Fit Notes New Hampshire

Staff Profile: Denise Chatel

Christine — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:59:11 +0000

Fitness Instructor Denise Chatel teaches fitness classes four nights a week, plus every Saturday morning, in addition to her job as an office manager for the Jaffrey Police Department. With a 14-year career in law enforcement, teacher was not something she ever expected to add to her resume.

Back in 2003 and 2004, she was taking Step classes at a fitness center in Jaffrey, and Joan Ahern approached her about teaching classes. Denise says she had never seen herself as an instructor, but Joan mentored her through the certification process with the Aerobics and Fitness Association of America, and she got certified in 2005. She has been teaching ever since.“Becoming an instructor was a breath of fresh air,” Denise says. “It was totally different from anything I’d done and took me out of my comfort zone. I really learned something about myself. I like the challenge.”She became certified in teaching Step, Turbo Kick and basic Pilates,and soon after began teaching at other fitness centers in the area. She still teaches elsewhere, but she signed on with the Wellness Center in 2007.

“The members here really make the class. They create the energy,” she said. “They look forward to class and that helps me look forward to it.”

At the moment, she’s teaching Circuit Burn and Step classes on Wednesday and Turbokick on alternate Saturday mornings.

She loves teaching Step because, as she says, “It’s more fun than being on a treadmill or an elliptical. Like other cardio classes, class participation helps. It’s great music and fun. It’s like you’re not working out, you’re just having a great time with a fun group of people.” She adds, “My group tends to hoot and holler.”

Her Turbokick class is designed to build strength and provide a cardio workout. “We do intervals-punching and then a cardio drill,” she said. “We go constantly. It involves more of the upper body than a lot of other classes.” In Circuit Burn, she keeps the classes varied by using hand weights, resistance bands, weight bars and more. “Some days are more intense than others, but we’re looking for whole body conditioning,” Denise said.

Denise explains that when newcomers attend class, she’s sure to break down each move for them, explain it well, and then assure that person he or she should just do what they can. In Step class, they shouldn’t worry about coordination.

With her full-time job in addition to teaching, Denise has some pretty busy days. Her husband, Lou, is chief of security at the hospital, and Denise explains she wouldn’t be able to do what she does without his support. “I often don’t get home until 7 at night, and he’s totally cool with that,” she said. “He has cooked dinner and laid out the sports page for me. I’m very lucky.”

Member Profile: Carter Judkins

Christine — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 22:12:56 +0000

Carter Judkins admits to being a little bit addicted to exercise. Well, maybe not addicted. She just knows that on a day when she’s super busy and stressed, even a half hour workout on the treadmill gets her to a better mental state.

“It just makes me exhale,” she says. “I seem to reach center by exercising. I can just tell when my body needs it.”Carter’s been a member for about 5 years, and says she has really had a lifetime of fitness activity. For the first 20 years of her life, however, that activity was centered around ballet-a real passion for her and one she could have pursued further if she chose.”The ballet had a huge effect on my body,” she said. “It just molded the way I move and work.”Though she no longer does ballet, she enjoys the Wellness Center’s yoga and Pilates classes-”It’s all the same core work.”In her late 40s, Carter decided to take her love of hiking to a new level and committed herself to hiking the 4000-foot peaks for which New Hampshire is so widely known. At that time, she only had 13 of the 48 total summits left to climb. Five years ago, in the year in which she turned 50, she completed the last one on the list–Mount Mariah, a hike that offers great views of Mount Washington the whole way.Hiking is a warm weather passion for her, but even during the summer months, Carter finds she likes to do some routines at the Wellness Center. When she first joined, she wasn’t certain she would enjoy the membership, but she soon realized she could exercise even when winter brought the early darkness. She loves having the yoga, Pilates and Zumba classes as options.Ideally, on a typical day, she gets in 20 minutes of exercise on three different machines-a treadmill, a stairmaster and an elliptical machine.”The goal is always just to get my heart rate up and get sweaty,” she said. “If I can do that, I’m happy, even if I just have time for 20 minutes worth.”

She says she loves being able to keep her core strong, and especially likes the Wellness Center on freezing cold days.”The facility is so fresh and clean and it always just feels new!”

Member Profile: Howard Mansfield & Sy Montgomery

Christine — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:37:09 +0000

Wellness Center membership is a couple’s affair for Sy Montgomery and Howard Mansfield, two Hancock residents who became members the minute the Center was opened more than 11 years ago.Howard’s occupational hazard as a writer, as it is for so many people, is sitting all day. He generally spends his day at two or three different desks, but knows his Wellness Center work will keep him from getting too “creaky.” Ultimately, he said, he wants to continue to be able to “tie his sneakers and then to stand up.”

