Online Personal Trainer News: Editorial Chapter 2.5 – Move With Ally

Ally Britton
Mar 17
3 min read

Online personal trainer, fitness coach, online dance teacher, and accidental adventurer — Move With Ally. This is chapter 2.5, where Ally has boyfriend trouble.

Confession: I can spot a wobbly knee from twenty paces, but I missed the wobble in my own relationship even when it was loud enough to set off the studio mirror.

We were at the sort of restaurant that has tiny chairs and enormous plates. He likes places where everything is measured: macros, time slots, expectations. I like places with music loud enough to dance to in your head. We meet in the middle with sparkling water and compromised joy.

“How was class?” he asked, scrolling. He always asks. He rarely waits for the answer.

“Good,” I said. “Clarke came by. We tried the new combo with the swivel and it—”

There it was: a flinch. Small, but I catch small for a living.

“Clarke again,” he said, like a diagnosis.

“He works with me,” I said. “He’s my friend.”

He folded the menu even though we’d already ordered. “It’s just… you get different with Clarke.”

“Different how?”

“Louder. Bigger. Like you’re performing.”

“I’m a performer,” I said, and smiled like a warning. “It’s literally on the tin.”

“That’s not what I mean.” He looked over my shoulder at the bar, at anyone who wasn’t me. “When it’s just us, you’re… normal.”

The word landed like a dumbbell on a toe.

***

Back home, Oscar forgave me immediately because we are not the same species. I fed him, put on the hoodie that smells faintly of chalk and eucalyptus spray, and sat on the mat. One hand on my chest, one on my belly. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Counting breaths until I could hear my own.

My phone buzzed.

Clarke: Did you see the girl in lemon earrings? Chaos. I adore her.

Me: She’s my favourite kind of nightmare. Class was a riot.

Clarke: How’s Spreadsheet Boy?

Me: He thinks I’m too much.

Clarke: Of course you are. That’s the job. Also the magic.

Me: He says with you I go… amplified.

Clarke: Correct. Anyone who tells you to dim is asking you to be smaller than your body knows how to be.

I stared at the screen long enough for Oscar to suggest, with a nose in my shin, that we go outside. We walked the late loop past the café that sells moral support disguised as pastries. The Malta air tasted like salt even here, away from the sea. I tried to make a list of his good things. I am fair. I am diligent. I coach myself the way I coach everyone else.

He remembers my coffee order. He labels his leftovers. He puts his shoes away. He calls his mum.

He also moves parts of me around in his head to make me fit.

Back on the mat, I picked up my phone.

Clarke: Tomorrow. I’m rewriting your Tinder bio.

Me: Absolutely not.

Clarke: Absolutely yes. You can’t coach change and refuse it. Coach.

Me: Fine. But we’re putting “will clap for you in public.”

Clarke: And “will not dim.”

Me: Too much?

Clarke: Exactly enough.

I looked at the ring light leaning against the wall like a white moon waiting to be switched on. My life is a series of circles: counts, reps, classes, seasons. The trick is not to run in them. The trick is to notice when one closes and another begins.

I set my alarm. Tomorrow we’d write the bio. Soon, I’d tell the truth out loud.

Stay tuned for next week’s chapter. In the mean time please, if you would like to book an online personal training session, pilates session or dance class please click the links below: