Flunking Geri-Fit Class

Notes from the Prairie: I Wonder #30

Photo by Centre for Ageing Better on Unsplash

[Today I’m pleased to offer this guest post by author Carol Van Klompenburg.]

Wearing a T-shirt and a healthy glow, Vivian Rippentrop floats into a Pella library conference room to meet me. She says she came directly from her library-sponsored Geri-Fit class.

When I wonder about the class, she explains. The class is for older adults to exercise twice a week with video instruction.

“Does the class build strength?” I ask.

“Oh, yes,” she says. “We also work on balance.”

“That sounds great!” I respond. “I walk 30 minutes a day, but I haven’t been doing strength or balance work. I need that.”

I am fairly fit for my age, I think. However, after several years as the oldest woman on the pickleball court, I quit the sport when I noticed my shrinking sense of balance.

My leg strength is still sufficient to rise easily from the high toilet seat in our bathroom, but rising from shorter public toilets now requires extra effort.

I wonder if I need preventative maintenance. I also wonder if I am too fit for a senior citizen class. I decide to try it.

I call the library to register, and the following Monday morning I join the class. After all my walking, I’m sure leg strength won’t be an issue. However, my upper body has always been weak. Instead of dumbbells, I bring two eight-ounce tomato paste cans. I don’t want sore arms.

A lean woman with a gray ponytail leads the exercises for a group of people on the screen. They look so ancient! I decide the video was filmed at a nursing home.

As on the screen, each of us in the room has a chair. A chair! My exercise classes in previous decades were chairless. Does the instructor think I’m too weak to get up from the floor?

I frown and sit. Vivian loans me an elastic band for warm-up stretches. When we start lifting weights, I use my half-pound cans. I easily do 12 repetitions. And then another 12. We work our shoulders, biceps, and triceps. I decide I will use Vivian’s weights for the next class. My arms are stronger than I realized.

The instructor tells us to rest and drink water. I am not thirsty or tired. I obey, though. I’ve read that as the years go by, older people don’t always sense their need for hydration.

Grasping our chairbacks for balance, we alternate between standing flat-footed and on tiptoe. My need for that chair surprises me.

We grasp the chairbacks again for a set of 12 lunges for each leg. We rest and repeat. I sink deep for each lunge.

Then we do two new sets of 12: rising from and sitting down on the chair. I rise completely on each repetition. Some class members rise just six inches, aided by pushing their hands against their chair seats. Near me, a woman collapses in her chair after just six reps.

I regret my comparisons and return my focus to myself. On the final few lifts, my upper thighs sting, but I push to a full stand each time.

After class, I tell Vivian, “It went fine. Rising from the chair was the hardest. My legs feel a little watery.”

One classmate assures me, “Leg strength grows pretty fast, though.”

Vivian adds, “All your walking probably helps you.” I nod and smile. She also offers to loan me a pair of weights. My small cans were too light; I accept.

My thighs murmur objections as I sit down in my car.

When I begin to rise from our extra-tall toilet two days later, nothing happens. My legs refuse to raise my torso. I try a second time.

Nothing.

I command my legs to straighten, and my thighs flame. I rise one inch and plop back.

I wonder about sliding to the floor and rising from my hands and knees. Nope. Don’t think it’ll work.

I wonder how long I’ll sit here. I remember an oft-told family tale. My grandmother was once trapped on her toilet for hours. Her 70-year-old daughter finally arrived and rescued her.

I gaze at the cabinet on my left. Maybe my arms can help out. I place both palms on the counter above the toilet tissue roll. Pushing with my arms and burning thighs, I inch my torso up.

Success!

Thighs still flaming, I limp to the medicine cabinet, swallow two extra-strength Tylenol capsules and wobble toward my office.

I learn from WebMD that muscle pain often peaks the second or third day after a workout. The article promises I am not permanently maimed.

Aided by non-stop Tylenol doses, I join class again on Thursday. I vow to go easy on my legs.

I bring heavier weights: two 14.5-ounce cans of tomato soup. If my arms tolerate these, I will take Vivian up on her offer of two-pound dumbbells, now too light for her.

Bit by bit, perhaps I can increase my arm strength and still be able to tear four squares of toilet tissue from the roll as needed.

Carol Van Klompenburg writes a weekly Substack newsletter, Notes from the Prairie, where she often wonders about and researches aging. She also coordinates a Facebook group, Flourishing After 50, where she and other members post and respond to book snippets, uplifting quotations, questions, and humor.