| I can't believe I forgot to post this article last month! I know it's long but it's a great article on Rainier Health & Fitness by ColorsNW Magazine. We were the featured article! (too bad they spelled my name wrong. boohoo)
Cover Story - Rainier Health and Fitness
December 2007
Christina Twu
Copyright ColorsNW Magazine
Print Article
With the patter of
children’s feet in the group gymnastics classes, a day-care room across
the hall and the murmur of side conversations over the buzz of
treadmills, Rainier Health & Fitness feels more like a community
center than a gym.
Replacing the usual gym music favorites like
Jock Jams or ’80s monster hits are eclectic world pop, Stevie Wonder,
R&B and funk. And it’s not your usual cast of characters, either.
Huong
Huynh, 58, had never set foot in a gym before August, when she started
working out at Rainier Health & Fitness. Now she tries to come four
or five nights a week to use the cycling machines and get free
personal-fitness training. “I’m happy because I meet lots of people. I
talk, I exercise, I talk,” she explains, while pedaling a recumbent
bicycle.
After a long, hard day working at the Hyatt Hotel in
Bellevue, the last thing Huynh wanted was a long commute to the gym
from her Beacon Hill home. But she didn’t have to when Rainer Health
& Fitness opened in South Seattle last year, and moved to a larger,
new facility on 7722 Rainier Avenue South this March. There, a $19
monthly flat rate and $44 initiation fee will get members access to
high-quality cardio and weight machines, as well as a host of free
services such as group exercise classes, personal training and day care
for the sizable pool of parent members. In contrast, 24-Hour-Fitness
One-Club monthly rates range from $20-60 with initiation fees between
$183-$200. For five 50-minute personal training sessions, there is an
additional $321 charge.
Since its inception in 2005, Rainier
Health & Fitness has garnered around 700 members, many like Huynh,
who might otherwise not step foot in a gym. In addition to
accessibility to high-quality equipment and services at a convenient
Rainer Valley location, the fitness centers’ founders – Tausili Kalepo,
Ryan Schmid and Elisabeth Kingsley – wanted to address the specific
health needs of South Seattle, a community that has not traditionally
had safe outdoor spaces to exercise.
“The sidewalk from about
Henderson to Graham Street are cracked and broken, unsafe and with
inadequate lighting,” observes Kalepo, 26. “Riding your bike up and
down Rainier is also a gamble; from cars racing up and down the road to
broken glass everywhere, it’s a very dangerous situation.”
In
addition, Public Health Seattle-King County says in its “Diabetes in
King County” report that South Seattle residents – historically poorer
and with a dense population of people of color – are at least four
times more likely to die of diabetes than residents of wealthy Mercer
Island. Diabetes rates are perpetuated by high obesity rates, which
more severely afflict poor and minority populations, according to the
report, released last spring.
“If you look at neighborhoods that
are underdeveloped and without resources such as in this area, health
is just one of those things that just gets missed,” says Kalepo, a
Samoan American and Rainier Valley native. “Mostly you just have a
bunch of fast food restaurants and corner stores – all that stuff that
equals high obesity.”
After graduating from Franklin High School
in 1999, Kalepo attended Southwestern Oklahoma State University on a
football scholarship.
“I was the first one in my family to go to
school, and I managed to tie in with the wrong crowds and sabotage my
first year,” Kalepo remembers. “I came back to Seattle pretty mad, used
the football conditioning to deliver hot tubs, and made a U-turn when I
reconnected with Rainier Avenue Church. That’s when I met Ryan (Schmid)
and we found that, though most people would look at us and assumed we
were completely different, our commitments to sport and fitness broke
through a lot of barriers. We came from different places, but our
vision to see people in this community get healthy set us on the same
path. The rest is history.”
In 2003, Kalepo and his church
buddy, Schmid, 28, started formulating a plan. It became clear that
Rainier Valley needed a safe, low-cost place to exercise with
state-of-the-art equipment for a growing South Seattle population that
seemed more susceptible to obesity and diabetes. By 2005, when they
launched Rainier Health & Fitness, the people of South Seattle were
more than ripe for a solution, according to Kalepo.
“When people saw that we were investing in a fitness center within this community, they just got excited,” he says.
So
excited that within the first three months of its 2005 pilot year under
the umbrella of faith-based nonprofit Urban Impact, Rainier Health
& Fitness had 250 members – the number of members projected for the
entire year, says Kalepo. As the first program under its health
initiative, Urban Impact – formed by Emerald City Outreach Ministries
and Northwest Urban Ministries – sought funding from a variety of
sources, garnering grants from private foundations such as the Murdock
Charitable Trust; state-of-the-art TechnoGym exercise equipment made
possible through a grant from the Gesner-Johnson Foundation. Although
Urban Impact is a Christian faith-based organization, no religious
expressions are visible in the gym, and people of all faiths and
backgrounds attend.
