Who needs to go to the gym, anyway? While some planners may keep in shape between events with spinning classes and aerobics, others find the job itself to be a great workout. Jo Angela Maniaci, CMP, who heads up Special Events Planning LLC, an event-planning company based in St. Paul, Minn., posted her take on exercising, meeting-planner-style, to the Meetings Community listserv (www.meetingscommunity.org), also known as MeCo. She kindly agreed to let us also share it here.

THE WARM-UP, TO BE UNDERTAKEN DURING THE PLANNING STAGE:

1. Bend over backwards to meet a client's unrealistic demands.

2. Do deep knee bends each time I get on my knees to pray for a miracle to meet said unrealistic demands.

3. Stretch myself thin to condense 30 hours of work into the 12 hours I have been given to solve problems created by changes in directions.

4. Perform mental gymnastics trying to figure out how to clone myself to accomplish No. 3.

THE WORKOUT, TO BE DONE WHILE ON SITE:

1. Weight training, a natural outcome from lifting and schlepping the many boxes of stuff needed. An added benefit: great core strengthening.

2. Circuit training, which includes mandatory brisk walking, as I check on each session room to make sure things are proceeding as planned.

3. Deep breathing, required each time I find myself being asked to answer yet one more ridiculous question.

4. Resistance training, the result of stopping myself from the urge to throttle the person who just asked said ridiculous question.

5. Deep knee bends again, which are required to put myself at the correct height to kiss the posterior of an obstreperous speaker/VIP.

Do you have an irreverent, controversial, or just plain different take on some aspect of meeting planning that you'd like to share? Let Editor Sue Pelletier know by dropping her a line at spelletier@meetingsnet.com.