WASHINGTON — Michael Strautmanis had no sooner started his White House job as a deputy assistant to the president when his boss began badgering him.
“Am I working out? Am I eating right?” Mr. Strautmanis recalled President Obama asking. “And then he told me that I should use his trainer.”
The very fit president has sent other White House aides to Cornell McClellan, the trainer, a genial master tormenter who is the secret weapon behind Michelle Obama’s famously toned arms and who has overseen both Obamas’ exercise programs for more than a decade.
Mr. Strautmanis made one — and only one — appointment with Mr. McClellan, just to satisfy the president. But Mr. Obama had other plans.
As Mr. Strautmanis walked away from a White House news conference one morning, the president caught up with him and called out, “Strautmanis, Cornell says you’re not showing up for your workouts.”
“And that’s when I knew this was going to be a different experience for me,” said Mr. Strautmanis, who has forsaken cheeseburgers, taken up egg whites and lost 20 pounds since he started twice-weekly sessions with Mr. McClellan in a gym at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
An unassuming 54-year-old with a compact body and an easy laugh, Mr. McClellan has become the unlikely man at the center of a group of top staff members who work out with him, gossip with him, talk about him and even rat one another out to him, especially when someone — that means you, David Axelrod — slips up and gets an extra scoop of ice cream in the White House mess. (But the real culprit, aides joke, are the M&Ms found throughout the West Wing).