The story below is a preview from our January/February 2018 issue. For the full story Subscribe today, view our FREE interactive digital edition or download our FREE iOS app!
Your new workout routine doesn’t have to fade away by mid-February. Here’s how some Roanokers stay in shape all year, every year. It’s not rocket science.
Dan Smith
The gym rats just roll their eyes. Every January, the routine is the same: an influx of eager, smiling, chatty 40-year-old (on average) newbies looking for a return of that 22-year-old waistline with six-pack abs. The second week of January is the busiest time of the year for health clubs, but nearly 80 percent of the eager beavers are gone by the second week of February, according to quora.com research.
The gyms are up on the numbers and know that 18 percent of those buying new memberships will use them. In fact, The Washington Post says the $30 billion industry counts on that, selling far more memberships than capacity would allow if memberships were used. About half the consistent 50 million members of gyms in the U.S. work out 100 times a year (a little more than every third day). A few—12.5 percent—take advantage of one of the 300,000 personal trainers in the U.S., but that can be expensive and expense is a major consideration. Gym memberships go for $40-$50 a month in general, the personal trainer costing extra.
Says Gail Wimmer Nordhouse of Roanoke, who recently turned 59, “I’m physically active but lately it feels as if age is attempting a hostile takeover of my body. This is why I’m working with a trainer. So, I wouldn’t say I’m settled into a routine. Actually, I feel that I need to mix it up and give my routine a good shake up.”
The gym is not the only way to stay in shape, but memberships often announce to the world, “I’m shaping up.” Gym or no gym, Roanokers who have been successful in their efforts go about it in a variety of ways.
A range of Roanokers with different goals, competencies, schedules and commitment levels took a few minutes to share their roads to success as the new year approached.
Lisa Stauffer, a 50-year-old former bank, real estate, communications and insurance executive is a former gymnast who recently rediscovered her passion for working out. That led her to take classes and become a trainer because staying in shape had become “hard with so many things pulling at my schedule … Exercise helps with who I am and I need that release, otherwise I feel like ‘arrrrgh!’”
She now teaches/works out five days a week for about 12 hours and is eager to take on more classes as she earns experience. “It takes more effort now as I age,” she says, “and it starts in the kitchen” with a healthy diet. Sticking to a routine, she says, must involve doing “something you enjoy and preferably with a friend or in a class, which has a social aspect. You need to make it a priority part of your schedule.”
Bonnie Pritchett, a retired special education teacher in Roanoke and Franklin Counties, has found that exercising in class has given her a brand new focus on her life. “When I was teaching,” she says, “I worked 6:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. every day for 35 years. I never married or had children and I had no life outside work. When I retired, I discovered Green Ridge [Recreation Center in Roanoke County] and I’m there now five days a week, 8 a.m.-noon working out and taking classes. I wanted to get my body and my heart in shape, but I joined partly for the mental part. I meet people who become my friends and it is social for me. We have lunch and sometimes travel together. I try to meet two or three people a day.”
Mike Hamlar, a 35-year-old funeral home executive who has a TV show and is involved in mergers-acquisitions, is a former college football player who saw his waistline expanding and got back to work. “After football [at Wake Forest],” he says, “I didn’t get to bench press 460 pounds or squat 600 any more.” When his weight began climbing, he started walking. “I didn’t realize how much impact that simple exercise could have,” he says. A year ago, he ran for Virginia State Senate and “lost 20 pounds knocking on doors. There’s a lot of walking involved in that. I get the same feeling walking as I did working out, though I still enjoy lifting occasionally. Muscle memory is very real, so it’s not like starting over.”
His walking involves a 10,000-steps-a-day minimum, usually in his neighborhood. “The big thing,” he says, “is eating. I have to stop when I’m full. I got up to 250 a few years ago [from playing weight at linebacker of 225] and I concentrated on getting down to where I should be. I grew up in a diabetic family, so I know what healthy eating is.”
Exercising with his wife and three children is an additional plus, since it helps to put a priority where it needs to be.
