Ageless Fitness:
Help Me Into the Hot Tub, Sonny!

by Sherry Perkins

At the beginning of last summer, I decided that since I wasn’t finding a job I might as well spend my time getting fit and losing weight. For years I’d been a member of Samena, a swim club close to my house. Dutifully, I’d paid my $54 dues each month, but I never went there. (A very unusual story, right?) It was only about three blocks from my house, had two lovely pools, one indoor and one out, lots of exercise equipment, countless classes, and really nice people. At one point I decided that I could no longer afford this useless extravagance, but the idea that I would then not have any pool to go to, should I happen to have the sudden desire to swim, was almost suffocating. Like the idea of living away from the ocean when you’ve always lived at the beach. (Even if you never went there, just the idea that it was there was a comfort that kept you from moving away.)

So, in late May, I got out my Samena summer catalog and my turquoise highlighter. After highlighting half the classes in the catalog, I finally settled on three: Ageless Fitness, from 8:00 to 9:00 AM on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; Deep Water Exercise, from 9:15 to 10:15 AM on Tuesday and Thursday; and Yoga, from 9:15 to 10:45 AM on Friday, right after Ageless Fitness. The next day, I showed up at Samena and wrote out a big check to catch me up for dues and sign me up for the classes I wanted. I was committed!

You can assume that anything with the term "ageless" in it is for old people. While we’re at it, we might as well digress and define "old" and a couple of other terms we use for people who are no longer young. You would think the progression would be old, older, oldest. But my perception is that it’s really older, old, elderly. To me, an older person is someone in his or her fifties or early sixties. An old person is someone in his or her late sixties or early seventies. An elderly person is someone in his or her late seventies, eighties, or nineties. All in all, however, I sincerely believe that "getting up there in age" is really more about how a person feels, looks, moves, dresses, and even thinks than one’s chronological age. I think we call people "older" when they simply are no longer young, and there’s a sensitive, respectful sound to the term. And those in their late seventies to nineties are respected because they have lived so long. The ones in the middle are simply old. There’s no particular respect involved, at least in the term "old" itself. That’s where I am. I’m too old to be called "older," and too young to be thought of as "elderly."

On the first Monday morning, I joined the others for Ageless Fitness. There were about ten of us in the class, two men and eight women. We sat in chairs in a circle and followed the young Marianne’s directions. We put on leg weights and did leg lifts. We tied thick, rubber bands to the backs of our chairs, and pulled the ends to our chests. "Oh, dear," I thought, "this is just a tad too easy, but it can’t hurt me." It was a moderately decent workout. Then Wednesday and Friday, we didn’t have chairs. We sat on, and did all sorts of other obscene things with, big balance balls. This was much more difficult, and these people were able to do everything without any problem. You can either sit on a balance ball — or not. There is no graceful halfway. I discovered that, though I still had a lot of flexibility, my balance sucked and my strength was shot. I would have to work in this class, after all. One of the members, Ruth, is also in my book club. She’s been coming to the class for about four years. She’s in a lot better shape than I am, and she might even be older than I am, though she certainly is not elderly. This is a long-term kind of thing.

Tuesday, I showed up for my Deep Water Exercise class. I’ve loved to swim all my life, and was looking forward to it. But this class is not about swimming. It’s about wearing various flotation devices (belts, gloves, ankle floats, and water "weights"), and maintaining a vertical position in deep water, while doing cardiovascular and resistance exercises. About four of us were new to the class that day, and altogether we comprised a group of twelve to fifteen women. I told Carol, the teacher, that I’m very buoyant (doesn’t fat float?) and probably didn’t need a belt. So she outfitted me with a pair of webbed gloves, a pair of floats that strapped around my ankles, and gave me a pair of what looked like Styrofoam dumbbells, for later. I got into the pool in deep water and nearly drowned! The floats on my ankles made my feet pop up to the surface, throwing my upper body either backward or forward onto my face, but always into someone who was only trying to get a decent workout. Apologizing repeatedly, I felt like an out-of-control jellyfish. Each time, the teacher came over (you can’t say she swam over because she was walking or jogging in deep water, like I was supposed to be doing) and said, "Bend your knee and press down! Now bend your other knee and press down!" This took all my strength, but when I followed her directions, I was able to hold both feet down for a couple of minutes. Then when I’d start to relax, up my feet would pop and I’d start thrashing around again. Finally, "we" decided that the ankle floats were too buoyant for me and we took them off. The rest of the class went much better.

