Warren Sponsler is one of a few Wellness Center charter members who got so into it that eventually he became a Wellness Center instructor.
“I was coming here every day any way and I really like doing it so I figured why not get paid for it?” he said. “But the pay was not the motivation. I thought it would be fun to do and it has proven to be so.”
Warren now teaches three different strength training classes, each at 6:30 a.m. Monday, Wednesday and every other Friday. Strength training is something he enjoyed when he was just a member. When the opportunity to get trained as an instructor arose, he jumped at the chance.
He trained with both a group from the Wellness Center and with others in the community. After passing his written and practical exams, he became certified five years ago by the Aerobics and Fitness Association of America, which now requires him to take a certain number of continuing education classes each year.
Warren’s Monday class is Group Strength Training, which is an hour’s worth of strength training involving the use of weights, bars, exercise balls and bands. On Wednesdays he leads Circuit Challenge, a combination strength and cardio class that he describes as “slightly more energetic” than Monday’s class. Friday mornings it’s Serious Strength, which is very similar in format to the Monday class but stepped up a little. “It might be a bit tougher,” he said. “It gets your heart going.”
Warren likes the fact that most of the classes are about half female and half male. He sees himself as a role model for the middle-aged men who take the class (he will be 66 himself this year), and hopes they can see that they are perfectly capable of the work, and that they should be doing it.
“I’m usually the oldest guy in class. I don’t think there’s anybody else that comes that’s older than me,” he said. “I want to keep those guys coming back and keep them going.”
His classes have a regular following and plenty of the attendees won’t miss a class unless they’re traveling. “So many who are able to come to the 6:30 classes are business people, and they must dash off to work right afterwards. Early in the morning works well for them, it works for them to get this out of the way and then head off to work,” Warren said.
The attendees also seem to like the camaraderie of the group strength classes, as opposed to using the weight training machines out on the fitness flour. “The people who come seem to come because they like the group experience,” he said. “We have a lot of fun. It varies from day to day and there are down days—but we laugh it up and joke around and talk about eating donuts afterward. I like it best when there are a lot of people in there and we get a lot of interaction going.”
“A number of people come up to me after being here for some time to tell me how much better they feel and how much stronger they are. One was a fairly young woman who came to thank me,” Warren says. “But I didn’t do the work, she did. She had lost some weight and lost some inches.”
“The thing about strength training is you can make it as hard as you want to make it. It’s really up to the individual,” he said. “I just put the program together. You’re free to adjust your weights or stop when you want to, or have to.”
The most common question he’ll get from class attendees relates to shoulders. Shoulder injuries seem so common these days. Because of that, he does make sure he concentrates on working the shoulder and building up those muscles. “We’re all working our lower, big muscles all the time, but people don’t concentrate on their upper body very much, particularly when they get older. Then those muscles tend to atrophy.”
In fact, Peggy Cappy, a Wellness Center and renowned yoga instructor, came to his class while dealing with a rotator cuff problem. She says Warren’s strength training class proved to be the thing that finally improved mobility she had lost in one shoulder from a long-ago ski injury. After trying massage and other things, she felt the strength training finally did the trick. She started with low weights in the class and says she noticed the difference immediately. “I knew weight lifting would strengthen all the muscles in the shoulder and I can just feel it working,” she said. “All the supporting muscles are working together now. I just love his class.”
Warren cautions, “With shoulder or other pain, however, you have to make sure you’re not working through the pain because you could be doing it more damage. You may have to modify some of the moves and do them more slowly or not do them at all.”
“I don’t hesitate to tell people to get something that hurts checked out by their doctor or a physical therapist,” he said.
His goal with his classes is to keep them interesting enough so that the participants will want to keep coming back.
In addition to teaching his classes, Warren finds time to walk often and sometimes take runs. He likes to bike and ski, and in summer he plays golf two or three times a week. “I’m also the outside person at our house. I take care of the gardening and yard work,” he said.
And, just for fun and in his spare time, he’ll “bag” a 4000-footer or two up in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. Twice a year he goes with three other guys (average age about 65) to hike the highest peaks in the state. Of the 48 total 4000-footers, he only has 9 left, which he intends to accomplish, even after a harrowing experience some years ago when torrential rains turned a day hike into a 24-hour ordeal.
On Kinsman Mountain, just south of Cannon Mountain, the day’s forecast was for light rain, but soon the trails became rivers. After stopping in a shelter to re-assess, the group decided to turn back but discovered the trail down had become impassable. They started bushwacking parallel to the trail, but it had tributaries they couldn’t cross or blowdowns that they couldn’t navigate. Darkness fell and they couldn’t stop or hypothermia would kick in. Twenty-four hours later, just an hour before a search team was due to set out, they made it back to base and were able to call off the search.
”We’re just now all a little more gun shy,” he says.
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