It was a surprisingly quiet day at the Loud house, when Rita Loud, the matriarch of the big family, was practicing her TV exercises.

"Up and down, up and down! Left and right, left and right!" the woman on the TV said, with Rita imitating the movements effortlessly. "Come on, ladies, burn those buttocks!"

"Darling, I've been burning these butt cheeks ever since I had a child!" Rita boasted, only to nonchalantly add, "And then I started burning them even harder after the next eight or so-"

"Mom?!"

Rita turned around and saw Lynn-her athletic jock daughter, not her husband-standing nearby looking in awe and shock.

"Oh hi Lynn, what's up?" Rita remarked rather casually, without even stopping her exercises.

"Are you exercising?!" Lynn exclaimed, sounding both surprised and even betrayed. "You know I'm the sports extraordinaire! The baseball shaman! The batter roller! That one athlete with way too many pretentious names! And you never told me you did exercise until now?!"

"Lynn, the reason I never told you I exercised until now is because I usually exercise to lose some weight, or to try to keep the shapely figure I got going. Either keep it in general or prevent it from getting worse, take your pick," Rita answered, focusing solely on her program. "You typically only ever exercise if it'll help you win a sport, every other time you're either living life as it was a sport, or eating tons of food that should make you look fatter than me!"

Lynn, obviously taking the statement as a challenge, grabbed her shirt and got ready to rip it off, only for Rita to shout, "Stop!" which caught her attention. "Lynn, do you even have anything underneath your shirt?"

The jock took a quick look, then shook her head. "I have a spare exercising outfit on the basement, go get that one and then I can prove you're no match for me in this stuff," Rita stated, all without pausing her exercises.

"Can I put it under my normal outfit, then rip the normal clothes apart to reveal it?" Lynn asked before rubbing her shirt. "I don't know, there's something about it that just fills me with thrills and motivation, you know?"

"Lynn, those clothes were very expensive for your dad to get, so if you rip them apart, I'm going to literally ground you," Rita shot a glare at the athlete. "To the ground. With my bare hands."

Lynn flinched, realizing her mother wasn't kidding. "I'll change clothes, got it!"

"And take a bath as well!"

"Ugh, fine!"

One bath and change of clothes later...

Lynn walked down the stairs, only to see her mother seemingly continuing her exercises. "Oh come on, really?!" Lynn quickly ran to her mother's side. "Have you seriously been exercising while I was taking a bath and changing clothes?!"

Then Rita stopped and chuckled. "Nah, I just waited until you popped up so I could trick you into thinking I did that."

"...Smooth, now let's do this thing!"

"Okay then, if you say so."

Rita turned on the TV and the exercises started almost immediately, with the woman doing the exercises first while Lynn watched. "Now, Lynn, the point of the video is to follow what the lady is doing, like me!"

"I see," Lynn turned back to the television, then repeated the shown exercises: Left leg up, right leg up, stretch to the left, stretch to the right. "Like this?"

Rita nodded. "Yeah, just like that!"

"Looks like you're quickly getting the hang of this, Junior!"

"Good to know!" the jock replied with a smirk. "That way, I can beat you in no time!"

The woman giggled before asking, "Lynn, how many times have you done these exercises?"

The jock raised an eyebrow. "I'm more used to pulling random stuff before a game, so I think this is the first time I do this specific set."

"Well, I don't want to boast or anything," Rita flashed a confident smile. "But I've been doing these exercises ever since I gave birth to Lori."

Lynn took the chance to quip, "Huh, interesting, so exercising and sports existed back when the dinosaurs roamed the planet?"

Rita retorted in kind, "No, but what did exist back then was a preferred height for athletes, which is coincidentally twice your height."

"Good to know your body isn't the only thing burning, but enough talking, let's keep going!"

And so, the mother and daughter continued to follow the instructions said by the exercise lady. They stretched their arms, their legs, did pull ups and so on pretty evenly, but Lynn started to run into trouble once the woman did a particular exercise: First she jumped with her arms up in the air, then she crouched down, jumped-in a way-into doing a pull up, jumped back to crouching, jumped up again, rinse and repeat.

As if the fact she had no idea what she just did wasn't enough, her mother was repeating the exercise repeatedly, and without pausing with each repeat. So, she watched her a few more times before trying it herself, but after repeating the movements three times, Lynn started to breath heavily as she felt her arms and legs growing tired. Mostly her legs.

"What's wrong, Lynn?" Rita asked in the middle of her movements. "Feeling tired already? I thought you were the sports extraordinaire!"

"N-Not so fast, mom!" Lynn stated. "I still got some energy left in me!"

And she did manage to perform the exercise two more times. However, once the exercise had changed into doing pull-ups, Lynn realized her energy was pretty much already depleted, so she could only perform about two pull ups before collapsing on the ground.

Upon seeing that, Rita stopped, turned off then TV, then walked to her daughter before asking, "Are you tired yet, sweetie?"

"I don't think I can do any more exercising," Lynn said. "My energy reserves are all dried up."

"What, are you a robot or something?" Rita offered Lynn a hand. "Anyway, do you admit defeat yet?"

Seeing she was too tired to argue, Lynn accepted the help and answered, "...I do. I can't defeat the meaty behemoth that is your training exercise."

"Good," the woman put a hand on the jock's shoulder. "Now, Lynn, I must ask you something: Did you do any sports or any other physically demanding activity before challenging me?"

The athlete then thought about it, and while she couldn't recall if she did any specific sports, she was her usual energetic self around the house for most of the day. "I guess?"

"No wonder there was no way you could compete with me," Rita sighed. "Lynn, you should know by now that exercising right after doing sports or stuff like that is a bad idea."

"Well, what did you expect me to do?!" the jock snapped, folding her arms. "You were exercising without me, and that really hurt me! I just wanted to prove to you that I could be your exercise partner! That you didn't have to do it alone! That I-"

Rita shut up Lynn with one finger. "Okay, how about we do this: We'll do this exercising deal some other time, when we're both better prepared, mentally and physically, alright?"

"That sounds good," Lynn grinned. "And next time, I'm certainly going to beat you!"

The brunette separated from the blonde, and as she ran off to relax for once, Rita chuckled and said:

"We'll see about that."