Afterwards, several women came up and told me that it had taken them several months before they were strong enough to hold the ankle floats down. One woman, Dawn, had a pair of floats at home that she’d used in the beginning because they weren’t quite as (I keep wanting to say "heavy," but it’s just the opposite) buoyant as the black ones furnished by Samena. She brought them to the next class for me, and they were perfect. Eventually, I found some at Sylvia’s Swimwear, that are also perfect. They’re a sort of Styrofoam expandable shoe with a rubber strap that goes around your heel.

Since I’ve found the right combination of floats for my feet and hands, I’ve had nothing but fun in this class. We jog as fast as we can and get our heart rates up, then stretch out in a slow, high-hurdles-stride to relax. We do curls with the water weights, jumping jacks, and all manner of other movements that you could never do on dry land. The summer classes are held in the outdoor pool, and it must look funny to see us out there in a circle with our sunglasses, visors, and hats, working our butts off, literally.

(Mark, a friend of mine, worked as a lifeguard at Samena when he was in high school. Because the water exercise classes tend to attract mostly women and many of us are not slim, he began calling the classes the water buffalo classes—until a member overheard him. Luckily, she thought it was hilarious, and told the other members, who all began calling it the water buffalo class. She turned out to be his future mother-in-law.)

Friday came around, and after Ageless Fitness I stayed for yoga class. Now, I need to say that years ago, when I was in my forties, in the Late Pleistocene, I took two advanced yoga classes a week and taught a beginner class. You should have seen my headstand! So I was looking forward to getting back into it. But it was another rude awakening: there were usually five people in the class, not always the same people, mostly women, occasionally one man, but they were really, really strong! Our teacher, Elizabeth, was eight months pregnant! I can imagine she will have a spectacular delivery. Again, I had the flexibility, which was at least something, but had (I felt) virtually no strength and no balance. Thank heavens yoga is about balance, so after you work very hard on one pose, your next pose is a resting, stretching pose. I lived for those resting poses. I worked very hard. Sweat poured off of me. I piled all of my muscles onto my bones. I let them melt off again. But there’s no making up for lost time. Elizabeth was very creative in thinking up things for me to do while the others were working on their handstands. I staggered out of there the first Friday, and went back each week with fear and hope. I began to see progress at the end of ten sessions, when Elizabeth left to have her baby. I hope she comes back in the fall. I know I’ll be there.

Deep Water is out for the month of August. On the last day we had a potluck, sat around on the upper deck in our towels and wet suits, and talked about grandchildren and our lives in general. It was nice to be with people my own age. Most of my friends are at least ten years younger than I am. I see them looking at me thinking, "That could be me in ten years." And when new people I meet find out my age, they’re amazed. I’ve always felt a little smug about this. Now the smugness is gone. These people are in much better shape than I am, and many are older than I am. I’d better get busy.

There’s another nice thing that happens when you stay committed to a health club. Because I’m a regular now, for the first time I feel at home at my club. I leave there with my soggy towel and suit in my faded bag, ready to face the day, with a smile of recognition for the young mothers bringing their kids for lessons, and for the teenagers hanging out by the soda machine.

So what are my results? Well, I am stronger, and I have much more energy on the days I exercise. Have I lost any weight? Yes, several pounds, several times. I seem to lose four pounds one week, and gain five the next. This has a lot more to do with food than the workouts. I do go out of there famished, but I try to stick to salads and lots of protein. One woman in Deep Water told me she’d lost four inches on each thigh since she’d started the class, and she’s really not dieting. She looks great, but she’s been in the class for over a year. So I guess it’s a long, slow, steady process. I’m ready.

Ageless fitness is good, and no one’s had to help me into the hot tub, so far.

Sherry has been a tech writer and has dabbled in short story and essay writing as well as environmental writing. She participates in workshops, classes, and conferences.