Sergeant's First-Class Workouts

by Scott Bowles

Dawn has yet to break over Welsh Park in Rockville, but already Mike Sherman is on his third lap around the grass playing field.

The strain is beginning to show. His face has turned a shade of crimson, and his breathing has become a pant. He has lagged behind a half dozen other middle-aged men running together in the darkness.

This is the moment when Sherman could use a boost, a word of encouragement, a gesture of support from the man leading the group through the park. Then he gets it.

"You run like a girl, fat ass!"

The men around him break up in laughter, and even Sherman, 48, forces a grin through labored breaths.

After all, he asked for this abuse. In fact he paid for it.

Sherman and his colleagues each coughed up $345 up front and now pay $80 a month to be yelled at, bullied and derided into exercising. They gather before dawn, five days a week, and for an hour follow the commands of a former Marine who forces them to do pull-ups on tree branches, push-ups in mud and two-mile runs in rain and sub-freezing temperatures.

It’s standard fare for the Sergeant’s Program, and exercise regimen that brings military-style discipline to Washington’s aerobically challenged set. Bankers, lawyers, business owners are lining up by the hundreds to be badgered by drill instructors into better health-Camp Lejeune meets corporate Washington.

The program, one of the firsts of its kind, is yet another strategy in the nation’s $35 billion-a-year battle of the bulge: Dieting and exercise have become a huge industry, and seemingly to no avail. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, one-third of the adult population is obese, which is defined as 20 percent above desirable body weight.

"People are willing to go to real extremes miracle drugs, diet pills, low cal drinks to get thinner," said Lawrence Cheskin, director of the Johns Hopkins Weight Management Center. "But I have to say I'm sur-prised to see people submitting themselves to enforced exercise."

Despite the rigors of the Sergeant's Program, which includes a three-week "boot camp" to shell-shock the flabby into fitness, the program has taken off. What began as an informal workout class for two people in a Bethesda apartment eleven years ago has become a robust business, with 27 instructors, over 30 classes and 700 students in Montgomery, Fairfax, Arlington and Prince George's counties, as well as four new classes in the Chicago area. The students, generally ages 30 to 65, use whatever facilities are on hand at the exercise site, from park benches to tree stumps to jungle gyms. There have been offers to franchise, and that may be in the future for this successful Program.

The program's success, says President Patrick Avon, also known as "the Sarge," seems to say two things about the Washington lifestyle.

One is the workaholic mentality of the nation's capital. With families and jobs that go beyond full time, "nearly everyone who joins says the only free time they have is early, early in the morning," Avon said. "So most of our classes start around dawn. We haven't gotten a complaint yet."

The other is that when it comes to exercise, it's hard to go too far. "The more we yell and shout and push them, the more they want," said Avon, a former Navy fitness instructor who stays in top shape himself. "They love the discipline. They need the discipline."

So they get the discipline. Avon, who periodically drills some classes himself, has taken his groups to McDonald's restaurants, forcing them to do push-ups near the drive through window as he shouts out the fat content of Egg McMuffins.

I haven't eaten a Big Mac in six months," said Tom Murphy, 49, a Rockville lawyer and member of the Welsh Park group.

If he did sneak one, Murphy conceded, he probably would not admit it to his instructor, Patrick Riley, who served in the Marines for 12 years and is still a major in the Marine Reserves.

"If you tell him you had a doughnut for breakfast, he'll tell you to hit the dirt and give him 20 push-ups", Murphy said. "Talk too much during the class, and he'll make you do 20, too."

Riley isn't a big fan of tardiness, either. Three minutes after his class began one morning, Dan O'Lone, 42, sauntered onto the field, tossing a welcome mat from his home onto the grass to begin sit-ups.

"Glad you could join us, Mr. O'Lone!" Riley barked, walking up to the sleepy-eyed real estate broker and patting him on the face. "Should I stretch your jowls for you?"

The approach is harsh, but Avon and the participants swear by the methods. Avon, 39, of Rockville, said he came up with the idea in 1989, shortly after leaving the Navy. He led a class of two in the spare bedroom of his apartment and was impressed by their reaction to his military style.

"You hit middle age, you need to be pushed," said Avon, whose rapid-fire delivery makes him sound as if he's leading a platoon. "You're out of school, you've married your college sweetheart, your career is taking off, and boom! You look down and you've got a 40-inch waist. We charge them enough money to get their butts out of bed every morning and push them hard enough to change their lives."

The program attempts to do that on and off the field. Avon's instructors not only push their students physically, but grill them on foods they eat and the exercise they get the rest of the day. And while some students say they haven't lost much weight, most say they are in better condition because they dumped un-healthy habits to accommodate the program's demanding schedule.

My wife complains because I fall asleep at 10 p.m. every night," Murphy said. But by 7:30 am., I'm in my office and ready to work."

That kind of allegiance doesn’t come easy, and Avon prides himself on a program that might resemble fraternity hazing.

"If someone doesn't show up for class for a few days, I'll send them postcards with a fat guy on them," Avon said. Or we'll hold class on his front lawn. It's all in good fun we're not going to kill them with exercise. But the guys know it's serious to watch your weight."

Avon has learned that women are just as serious. Three years ago, few women enrolled in his classes, which sometimes have the bawdy humor of a boys' locker room. Now, more than half of the students are female, and the program offers mixed and women-only groups.

Nancy Wert, 43, a real estate agent in Olney, had no plans to find a workout program until she tried to fit into a bathing suit last summer.

"I tried on 80 [swimsuits] and finally said, 'This is ridiculous,' " Wert said. "Someone suggested this real strict program, and now I get up at 5 a.m. to exercise every day. People say I'm nuts, but I just lost 35 pounds since August. Then they don't think it's so nuts. Crazy maybe. it does get pathetically cold some days."

But like good soldiers test. As the Welsh Park men hopped up and down picnic tables one morning, hands clasped over their heads, Patrick Riley's voice boomed over them, pushing them for 10 more, daring them to stop.

O'Lone began to sag, his steps slowing, hands drooping and clasping onto his ears.

Perhaps realizing he had willingly spent hundreds of dollars for this morning ritual, he grimaced and looked at the men with him on the table. "Someone go over there and tell the major to shut the hell up," O'Lone said.