A FEW MINUTES WITH …: Fitness Guru’s Train of Thought
By Jim Schaefer, Detroit Free Press
Jan. 13–Look in this space on Fridays for conversations with people who are interesting but unheralded.
He’s 6 feet tall, 200 pounds and built like granite.
For $65 an hour, you can have a personal trainer like Rasheed Lee lord over you and nag for just one more pull-up, one more crunch, one more minute on the exercise bike.
Lee, 34, of Detroit — a retired kickboxing champion — coaches people one-on-one and leads classes at Powerhouse Gym in West Bloomfield. He says his clients eventually see results.
That’s all very nice. Truthfully, though, we were more interested in why anyone in his right mind would want to make a living busting his hump.
QUESTION: Personal fitness training, what does that involve? You’ve got rich people who want to pay you money to get them fit, basically, right?
ANSWER: (Laughs.) Not everybody I train is rich.
Q: What kind of people are your clients?
A: I have a wide variety of clients. I train some fighters, professionals. I train some executives.
Q: Anybody famous? That you can talk about?
A: Nobody I can talk about.
Q: Pretty paranoid world we live in, isn’t it?
A: Yeah, it is. People want to work out in peace.
Q: Were you always in pretty good shape or were you like a geek in high school?
A: (Laughs.) I wasn’t a geek, but I was a scrawny little kid.
Q: Did you take any grief from people, get your butt kicked?
A: Not when I started kicking back.
Q: You probably know the exact measurement of your biceps, don’t you?
A: I don’t. Honestly, I don’t.
Q: You ever been knocked out?
A: Yeah, I have … really knocked out.
Q: How did it happen?
A: A spinning back-fist.
Q: Oh … like Bruce Lee!
A: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Q: I had some guy throw one of those at me at a party one time and he missed, thank God. Hit his fist into the closet door instead. He was drunk as hell. Did it connect right on your cheekbone?
A: I was out. On the floor facedown. And when I looked up, everyone was leaving.
Q: Is it important for you to be fit?
A: Nobody wants to come in to a jelly doughnut telling them how to get into shape.
Q: Are you married?
A: Yes.
Q: How many of your clients hit on you?
A: I’m not touching that one. I am MARRIED.
Q: You think it’s worth it, all this sweat? I can sit on the couch all day and not even work up a sweat.
A: And get blisters on your rear end.
Q: When’s the last time you ate a half-gallon of ice cream in one sitting?
A: A half-gallon? I don’t think I ever have.
Q: You gotta have some vices. You got any weaknesses?
A: Chocolate chip cookies. Soda pop.
Q: How do you control that urge?
A: I don’t. I just work it off. (Laughs.)
Contact JIM SCHAEFER at 313-223-4542 or schaefer@freepress.com.
photo
Rasheed Lee of Detroit trains himself before he trains others in his work at Powerhouse Gym in West Bloomfield. “Nobody wants to come in to a jelly doughnut telling them how to get into shape,” says the 34-year-old Lee, a former kickboxing champion. (MANDI WRIGHT/Detroit Free Press)
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