Between the two of them, they’ve written so many books that it’s hard for them to recall the exact number. Howard concentrates on architecture, preservation and history, with “In the Memory House” as one of his recent titles. He thinks his total is eight books on his own; many more in collaboration with others. (See http://www.howardmansfield.com)

Sy’s latest book total is 15, with a couple more on their way soon. (See http://symontgomery.com/) When you take a look at her list of titles, you’ll understand why this author says she must stay fit for her job. She’s been known to swim with piranhas, ride elephants, deal with high altitudes, and the lowlands of the desert in her research treks to write about the wildlife that fascinates her and her readers. “It’s just part of my job,” she said. “I was delighted when the place opened.”

Howard and Sy are also the proud owners of border collie, Sally, who requires them to stay fit because she just loves to hike and kayak.

Sy says she just loves the fitness classes and gravitates toward the fast-paced, dancing ones, such as Zumba. “For me it’s like dancing in the basement with your best girlfriends,” she said. “Your friends are there. You feel like you’re 14. The instructors are just the best.”

While Sy has tried just about every type of class offered, Howard is a devotee of the fitness machines and works with one of the Wellness Center’s personal trainers to change things up every couple of months. He really enjoyed the rowing machines to loosen up painfully tight hamstrings. Currently he uses the elliptical machine and runs on the treadmills, but his favorite is the video-equipped stationary bike that lets him ride a virtual course and compete with others.

Both Howard and Sy try to make it into the Wellness Center at least three times a week and they change it around in the summer when the weather’s nice. When Sy sustained an ankle injury out walking Sally in Hancock one spring, she ended up on crutches. Then she enlisted two of the Wellness Center’s personal trainers to get her back on track.

She need to be in top condition for her next adventure–searching for snow leopards in the Altai Mountains of the Gobi of Mongolia, and it entailed hiking every day, all day, sometimes to 11,000 feet, over knife-edged ridges. “Getting that ankle to recover was almost a full-time job,” she said. The trek ended in her book “Saving the Ghost of the Mountain.”

Howard, 54, and Sy, 53, both find the inspiration to stay fit from other Wellness Center members and those out in the community. Howard tells the story of watching a 70 year-old strap on his ice skates and tackle the ice on Dublin Lake last winter. “I want to be that guy on the ice,” he said.

Sy wants to keep doing what she’s doing forever. “There are so many animals and so little time,” she explains. “Ultimately, I need to get to the naked mole rat in Namibia.”

The Wellness Center provides a great connection to the community in a profession that can otherwise be pretty isolating.

Sy says, “Everybody here, from the person at the desk to the person who cleans the locker room, makes you feel so cared for and they’re so friendly…”

Howard interrupts Sy, “And the locker room doesn’t smell like a locker room. And we get to meet and talk to an awful lot of fascinating people.”

Staff Profile: Laurie Boyle

Christine — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 20:20:08 +0000

Laurie Boyle is a Wellness Center massage therapist who knows that everything is connected, especially where our bodies are concerned. Certified in “structural integration,”she has special training in understanding the muscles and their alignment.

She completed massage school at the New Hampshire Institute of Therapeutic Arts in 2009,and completed her externship at the Riverview Mill in Wilton. She got interested in the field after she herself needed a therapist to help her heal after she had surgery for a torn ACL. “I just decided I have to be in this field,” she said. “The body needs help to heal and I just wanted to know all about the knee and anatomy and everything.”

After her training, she had a friend who was going on maternity leave and needed a fill-in at her massage practice. Things just fell into place for Laurie after that. She began at the Wellness Center in December of 2009, and sees clients there on Friday and Saturday mornings and the occasional Wednesday.

Laurie’s training included work in deep tissue massage and scar tissue management, which led to her interest in the body’s fascia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascia. Fascia is the focus of any massage therapist who focuses on structural integration.It examines the ways the body is connected from head to foot. She found her training to be a real eye-opener. It helped her understand that a person presenting with back pain may have a problem not connected with the back at all.

The training demonstrated how pain in the back could indicate a problem in the legs, or pain in the shoulder could be related to the hips. “At first it sounded like hocus-pocus,” she said, but she learned to recognize the blocked areas in the fascia and how things are interconnected.

