A 6-foot-2 personal trainer with the lean physique and toned muscles of a basketball pro might seem an unlikely match for Charlene Nilsen. A homemaker, she is 77 years old, has a bad back and just had both knees replaced.
But Nilsen’s trainer, Lawrence Dawson, knows where her body has been in ways that most trainers could never understand. Dawson is 80. To him, Nilsen is a baby. That doesn’t mean he lets her off the hook.
“Rotate the heels,” he said as she swung a set of barbells from left to right. “Abs are nice and tight.”
Dawson, retired from the Army, has worked for 17 years as a personal fitness trainer at the Chinn Aquatics & Fitness Center in Woodbridge, Va. He is the oldest trainer there by decades. He started at an age when most people are retiring, and he works four days a week, pushing his clients, most of whom are retirement age, through rigorous drills that would fatigue people half their age.
They crack heavy ropes up and down like whips. They contort their torsos into crunches from an awkward tilted-back angle.
At first glance, Dawson looks like he could be in his 50s. But he has felt the ravages of age — a balky knee, a wrist he has to hold a certain way when he plays racquetball, a hearing aid tucked discreetly in the ear.
These are the things that attract many of his clients.
“I just felt that he would understand my needs and my limitations better,” said Bill Skinner, an 80-year-old retiree from Manassas, Va., who has been working with Dawson twice a week for three or four years.
For Dawson, older bodies represent a challenge. “The body, as Churchill said, is a conundrum wrapped up in an enigma,” he said. “At 70 plus, you probably can’t do the 100 in under 25, but you have an intuitive understanding of what your body can do.”
His methods were honed by 25 years in the Army, including stints in Germany, Congo, Nigeria and Vietnam. He is a two-time Northern Virginia senior Olympian in the 75-and-older category. His signature display of abdominal prowess involves grabbing an overhead bar and pulling his feet up to meet it.
Some trainers push their clients by screaming in their face. This is not Dawson’s way. “His passion is understated — he’s not rah-rah-rah in your face,” said Beverly McIntyre, one of his managers at the gym. “But you don’t stay in it this long if you don’t love what you do. Probably because he has experienced the human body in its various stages, he probably has a far better understanding of what can happen … I think that serves this age group well. They don’t need someone to yell at them; they just need to be in a better place when they leave.” But even if his manner is gentle, his message is not.
“Some of the ladies who are in their 70s, I say to them, ‘You’ve got to have an attitude where if you’re on the street, you’ve got to be able to knee people in the groin, you’ve got to be able to jab ’em right here and shatter their nose,” he said. “They kind of recoil when I say that to them, but then when they practice on the dummy they get into it.”
Dawson believes in using the whole body, rather than isolating parts of it. “My motto is, you ought not to have any muscles that are living rent-free.” He is not a fan of mindless reps. “I don’t think there’s much utility in a person who’s 65 being able to press weights; I’d much rather have you be flexible and be able to respond quickly,” he said. “If you get the heartbeat and the breathing going, there’s an enthusiasm there that can’t be created any other way.”
Some clients need help recognizing their own limitations, like the 70-year-olds who were star athletes in high school and think they still have the bodies they once had. “I can disabuse that notion quickly; just do a session with a heavy ball, a mobility drill that’s hard. Then you can have a reasonable conversation.”
