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Client Testimonials

• Our "neighborhood gym" is in Teresa Carpenter's garage and often spills into our Barton Hills neighborhood streets. Teresa's outgoing personality and our group's dynamics keep us off our couches and working toward buffness. Splitting Teresa's $50/hour charge makes our fitness more affordable. Our 5-member "BAFA" group ("Baggy Arms-Fat Anterior") is now "Buff Arms-Firm Anterior." This weekly "torture" treatment consists of core strength building plus a variety of other activities for building endurance and self defense skills. Teresa mixes-it-up so it is fun and interesting. She enjoys participating in sports and always is looking for new ways to make exercise fun. "Hoppie & Bob" have disappeared from our underarms. I can put on our pants standing-up. And, young males driving by and seeing us execute a "Teresa treat" have yelled "positive assessments." :) A "Teresa Treat" is a few push-ups, quad burns, etc as you find a dead-end street/guard rail or other "place to rest" from a forced march. Not bad for a group of 50ish gals! And should we overdo, Teresa can help us work out the kinks as a registered massage therapist.
  - JBB
  
  
• I tried every diet in the book: the Toadstool Diet, the South Padre Island Beach Diet, The French-Fried Couch Potato Diet, William Shatner’s Trekkie Diet, the Beer Drinkers Diet, and the infamous Yo-Yo Diet, and then I met the Fitness Goddess, Teresa the Terrible. She said, “Diet! You don’t need no stinkin’ diet! Come to my gym and I will have you in shape in no time!” …she didn’t say what kind of shape! So once a week to the torture chamber we trodded, the exercise sisters moaned and groaned, and sweated and plodded through those miserable exercises…. Then one day, the Weight Fairy waved a wand, and I discovered that I had lost an inch off my waist…don’t know where it went, but I think I saw it in a puddle on Teresa’s gym floor. I hadn’t lost any weight, but I was excited to discover that my clothes fit much more comfortably, and I could beat up my husband anytime he gave me lip! Eight months later, I am 8 pounds lighter and well on my way to reaching my goal of 10 pounds in one year.
  - LM
  
  
• I was thrilled when I was trying on clothes with my daughter and she remarked "Mom, you have a six-pack"! To which I asked "is that a good thing?" Needless to say, I learned that it's a coveted thing to have defined abs and I have Teresa's workouts to thank for that!"
  - JW
  

Tales from the trainer

• I use the excuse of walking or running a client's pet to give the pet and the client some exercise in an attempt to get them to at least walk when I'm not around. One day I was out jogging up a hill with a client and had the dog happily trotting on a leash in front of me. A car stopped and it turned out to be a friend I had not seen in a while. He asked "what are you doing in my neighborhood?" I replied that I was training a client, to which he asked "Uh, you do know that's a DOG, don't you?"

• A client, ASM, was doing sets of crunches with me. After the last crunch, she cried out "Call 911". Alarmed that something was wrong, I hurried to her side and asked what was wrong. She said "I need a fireman - my abs are on fire"!

• My clients have grown to love the sound of the beep on my watch indicating the end of their minute of whatever torturous exercise we are currently doing. One client even loves the sound of being done that she claims she is going to record that sound to put on her cell phone because she loves it so much. When my watch got wet and the beep quit working, almost every one of them offered to buy me a new watch battery or watch.

• I overheard one of my clients, S, telling her friend how she hated me the first few weeks of our workouts. She would be tight and sore getting out of bed from using muscles she had never used before. Then, she said, she put her clothes on and they fit looser and she would pick up the phone and say "Teresa when are you coming back? I love you".

Client One-Liners and Excuses

• "I'm not actually resting, I'm QUIVERING" - EE
• "I have six-pack abs - they're just wearing a koozie!" - RT
• "How do you expect me to lift my hips? The bone itself weighs 50 pounds!" - JB
• "I want weight on the bar, NOT my butt" - LM
• "How can I erase 20 beers off of my butt?" - LB
• One client arriving for a workout while a group is leaving "Can I just pay you and go shopping with them?" - KM
• One client while punching vigorously on the bag "Is it wrong to love this so much?"
• "I came late, can I leave early?" - DR
• "My butt is so big that it's still on the ground when I do butt lifts" - PG
• "These crunches even make my teeth hurt" - SL
• "I feel like I'm stuck in a never-ending cartoon" - CC
• "I like how my arms look, but I hate doing these exercises" - SD