Personal Trainer Diaries: Making the affluent sweat since the 1980s Vertical Club

An upscale health club is one place where the divergent classes meet...and mingle. After all, any personal trainer worth his or her supplements craves an elite clientele. Conversely, our wealthy customers wield buff buns and ripped abs like twenty-first century status symbols.

Trainers and clients are from different worlds—sometimes at odds but often in synch. Their relationship is a complex and unique offshoot of a society in which the top 20 percent of Americans control 85 percent of the wealth. But in the gym, comrades, you can’t use your stock portfolio to get through a tough set of lunges…that’s what us trainers are for.

Welcome to my world…

From hanging with Arnold and Sly in the go-go 80s right up to training today's ever-growing training market Mickey Z. has witnessed firsthand the evolution of a fitness revolution