Plead the fit
PASS THE BARBELL Experience rough justice with three of Ginsburg’s top moves.
took a military-fitness-training course and a few civilian-training courses to boot.
With certifications under his belt, he didn’t have to look far for clients. Word of his butt-kicking talents spread throughout the Supreme Court, and he began amassing a clientele of America’s top legal eagles: Judges Thomas Hogan and Gladys Kessler, Justice Elena Kagan and, of course, RBG. And he doesn’t go easy on them.
The notorious RBG first came to Johnson in 1999, after a tough battle with colorectal cancer. “My ever-supportive spouse told me, ‘You look like an Auschwitz survivor,’ ” the two-time cancer survivor writes in her introduction to Johnson’s book. So Ginsburg turned to the trainer at a colleague’s recommendation — and now, nearly 20 years later, the diminutive dynamo can tackle 20 pushups in a session.
“She’s tough as nails,” Johnson says, “and she’s serious about her workouts.”
Very serious, indeed: Save for Johnson’s most recent military stint from 2004 to 2007, he and Ginsburg have met twice a week, every week, in a justices-only gym — located at the actual Supreme Court, on DC’s Capitol Hill. (A fancy Equinox it is not, but “it’s good,” Johnson says. “It has multiuse machines.” She uses those, for the most part, but her moves can be mimicked with resistance bands and dumbbells.)
Ginsburg — dressed in sweatpants (less often: leggings), a T-shirt and, occasionally, her beloved “Super Diva!” sweatshirt — meets Johnson at the gym around 7 p.m. There, with such classic workout jams as PBS “The News Hour” on in the background, they run through her grueling hourlong regimen: Five minutes of treadmill jogging and a quick series of stretches, then a long list of strength-training exercises, including presses, curls, pulldowns, rows, squats, pushups, planks and kicks.
Ginsburg doesn’t necessarily relish the experience. “She hates them planks,” Johnson says, gleefully; once, he forgot to count her out and she snapped at him, “Hello?”
Though he will adjust the workout if she’s tired or injured, she doesn’t want him to baby her, either: “She gets mad if I try to skip the pushups,” Johnson says. And she never bails.
“One night, she had a dinner with President Obama, and she told me she’d still make her 7 o’clock workout,” Johnson says. He was understandably dubious — but at 7 sharp, there she was. “I was like, ‘You left the president early to come do this with me?’ ”
He certainly makes the most of their time together, challenging her with even-tougher planks (he likes to nudge her around with his foot to test her balance), cracking jokes (occasionally, she laughs) and cheering her on through what he considers the most important move for any aging person to master: the squat.
So he has the judge approach the (gym) bench. Facing away from it (a chair works, as well), Ginsburg holds a medicine ball in both hands and squats all the way back — “like you’re sitting on a toilet” — until sitting lightly on the seat, with her legs bent at a 90-degree angle.
Although “booty” work like that is key if you want to maintain independence in your twilight years, Johnson stresses, he might not use that word at work.
Has he ever uttered “booty” in front of Ginsburg, for example? Johnson immediately shakes his head, looking horrified. “No. Never!”