Eight years ago today, 19 Jan 2005, I stepped inside Hampshire Fitness for the first time and signed up to become a member.  The next day I tried out one of their Precor machines, and on Friday, 21 Jan, I attended my first group exercise class.  Since then, I’ve renewed my membership every year and faithfully attended classes, two or three times a week.  The health club is located in Amherst right off Route 9, which I drive to and from work, so it’s been easy for me to incorporate structured exercise into my daily routines.

It was not always so.  At the beginning of spring semester of my senior year in college, I began to swim regularly, though for only a half mile, which is 36 laps.  After I graduated and started working, I continued to swim whenever I could, first when I was working at ASU, then at MIT.  I also jogged and biked a bit in those years, though quite sporadically.  Then after I earned a graduate degree and started working at Harvard, I began to swim regularly, meaning every day, seven days a week.  I loved Blodgett Pool, which to this day I think is the most beautiful pool I’ve ever swum in.  Harvard has another pool in the IAB, which I also swam in occasionally, and when I took evening courses at Northeastern, my student ID card allowed me to swim in their pool.  After I left Harvard, I wanted to continue swimming, so I joined the Boston Health and Swim Club and rode the T out to their facility on Comm Ave.

But life goes on, and after almost eight years in Boston, I moved to Western Mass.  I got a job at UMass, and in order to continue swimming, I bought an athletic sticker every semester and then used it regularly at the pools in Curry Hicks, Boyden Gym, and even at Totman (which was way on the other side of campus from where I worked).  I also found an athletic club, Northampton Nautilus (now doing business as the Northampton Athletic Club) within walking distance of my home and began to work out there in the evenings and on weekends.  At the Nautilus facility, I concentrated on weight training and began to build upper body strength.  My goal was to be able to bench-press my own weight, but I never came close.

Life events again interrupted this even flow of days, and after nearly six years in the Pioneer Valley, I moved again, this time to Central Mass.  I quickly found another health club, Guaranteed Fitness, right on Route 9 in Spencer, exactly half way between home and work, and I continued weight training there.  But after a few years at this location, the club owners decided to move the operation to a building on Route 31, and it was no longer convenient for me to work out at their club.  So I moved on, first to Paxton Sports Centre on Route 122, and then to Pine Ridge Country Club, off Route 56 in Oxford.  Unfortunately, both health clubs soon went out of business, and I wondered what I would do.  By a stroke of luck, at that exact time, Clark University, where I was working, opened a brand new Fitness Center, and I began to work out there, mostly after 5 pm, but sometimes on Saturdays as well, if I was in town.

I stayed at Clark for six years, then took another IT job in West Boylston.  Now what will I do, I asked myself.  Again, I was in luck:  I found the Worcester Fitness health club on Grove Street, a ten-minute drive from my office and on my way home.  I joined immediately.  But after a couple of years, I began to feel bored with the stepper and lifting weights, so I asked a personal trainer about the exercise classes.  She encouraged me to try a class, so with much trepidation, I did, and the rest is history.  It turned out that I loved group exercise classes, and I became devoted to them.  That was over a decade ago, and I’m as enthusiastic as the day I started.

After almost six years at Fallon, I changed jobs again and found myself once again working in the Pioneer Valley, hence my foray into the Hampshire Athletic Club, the event I introduced at the beginning of this post.  Eight years down the line, I am still attending exercise classes on average three days a week.  Over the years, I’ve done a lot of Step Aerobics, Triple Play and Double Play, Kick Boxing, Stretch and Strengthen, Intervals, CardioPump, Power Hour, and even one or two Spin, Yoga, Qi Gong, Zumba, and Pilates classes.  This semester, I’ll be doing Double Step on Mon, Kick Boxing on Tues, Boot Camp on Thurs, and Body Sculpt on Fri, all scheduled from 5:35-6:35.

My annual membership fee at HAC is still $500, which has held steady through new ownership and some major upgrades to the facility (newly renovated locker rooms — yay).  Quintessential Yankee that I am, I’ve calculated that this works out to be about $4 per class.  So what’s my point?  A structured exercise program, one which you can commit to, is well worth it.  In my case, fortunately, every one of my many fitness instructors was terrific.  I can’t name them all, but here’s a huge shout-out to all of them collectively: “Thank you for all you do!”

I do believe that if I hadn’t kept at it (even if all I did was walk on weekends), I would already have passed on (yes, I mean died).  If more people convinced themselves that they’d be better off with regular exercise, I think we’d be a much healthier society.  So take it from me, and get moving!