Jim M.

Laurie Gordon is Montgomery County’s best kept secret when it comes to fitness and musculoskeletal health. I met her playing on a mixed doubles tennis team 12 years ago. I hired her as my Personal Trainer nearly 3 years ago. I waited this long because I thought it was ridiculous to have an instructor by my side to go through such obvious exercises. I “should” be able to do them by myself, I thought. But it turns out, there are lots of ways to do exercises wrong, and technique really matters. Further, I am not so unusual that I need a little regular encouragement to stay in shape. Using Laurie’s guidance is a way of being kind to myself. And the body, I’ve learned in my work with her, is a quite complicated thing to understand and manage. Ignorance is not bliss. When we first started, I couldn’t play two sets of tennis before my inner thigh muscles would freeze up quite painfully, and I would walk off the court, bent over from the pain. I also have a partially torn right PCL, in my knee, which is irreparable and my knee would ache badly. On top of the knee and inner thigh muscles, I periodically got tennis elbow. Since I was totally dependent on tennis for exercise, the downtime would cause me to get painfully out of shape. I quickly found out that Laurie doesn’t just throw a bunch of exercises at you. She actually gets to know you and thinks about your specific needs — constantly and continuously. You will leave with a home routine, but can come back for more. I use a mixture thereof. And my routine keeps being further refined as I get stronger. It wasn’t long before I was back on the court with no symptoms. I was amazed how quickly and easily the groin muscle problem was eliminated with “sliders”, one of her magical exercises. Now I play injury-free to my heart’s content and know exactly what I have to do to stay in shape and prevent injury. And, recently, my shoulder started hurting a bit from serving. No more. At her instruction, I carry a little hand weight in my bag and do circle eights with my shoulder and arm circles before each match. End of problem. Positively magical. I’m blasting serves harder than ever before, at age 72. At first, when she would get that “come on, you can do more” look on her face, I thought of her as “Our Lady of Pain!” Now, I realize that she is actually very careful not to go too far and knows exactly what that means for each person. I feel very comfortable pushing my limits under her watchful eye. If you want a calm, patient, caring, and thoroughly enjoyable personal trainer in your back pocket, to help with whatever you’re involved in, be it post-rehab, just staying in shape, or competitive sports, Laurie is so special and valuable, I have no words.