After membership increased by the month
within the first pilot year, a new, larger facility became necessary.
The fitness center founders and staffers needed a quick solution, since
they were already turning away aspiring members due to lack of
capacity. They opted to build a pre-site modular location – property
that would be relatively fast to set up and easy to sell and move, if
the gym needed to be expanded in the future. The mobile units were less
expensive and about two years’ faster than a permanent development,
Schmid says. Emerald City Bible Fellowship, who owns the land, was
willing to give a generous break on rent.
Originally, Kalepo
says, they were hoping for 6,700 square feet of property, but their
vision was downsized to 4,000 square feet to comply with Environment
Protection Agency law. Unbudgeted costs – such as the gravel to build
their foundation and the challenge of finding different building permit
options – also made the move and expansion a little more convoluted
than expected.
But the benefits outweighed the challenges.
In
its new, modular facility, Rainier Health also has expanded
programming, including the introduction of free group exercise classes
and availability of child care every night. The gym’s 700 members
include 35 percent that are on a scholarship rate of $11 per month.
What’s more, the gym usage rate at Rainier Health is 54 percent,
compared to the 7 percent to 15 percent usage rate at large gyms that
typically serve a base of 10,000 or more members, Kalepo says.
Co-founder
Kingsley, 24, stepped into the picture shortly after the opening of the
gym’s first pilot year, playing an instrumental role in setting up the
first facility and recruiting volunteers, says Schmid.
“We wouldn’t have survived without her,” he says.
She
had served as an intern for Urban Impact while attending Seattle
Pacific University, after a recommendation from an SPU professor who
was on the pastoral staff at Rainier Avenue Church, where she now
attends. She had also gotten marketing experience at a small company in
Seattle and taught gymnastics for young children. After she was hired
officially in 2005 and crowned co-founder after her volunteer
contributions, and considering her former experience, it became a
natural fit for her to help develop Rainier Health’s gymnastics classes
for children ages 4 to 7.
Kingsley attributes much of the
success of the gym to the free personal training and the unique
positioning Rainer Health takes as a nontraditional, nonintimidating
gym.
“We wanted to be very different from other gyms,” she says.
“From the get-go, we emphasized the non-intimidating factor, making
people feel comfortable, not meat-market style. People have to wear
shirts, and we do personal training. We work with people one-on-one,
show them how to use everything, and find out what they’re looking for,
making the gym less scary, because they can be scary places for people
who haven’t exercised in a long time or who’ve never been in a gym, or
who just have lots of stereotypes about what a gym is.” To this end,
there are no mirrors at Rainier Health and Fitness and no sales people
pushing supplements and other products.
West Seattle resident
Carrie Thomas, 35, who previously lived in Rainier Valley for 20 years,
has tried different gyms time and again — from 24-Hour Fitness to
smaller, niche gyms such as Curves. But none of them really met her
needs.
Her problem?
“The other gyms, they want to charge
you $100 million just to look at a personal trainer!” Thomas laughs,
hyperbolizing. “I want to know how to use the machines, and a lot of
times, I want a personal fitness trainer.”
In addition to the
free, walk-in personal assistance, Rainier Health & Fitness honors
women who might have specific religious or cultural practices that
prohibit exercising in front of men. It holds female-only gym time with
“Ladies Night” on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6 to 8 p.m., where Muslim
women feel comfortable in a women-only space where hijabs are
acceptable attire for cardio workouts.
“To have so many Muslim
women together for the purpose of exercise is definitely unique and
doesn’t happen anywhere else close by,” observes Kingsley.
The
ladies-only hours are prime bonding time for Thomas, her diabetic
mother and 5-year-old niece, who attends the $45-per-month, weekly
evening gymnastics classes that end this month and start up again in
January.
“We call (Rainier Health & Fitness) RHF! – Really
Healthy Females!” laughs Thomas. “We’re fat killers! We’re murdering
our fat. I’ll be running on the treadmill singing the theme song to
‘Rocky!’ ”
Rainier Fitness also offers a youth rate of 12 visits
for $8 for teens ages 13 to 18, in which youths 15 and under must be
accompanied by an adult. This encourages healthy patterns among an
emerging adult population, as it allows parents to model healthy habits
for their kids, Kingsley says.
Thomas, whose teenage son is soon
joining the gym, appreciates this, and sees the dire need among an
increasingly overweight community of youth in South Seattle.
“When
I was in school, there was one overweight kid per class, and now
there’s like one skinny person per class,” Thomas observes.
She
attributes some of this to video games, which don’t encourage youth to
go outside as much and partake in physical activity. With her niece,
says Thomas, “It’ll be a beautiful day outside, and she’ll say there’s
nothing to do.”
