds.”
“But I only weigh 229.”
“You only weigh 229 now. Twelve weeks from now is a whole different game. You don’t do a lot of weights, do you?” Tony asked.
“I was in here a lot last year,” I said, shaking my head. “A couple of times a week.”
“A couple of times? I thought you said a lot. Twice a week isn’t going to cut it, and you probably had nobody to train you. Most likely it was a bunch of you boys in here, more pretending and playing than actually working. We’ll take care of that. You have a good platform to build on. You’re naturally a big guy. How big is your dad?”
“He’s big,” I said. Actually, I remembered him as being huge, but most men are pretty big compared to nine-year-olds. It had been almost eight years since I’d seen him.
“How much does he weigh and how tall is he?”
“A couple of inches taller than me and more weight,” I said. I wasn’t sure of his exact height or weight, but I didn’t like to talk about that.
“That’s great. It means we have room for growth. Have you ever taken megadoses of vitamins or used food supplements?”
“Some chewable vitamins when I was small.”
“That isn’t quite what I was talking about. What that means is that most of the things
we’re going to try, you’ve never tried. Forget the 300 pounds. We might get you up to bench pressing 325 pounds. They call you The Moose, right?”
I nodded.
“By the time I’m through with you, they’ll be calling you a herd of moose.”
“That would be great.”
“All you have to do is follow the program and work hard.”
“I’ll work hard,” I said.
“I believe you. You know who you remind me of? Your attitude?”
“Who?”
“Jessie McCarthy.”
“I remind you of Jessie McCarthy?