By David Beers

A group of like-minded fitness and outdoor enthusiasts gets together twice a week in Norfolk to enjoy each other’s company and share in a healthy lifestyle. Their leader is Bill Couch. The Tuesday workout, called “Full Body Fitness,” takes place at the Congregational Church’s Battell Chapel from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. In the dark of winter, the session is held inside the chapel, but as soon as the sun shines late enough and the snow has melted, workout is often outdoors for all or part of the hour.

On Saturday mornings the group meets at various outdoor sites to exercise together from 8 to 9 a.m. This workout is called “Saturday in the Park.” Outdoor sites typically include Haystack Mountain, Dennis Hill, Botelle School and the Golf Drive Shelter. Occasionally, a special guest site is thrown into the mix. While the Tuesday evening schedule takes a hiatus in the heart of the summer, the Saturday workout, proceeding like the postal carrier regardless of heat, cold, wind, snow or ice, happens 50 Saturdays each year. Participants have learned how to prepare for and embrace all types of weather.

Couch schedules a mix of aerobic exercise, strength training and stretching in every workout. So how does that work? One minute you are briskly hiking up Haystack, and the next you stop at a picnic table or a boulder to do some pushups and maybe crunches, then you are back to hiking. You get to the top and toss some portable suspension trainers (ropes with handles) over the fork in a tree for a full upper-body workout, then hike down and do stretches at the parking lot. After a recent Saturday workout, Lina Garetson said, “Class uplifts my mood, makes me feel great and has allowed me to surpass my expectations.”

Couch started these classes about 4 years ago as a way to provide fitness instruction for a modest investment of money and time—$10 for an hour-long session. The goal of each class is to flex and strengthen all the major muscles, while improving balance and cardiovascular health. Most of us are good at doing our favorite activity—walking, running, bike riding—but ignore the parts of our body not called into play, to the detriment of our overall health, making us more prone to injury. Kate Johnson supports this by saying, “Class is a perfect base of training for my other athletic passions.”

The mind-body connection is important to Couch. He points out that exercise is good for our mind. Our brains work best when our bodies are getting the regular exercise they need. Our modern lifestyle is often far too sedentary, which has led to countless diseases that are all or partly caused by lack of exercise, obesity and a low-nutrient/high-sugar diet. Research has shown that regular exercise increases creativity, happiness, and intelligence.

Most importantly, the benefits of each workout are amplified by the mental and physical benefits of being physically active in nature, something many of us don’t regularly get. Holly Torrant summed it up nicely by stating, “I love being with supportive friends in beautiful indoor and outdoor spaces year round.”

Couch hopes that participants will continue the good habits they develop in class by being physically active in nature every day of the week—hence the name of his business, “7day recreationalist.” Michelle Childs wraps this up by stating, “This class is fun and challenging.”

Please join us next Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. at the Congregational Church’s Battell Chapel, or contact info@7dayrec.com.

Photos by David Beers.