In addition to the youth memberships, the center
started offering a class called “Strength and Agility,” an
intergenerational tai chi program in partnership with the University of
Washington to study whether people of different ages can benefit from
working out together.
To counter a pervasive, sedentary
lifestyle, Rainier Health & Fitness staffers will soon offer health
and nutrition resources for those members with questions about specific
health problems, ready with pamphlets about diabetes prevention through
programs like REACH (Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health),
as well as a directory of community clinics and specific doctors.
There’s
more in the works for Rainier Health & Fitness, too. In the next
few years, its founders envision a new health community model, which
would entail low-income housing units in the parking lot area next to
the center. Schmid and Urban Impact also hope to add another service to
their health and fitness initiative: a community health clinic and a
family recreational center right under Urban Impact offices next to the
fitness center.
“It may not be a very traditional health
clinic,” says Schmid, “It might be geared toward the behavioral changes
related to obesity.”
The clinic’s focus would likely be nutrition consultation and preventive care, he says.
Although
this community-based capacity model may take a few years to execute,
programs soon under way include peer-led training pods initiated at the
gym and a group weight-loss program to offer ways members can empower
themselves to build their own authentic fitness communities on their
own time, Kalepo says.
“And it doesn’t have to be around an
event,” he says. “It could be around losing body fat percentage or lose
weight, or you know, maybe moms just want to get outside walking or
exercising together as a group... It doesn’t mean you have to climb
Mount Rainier and back.”
Rainier Health & Fitness staffers
have already initiated some of these group trainings. Last year, 15
women completed the Danskin Triathlon. In addition, 35 people
participated in the Seattle to Portland Bicycle Classic, 11 people did
the Lake Padden Triathlon, and three ran the Seattle half-marathon.
This year, 22 rode the Seattle-to Portland race, five did the Barclay
North half-Ironman half-marathon at Lake Stevens (three as a team), and
six completed the half-marathon at Bellingham Bay.
Meanwhile,
the buzz continues at Rainier Health & Fitness. Many groups and
faith-based organizations have toured the facility, hoping to start
their own gym communities.
Spin classes, kids’ gymnastics and
personal and group training remain popular. And in its midst, emerging
avid exercisers like Huynh and more engaged exercisers like Thomas.
As
Huynh continues to pedal with persistence during her usual Wednesday
night workout, she stops to yell “Bye!” to a gym-goer who is on his way
out. She turns to gym staffer Miyuko Bigelow, who is checking in on
progress, winks and smiles.
Three months into her first gym experience at Rainier Health & Fitness, Huynh is a popular lady.
ColorsNW - All rights reserved.
Editor's Note - Your Health
December 2007
Naomi Ishisaka
Copyright ColorsNW Magazine
Print Article
Our region’s
collective progressive bumper-sticker wisdom often encourages people to
“be the change you wish to see in the world” and reminds to “never
doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world.”
Yet
as we go about our daily lives, there are so many obstacles to “being
the change.” We have families, responsibilities and work, and we are
afraid of risk. We are not sure that our efforts will succeed or if the
success will even matter. Young people are often the most keenly aware
of what they want to change, yet too frequently lack the resources to
carry out their vision or are too saddled by cynicism to take steps
forward.
So within this framework, I am always amazed and
impressed by the people who ignore the little voices in their head
telling them “no” and follow the ones saying “yes.” People like the
young leaders of Rainier Health & Fitness in Seattle’s Rainier
Valley, who saw a need in the community and decided to fill it. Tausili
Kalepo, Ryan Schmid and Elisabeth Kingsley were well under 30 when they
came up with the idea to start a fitness center in the most diverse
urban area of the city. They wanted to create something to address the
widening health disparities in communities of color and the lack of
affordable fitness facilities in the area.
I first learned about
Rainier Health & Fitness as a member, and later began to see the
project as an important model for how people of all ages and
backgrounds could act on their dreams and make a significant effort in
creating the future they want to see.
From its humble beginnings
as a tiny pilot project with 250 members in an 800-square-foot space,
the experiment has blossomed in two years into a 4,000-square-foot
facility boasting 700 members. To work out at Rainier Health &
Fitness is not just an asset to the mind and body but a powerful
demonstration of our potential to bridge gaps in culture, religion,
citizenship and language. How often do you go to your gym and work out
on a machine next to a woman in full hijab? When’s the last time you
saw grandmothers and grandchildren – of all ethnic backgrounds – coming
to work out together at the gym? How often do organizations block out
prime time for Muslim women to participate in a way that allows them to
feel comfortable?
It is these demonstrations that give me hope,
every day, that even though most of us ignore the bumper-sticker
wisdom, there are enough of us who adopt it to keep moving us all
forward to “be the change” we wish for the world.
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