When her clients come in for a massage at the Wellness Center, she wants to give them whatever it is they need at that moment. “If they’ve had a heck of a week, I just want to get them to relax,” she says. “I check in on their pressure points and I might then spend more time on their neck, or just do their feet or whatever it is.”

She can tell a lot by examining someone’s posture. She’ll find people come in with a significant tilt to their shoulder and they’re wondering why their shoulder hurts. “Then I find that if I attempt that posture, my left lower back hurts,” she said. “The body speaks and it just shows us something is wrong.”

Clients get to her by calling the Wellness Center Member Services desk and describing their problem or what type of massage they’re interested in. She’ll see a lot of clients who complain of chronic pain. Plantar fascitis is another common problem, which she deals with by working on the entire back side of the body.

“The members here come in with such an attitude of ‘Here I am! I want to take care of my body!’ and I see they want to work out and be well. There’s a real awareness to it and I love it,” she said. “We build up a trust together and they work with me to tell me what they need.”

Often she won’t really know if she’s been successful with a client. But the next thing she knows, someone new is coming in, having been recommended by her previous client.

“That’s how I find out that they feel like they’re ‘cured’ and have recommended me,” she said. “I love that.”

Member Profile: Audrey Carvalho

Christine — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 20:19:45 +0000

Someone told Audrey Carvalho recently that she was not going to get the senior discount she was due because, well, she just had too much energy to be an actual senior.

“Too much energy” is somewhat of an understatement. Not only does this long-time Wellness Center member attend three different types of fitness classes during the week, she also finds time for a weekly two- to five-mile hike with her hiking group, attending two different book clubs, organizing monthly lunches with her Wellness Center water aerobics pals, and helping plan the summer Lyceum programs at the Unitarian Church in Peterborough.

At 75, she’s diagnosed with arthritis, osteoporosis and diabetes, and she claims that she has broken just about every bone in her body. But, with medication and exercise, her bone density is back up just about to where it should be. Not long ago, a knee x-ray showed she had bone rubbing against bone, but the muscle strength in her legs, built up with 10-plus years of water aerobics, has kept her from feeling a lot of pain because of it. “My muscles are just holding me up,” she explains.

She’s a regular at the Monday-Wednesday-Friday water aerobics classes with Patty Potter, and says what she really likes about that class is the music. “I love anything with a beat and if she’s not playing the right music, I let her know!”

The right music, she says, includes Elton John and The Bee Gees, for example. Audrey says it’s the music that draws her to the new Saturday morning class as well, Move and Groove, led by Anna Rogers.
Before coming to the Wellness Center, Audrey says, “I had such huge problems. I had a brace on my knee, I could hardly walk. I had necrosis of the bone and it was painful for me to just stand up. I was a mess.”

She’s always been active, but when her knee first started giving her problems, she enrolled in a water aerobics class at Crotched Mountain. Now, with almost 20 years of water fitness classes behind her, she really knows it’s made a difference in her life.

“All of my aunts and my mother were bent over because they had osteoporosis,” Audrey says, demonstrating how they walked. “I started to get concerned about my posture, too, and three or four years ago I enrolled in the Osteoporosis Pilates class.”

Audrey knows her stuff. “I read everything and I listen to NPR, and I was aware that osteoperosis could be a problem for me,” she said. “I just talked to my doctor and the pilates class seemed right.”

She’s had Type 1 diabetes for 45 years and calls herself lucky. “I have feeling in my toes and feet and I have no eye problems,” she said. “I’ve always made sure I eat right and exercise.”

Last week her hiking group—all women because that’s the way they like it—climbed Pack Monadnock in Peterborough, and she says they’ve gone all over the Monadnock region. “It’s more than the hike,” she says. “We support each other, exchange recipes, help each other out when we need it,” she says. “And four of us in the group are breast cancer survivors.”

With her “lousy bones” and the bad knee, Audrey says she’s likely to need surgery on the knee one day, but she expects she’ll recover quickly because of her muscles. “If you’ve got the muscles, you can weather the storms, and storms you’ll get the older you get,” she says. “You just have to appreciate the good things like finding mushrooms on the path or the beautiful sunshine out there.”

Audrey’s breast cancer was discovered about 10 years ago, very early, and she only needed radiation afterwards.

She expects she’ll keep her membership up at the Wellness Center until forced to move somewhere else. She’s got her name in at RiverMead.
“Being here, I’ve expanded my geographic circle of friends,” she says. “It spans all ages because of my connections here. I have a much wider group of friends than those who just sit at home,” she said. “I can come here, find out who has had a baby, or whatever.”

“I’m not a sit around and do nothing kind of person.”