Vivian de los Santos, a sales exec at Optical Cable Corporation, has never had a weight problem in her 47 years, but she wasn’t a trained athlete, either. She began exercising regularly “so I could sleep. I went to classes after work to rest my mind. It was easier when I was single [she’s married and has two young boys now]. When I moved here [from Panama], I got no exercise. I got married and divorced and exercise took my mind off it. It has always been mental for me.”
Her exercise routine changes “to what I want” occasionally and lately it has meant being a member of the Roanoke Valley’s roller derby team, the oldest woman on the team. “I’m competitive with myself,” she emphasizes. “I want to see how far I can go with this body. I need to have some doubt about whether I can do it” and then she attacks. “Derby was hard for me,” but she’s been a tri-athlete (“I was so scared”) and has run half marathons. “I need a goal and I ask myself, ‘Is it true that hard work pays off?’”
She combines yoga and swimming with all the other activities, using “what I have to the max” and even takes advice from Pat Leonard, OCC’s certified trainer. Leonard, who is 47, sees the “No. 1 issue” in exercising “is a lack of time. Many people simply don’t make time, though it’s interesting what they have time for. I try to be a good example here” and she uses the cafe area at the company to demonstrate good food choices.
Being in shape, she says, “has to be about lifestyle and not a ‘diet.’ About 80 percent [of weight problems] are about what goes through your lips. Food should not be a substitute for pleasure because what it does to the body is not pleasurable.” Leonard weighed 200 pounds when she finally got the message. She’s a tall trim woman now with a scale in the workout room at OCC. Taking control “is like addiction recovery,” she says. “You gotta be willing … It’s total lifestyle.”
Woods-Rogers attorney Victor Cardwell and his wife, Jo, work out regularly together. He’s 56 and a former defensive back at the University of Virginia and she is 44 and an RN and former high school soccer player, who has run a marathon and several half marathons. She regularly runs 10-15 miles a week and together they “do a lot of walking.” On a recent beach trip, they walked abut 10 miles a day for a week.
“I want us to walk when we retire,” says Victor. They do spin classes at the Roanoke Athletic Club and they lift and walk the stairs. “All aging bodies slow down,” says Jo. “Metabolism slows and you have to fight through it.”
“I like to work out,” says Victor, “and I’ve never stopped doing it. I keep two gym bags in the back of my car.” He also notices changes with age. “Five to 10 pounds is not so easy to drop now,” he says.
Victor learned early on, as a young lawyer at Woods Rogers, that working out was a priority. Former WR partner Bill Poff “told me to put workouts on my calendar and stick to it,” he says. Jo says that working out together is a solid incentive. “If I didn’t have a partner, it would be easy to walk away.”
On those days when full workouts are simply impossible, says Jo, “it is important to do something. If you have 15 or 20 minutes, you can do 30 flights of stairs or run on the treadmill. I like the small successes. It starts with a single lap around the track and works up to multiple times.”
“When I met Jo,” says Victor, “she was running 10 miles regularly” and that “sold me on her.” If love is not an incentive, what is?
Anne Lavery is a tiny 69-year-old trainer who home-schooled seven children and held a regular job for many years. “We were always on a budget, so walking was my go-to exercise, usually with kids in tow,” she says. “Of course, dancing in the house to music was always an on-going exercise: Clean, dance, cook, dance. Music makes life easier.”
She joined a gym 23 years ago and became an instructor a decade ago, incorporating “cardio exercise and weight-bearing exercise into my weekly routine.” One of her classes involves 1,000 weight-lifting repetitions in an hour.
It is, she says, “important to set aside a time for exercise. It is important for your physical and emotional well-being. Start slowly” with the advice of your physician. If you use a gym, “start with a beginner or low impact class. If you can only do 10 or 15 minutes, that is fine. Eventually, you will be able to exercise for a longer period of time as you become stronger.”
As you get older, she says, “Always remember, age is a state of mind … Put on that music from when you were younger and rejuvenate yourself. Exercise is good for body, mind, and soul."
... for more from our January/February 2018 issue, Subscribe today, view our FREE interactive digital edition or download our FREE iOS app!