Did you resolve to get fit in 2018 but you’re having trouble getting motivated to go to the gym?
Consider Gloria Barkley.
She’s 91 years old.
She hits the machines at the fitness centre in the Poirier Sport and Leisure Complex three times a week.
And she has been doing it since she was 73.
The Statistic Brain Research Institute in California says working out more often is one of the top 10 New Year's resolutions. But according to a study by the University of Scranton, about 92% of resolutions fail, often by early February.
(Indeed, Kathleen Vincent of the city of Coquitlam said visits to the city’s two fitness centres drop by about 8% from January to February.)
Barkley said failure, for her, was not an option.
Her doctor had told her her hip joints were thinning and the only way to prevent them from getting worse was to get moving — or face surgery. A survivor of multiple brushes with cancer, she said she had no desire to go under the knife.
So Barkley hit the pool. But the chemicals in the water didn’t agree with her skin, so she migrated to the gym.
Barkley said the equipment was overwhelming at first.
“It was all so new to me,” she said. “It was a whole new world.”
With guidance from staff at the fitness centre, Barkley started by setting the weights on the various machines at five pounds and worked out for 20 minutes. Now her circuit lasts an hour and she can easily push 30 or 35 lb.
“You realize anybody can do it,” said Barkley, who supplements her gym workout by walking there and back from her home a few blocks away.
Her senior years have made her kind of the elder stateswoman of the fitness centre.
“I get a lot of attention because of my grey hair,” she said. “I feel like something of a freak.”
But Barkley’s proactive regime has worked. She has stayed out of the hospital, even after she took a tumble down the stairs at Poirier a few years back. Even her brain is sharper, as she often composes poetry as she works out.
Barkley only wishes more of her contemporaries would join her at the gym.
“I will show them the ropes,” she said. “They don’t understand what motivates me.”
