KILAUEA — Five women in their 60s sat on the floor of a private motorcycle garage-turned-gym and massaged lacrosse balls into the meat of their ankles and calves. It was an exercise meant to loosen up the muscles before all
KILAUEA — Five women in their 60s sat on the floor of a private motorcycle garage-turned-gym and massaged lacrosse balls into the meat of their ankles and calves.
It was an exercise meant to loosen up the muscles before all the lifting and pushing and jumping and rowing began.
“Does anybody wear high heels a lot for work?” asked Summer Noble, who co-owns Kilauea CrossFit with her husband Samuel, and was teaching Friday morning’s class.
A fit of laughter ripped through the gym.
“That was nice of you, Summer,” said Vicki Yarberry, a spunky 68-year-old from Hanalei who wore electric pink exercise pants and two gold bangles on her arm.
“It’s been a long time since those days,” chimed in Nancy Sullivan.
The 10 a.m. class at Kilauea CrossFit, 5 Kuhio Highway, has been taken over by a surprising demographic: Women in their 60s.
It started with a couple of younger CrossFit regulars who recruited their moms, knowing that the aging body can be quick to lose mobility and strength.
Alice Bryan, who is 68 and has osteoporosis, said her doctor recommended she take up CrossFit to help ward off bone fractures and back pain.
For Sullivan, 67, it was the physical effects of a career spent high flying on her feet.
“I was a flight attendant for 42 years,” said Sullivan, huffing after jumping rope 100 times. “My knees are gone, my feet are gone. I’ve had a knee replacement. CrossFit has saved me.”
CrossFit is a high paced, high intensity exercise style that mixes movements, often in the same workout. Participants combine gymnastic-style body weight movements, with old fashioned cardio or Olympic barbell lifts, often in the same workout. No two days are really the same. One day can be squatting with weights on your back, and the next can focused on pushing sleds or jumping over boxes.
It bills itself as functional fitness for anyone.
The 10 a.m. class is open to any of the gym’s 70 or so members, but for the last several months it has been almost exclusively attended by older women for the simple reason that they find solidarity in their shared mission to tackle later-in-life fitness head-on.
“It’s all about strength,” said Yarberry, who joined Kilauea CrossFit a month ago. “Strength, strength, strength. We can, we will and we do.”
The ladies complete the same endurance and strength-building workouts as attendees of the gym’s other classes, but they do it at their own pace.
Friday’s class began with leg swings and a jog, ramped up with barbell squats and rowing and finished with a few minutes on the floor with self-massaging rollers.
The workouts have become slightly tweaked to focus on what this niche of aging women need most, such as balance and agility.
“Whether you’re pulling weeds in the garden or reaching down to get something that spilled on the floor out of the fridge, these are basic movements we all have to do in our lives,” said Samuel Nobel, who designs sewage and drainage systems as a civil engineer when he’s not coaching a class. “Dead-lifting and squats and overhead pressing can help reinforce that.”
The women are quick to encourage one another — and to gently point out when one of them doesn’t complete all their repetitions. They say it’s their way of looking out for one another’s health.
“It’s a good group of ladies,” said Summer Noble, whose 68-year-old mother sometimes joins a class. “My mom lives on Oahu, but when she comes I have her jump in, too. She walks, but it’s really not enough. I keep telling her, ‘That’s good, but you’ve gotta do those squats!’”
