Chapter 05
Hot American Love Is Coming!
Connor woke up early Saturday morning -- way too early for breakfast yet. He had forgotten to ask Dana and Polly what kind of 'extra arm work' he needed, so he did a little internet research work. Dana's spectacular rope work on stage made him think of trapeze artists from the circus. He found lots of examples of workouts for trapeze skills, and then he looked at exercises for gymnasts. He found dozens of good exercises that he could do without special equipment: dips, pull-ups, pushups and others so he cribbed the schedule for reps and tests to move up to more. He even found some 'erotic trapeze' routines. Then a thought struck him and he looked up what kind of workouts he would have been doing if he had actually enlisted in the Marines. He found standards for pull-ups, crunches and a 3 mile run, but he was already working well in excess of those standards. He found tougher standards for Army Ranger School and Navy BUDS and he decided to work towards them, especially on the push-ups, sit-ups, and pull-ups. He remembered his father telling him the 'training secret' of Mohammed Ali: do each exercise until it hurts, then do 100 more.
He used a spreadsheet to lay out a progress schedule week by week for the rest of the summer, then dressed in his workout stuff and went out onto one of the running trails. He sprinted to each mile marker, did each new exercise using the 'hurt plus 100 more' plan, and then sprinted to the next mile marker. When he completed his normal five mile course, his heart was pumping well above his target training rate and he was pushing himself just to finish. He made it back to the house and took a fast shower, then headed for breakfast, ravenously hungry.
Liz was alone in the kitchen, as everyone else seemed to be sleeping in, but she must have seen him coming in from his running course, because she said "looks like you need some extra protein this morning, hotshot!" She made him a big omelet with goat cheese and mushrooms, plus tomatoes, jalapenos, and onions, and a big tumbler of orange juice and some spring water. He polished it off so fast that she made him two pieces of toast topped with crunchy peanut butter and a glass of milk and he wolfed those down too. Liz watched him and said "We might need to check you for a tapeworm or a hollow leg".
Connor smiled. "You can check out my legs anytime you want Liz, all three of them!"
She laughed "In your dreams, kiddo. But I'll tell you what. Do you have a workout schedule laid out?"
Connor was not sure what she was driving at, but he told her his goals for the end of the summer for sit-ups, pushups, pull-ups, and a 5 mile run time. She smiled thoughtfully and wrote them down in the notepad she carried with her.
"Where did you get these standards?" she asked.
I told her about the BUDS tests and my almost enlistment in the Marines.
She smiled. "For BUDS there is also a swim test, and you should work on holding your breath."
"How do you know that?" Connor asked.
She smiled again. "My little brother is a SEAL officer, and I am a professional trainer and motivational specialist. So I'll make you a motivational offer. If you can meet all these standards, plus the swim standard which I will look up and tell you about, on or before the last day of August, I'll give you a one hour demonstration of my personal workout routine, which is done Bikram style -- naked and in a hot room."
Connor smiled appreciatively. "Do I have to be naked, too?"
"Yep" she said. "And I am interested to see if you can watch me without being intimidated!"
Connor looked her up and down. "I might be in danger of infatuation, but not intimidation!"
She smiled. "Good answer! Now go work on your swimming!
Connor thought of the hidden grotto, but that was for social and recreational swimming. There was an 'endless pool' in the house and he decided to add that into his schedule too.
Just as he was about to leave the kitchen, Polly came in and gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. "I want you to arrive a little early to your assigned viewing room tonight, Connor, as I want to introduce you to a few folks before the curtain goes up." The she was off to talk to someone else just sitting down to breakfast.
Connor changed to swim trunks and made his way to the endless pool and dialed up the pace for the mile swim he had completed a few years ago for a swimming merit badge. He completed it easily, feeling none of the fatigue he remembered, but he felt like he was fighting the water all the way rather than really mastering it and swimming efficiently. He dialed up another mile and tried to be 'one with the water' like his swimming coach used to say. He got a little better, and at the end of the second mile, when he was winded, he tried to hold his breath underwater. By his count, he had a long way to go to make the BUDS standard.
As he emerged from the water, he saw Liz watching. "You have NO natural talent for swimming, do you Connor?"
He agreed. "It was easy for me to learn when I was a kid, and I can keep my head above water and survive, but I have never been smooth" he admitted.
Liz said "let's move over to the regular pool and I think I can show you something."
Connor laughed "I'm sure you could!"
"About swimming!" she protested. She skinned off her long tee shirt to reveal a skin tight one piece suit that displayed her long and ropey musculature. She looked like a born swimmer and perhaps a great candidate for casting in the next Atlantis movie. She jumped into the water with almost no noise and no splash, and the wetness of her suit made her look even hotter, and Connor hadn't even seen her from the rear yet.
She had Connor float on his back, adjusting his posture and coaching his breathing until he was floating comfortably and maintaining his position without any skeletal muscle effort except his breathing. Then she showed him how different breathing patterns would lead to a different time course of his buoyancy and 'draw' in the water. "Your breathing has developed only as a land based runner, and you have to relearn it for swimming if you are going to be a decent swimmer." She had him memorize three different breathing patterns until he could reproduce them on command and shift between them in one breath.
Then she had him begin swimming on his back using just a simple, low excursion repetitive kick with no arm motion, and then showed him that using the three different breathing patterns markedly changed his speed through the water. It was a revelation to Connor how much the breathing modulated the kick and his progress through the water. She made him do several laps kicking with the least effective breathing pattern, then several with the most effective. Connor was amazed at how much easier it was to make progress with the more efficient breathing technique. Liz had him float again while she reiterated "You can see that your breathing affects everything that happens when you swim. If your breathing is not right, you have to fight it with the rest of your muscles and doing so wears you out much faster. In your case, you are also not using your lung capacity as you should, even when you breathe on dry land."
She gave him some additional exercises to do, and suggested that he join her in one of the HQ labs on Sunday afternoon, so she could do some spirometry and other lab work to help with his breathing. Then she had him flip over onto his abdomen and put his hands on the side of the pool, and then flutter kick steadily against the resistance of the pool wall. She began palpating his gluts and other leg muscles in a very no nonsense manner as he worked. "My, Connor, you have overdeveloped your 'land lubber' muscles and have some real deficits in some important swimming muscles. We will have to work on that."
She then changed her touch to a very sensuous one, lingering on the inside of his thighs and buttocks. "You have some very weak muscles that you can only develop well in the water, and until you develop those, you will never be able to do a really good job of sexual penetration. At least, not the way I like it!"
She then vaulted out of the water effortlessly, again with little noise and splash, seemingly leaping right from the water to the sidewalk without even using the pool bottom or the sides. "Let's have lunch together at 1300 hrs Sunday, and then we'll do a couple of hour's worth of measurements on you." She walked sensuously out of the pool area, and Connor realized he was staring at her swaying behind with his mouth hanging open. His breathing was certainly affected.