“Come on, baby, you’ve got this! Let’s go! Push it! No quit! No quit! Last one! Let’s go!”

The bench bar rattled into the rack with a clank that sounded vaguely satisfied with the set itself. I get up and I can feel the sinew in my upper-body tighten as I instinctively flex between shouts of “Woo!” and high-fives exchanged with my spot man.

Gruffly, he put the moment into words. “Ho-ly shit, Chuck, that was one of the most intense sets I’ve ever seen. Let me be the first to say, it was a personal honor to have guided you through it.”

We high-five again, clasping our hands and bumping chests — something that becomes more of a primal reaction once you’ve discovered there is actually muscle mass in said chest. Of course, I only have my spot man to thank for that: without Gary Roberts, former NHLer and now proprietor of Gary Roberts High Performance Training in Aurora, Ontario, I would’ve never even attempted today’s impressive bench, much less crushed it.

The process of physical transformation I’ve experienced under his tutelage has led us to forge a fraternal relationship as much as a professional one. We freshen up and hit the convertible. The sun threatens to torch us without respite, but we welcome it as a source of rebirth after the exhausting regimen Gary drew up this morning.

Gary cranks Dokken’s ‘Tooth and Nail’ as I crack a light domestic to sip casually on the short ride to the corner bar. He nods: be it metal to heave or beers to pound, he’s always keeping count and never likes to be outdone.

“Hell of a workout today, Kato,” he hollers over the wind and radio, addressing me by the established nickname. “Now time to reward ourselves.” We whip into the bar parking lot. The wing and pitcher special on the chalk sign out front already hints that the vehicle won’t get moving again until tomorrow.

We grab the two nearest stools. Beers are poured, wings are ordered — Gary goes with the dry rub, of course, to cut down on the sugar — and Whitesnake finds its way on the jukebox, all without speaking a word. Consistency pays off in the gym and at the watering hole.

Gary tips a whiskey back, tying the game after my opening roadie, and holds up his beer glass. “To Kato, eh?” he intones, firing off a coy smile that suggests we’re in for a long night, not unlikely to end in some well-intentioned fisticuffs. I briefly clutch at my ribs, unsure if they’ve recovered from last week. “A real jag in the trenches and chief of the benches!”

***

The glasses clinked, and then I jerked upright in my seat. Eyes watery, I spotted a fit, ostensibly impatient man standing in the doorway.

“Chuck?” Roberts asked in a procedural tone to tell me he already knew the answer.

“Yeah,” I managed, barely, sliding my Penguins hat back into proper position.

“Well, you going to wait there all day, bud, or what?” He was the first person I had ever met who could turn a question mark into an imperative.

I shot up with a “How high?!” kind of readiness and followed him into the office. The walls held a few pictures of himself — winning the cup with the Flames in 89, others of various stages throughout his career — but a lot more of players he’d turned into grade-A athletes thanks to his program. I frowned slightly: I figured there’d be at least one picture, largely true to life, of him arm-wrestling, like, a bear or beating Vladmir Putin at high-stakes Seven-Card Stud on international waters. You know, something reasonable like that.

His eyes shot towards the chair in front of his desk; there was no wasted motion with this guy. I parked myself in it obediently.

“Let’s take a look at what we’re working with here, Chuck,” he said, scanning my training questionnaire.

“Please, uh, Mr. Roberts, call me ‘Kato.’ It’s my workout name.” I figured it was good of a time as any to start building our eventual everlasting friendship.

His eyes wandered up from paper in a manner that made Predator look docile. Economy of language this time around. If those eyes could speak, and I wasn’t sure at that moment they wouldn’t, they would’ve declared, “That’s your one.” I took the hint and he took the opening.

“Your BMI is through the roof, your nutrition is substandard, and your entire approach to health and well-being defies its very core tenets.”

“I think that might be a bit of an overstatement,” I contested.

“It says here your favored post-workout beverage is I.C. Light.”

“Yeah!” My momentum faded fast. “Can’t be slugging Iron Heavies after pushing your body to the limit…I…always say.”

“Enough of that. No more alcohol prior to or within two hours after your workout.”

“But I maybe thought—”

“You didn’t or you wouldn’t have admitted to it. In fact, you’re sipping from a damned beer in that koozie right now!”

“Oh, this? I mean, this is only like my fourth in the last hour. I’m still with it and everything.” Roberts peaked his fingers over his mouth and nose, presumably to avoid agreeing that I was obviously still cool to operate heavy machinery or whatever.

“I think we should do a little impromptu diagnostic session,” he let out. He swallowed a smile, and it didn’t strike me as the one he shot at me in the convertible earlier. “Yeah, that sounds perfect. It’ll be a great first step in building our…”

“Eventual everlasting friendship?!”

“Sure, bud…sure. Let’s hit the bench, shall we?”

As I lied on the black padded bench, I marked this instant as the one where it happened: just Chuck, soon to be Kato, hanging with the best spot man / best friend anybody could ever ask for, Gary fucking Roberts. The thought churned my arms up and down.

One. Two. Three. The bar wobbled; I exhaled. “It’ll be worth it when we’re throwing a few back together,” I uttered, trying to stuff the words back into my mouth as if it were some wayward expression that wasted one of my three wishes.

“I’ve got bad news for you, Chuck,” he said. That smile from my midday dream dangled ominously over top of me. For fuck sake, what now? I’ll have to deadlift an oak tree? Power-clean a fighter jet?

“Yeah?” I managed, barely…again. Four. Five.

“Well, for starters, these reps suck, so by my count, you’re still at two.”

“Fine. And the other thing?”

“I don’t drink.”