Enhance Friendships

The program is called Enhance Fitness. I've been enrolled since August of 2010, just a month after I retired from Symetra Financial (formerly known as Safeco Life Insurance Company). Offered through the Northshore Senior Center (a nationwide model for senior centers all over the country), Enhance Fitness was billed as a class offering seniors specific aerobic, strength, and stretch exercises. Interestingly, the program was developed locally by Group Health Cooperative and University of Washington Medical School. Now it is a nationwide program that keeps seniors on their toes (and heels) in fifty states.

Not very flattering
but it's how it is

When I enrolled in the class, which was held in Kenmore, a neighboring suburb of Lake Forest Park where we then lived, the class was a modest size, maybe twelve people total (if everyone was present). We worked in a circle setup in a church basement. The classes were (and are) offered three times a week, year-round. Every four months participants are tested in three simple exercises to measure if they're getting stronger or, at least, holding their own.

It was through this class that I formed several deep and lasting friendships, and I've become acquainted with wonderful people, all of whom opened doors and windows into my satisfying life. As the years have gone by, instructors replaced instructors and word of mouth caused participants to join up (sometimes as many as twenty-five exercisers on a given day). And, yes, people do stop coming for myriad reasons, too, some of them forever--you get my drift.

After Jay and I moved from Lake Forest Park to Bothell, the commute to Kenmore in morning rush hour traffic became more and more challenging, so several years ago I transferred my enrollment to an Enhance Fitness class (same curriculum) closer to my home at the Northshore YMCA. So all these years later, I still attend EF. The different locale has allowed me to meet even more wonderful people--men and women--and the quality of instruction has endeared the YMCA to me. I just hit my twelfth anniversary as an Enhance Fitness participant!  I'd like to say I'm still going strong, but . . .

Without the permission of participants, I won't publish picture in which
individuals are recognizable--but you get the drift: Music, movement, sweat!

Recently I was tested--the same three measurements as always.  When I received my results this time, the test results for the entire twelve years were included!  Not too surprisingly,  I did get stronger on the tests the first ten years, but now . . . gulp. Yup, you guessed it: I'm beginning to show a decline. That's the difference between ages 65 and 77, like it or not.

I am determined to keep at it, however. I can only imagine how decrepit I would be without this class! And I would have never met the dozens upon dozens of wonderful people I exercise with.  I deeply appreciate all the benefits that Enhance Fitness has provided me over the years.