HEALTH & FITNESS : ATTAINING THE BODY BEAUTIFUL : Size 22s Fit In at This Health Club
Sharlyne Powell was overweight, out of shape and ready to do something about it. “My mother had just died of phlebitis, and I was no medical expert, but it seemed to me that if I started working out, it would make me less likely to have the same problem,” she says.
But the idea of taking her Size 22 body into a gym full of Size 8s was frightening, and not just because of the potential embarrassment. “Your self-esteem gets battered in a situation like that, but so does your body,” she says. “Aerobics classes were all high-impact back then, and that can be especially dangerous to large women.”
She tried working out at a few clubs near her home in Yakima, Wash., but, she says, “I just couldn’t keep up.”
So she decided to start her own health club especially for large women. That was seven years ago, and on Saturday, Powell will open her 25th Women At Large exercise salon in Orange, the first one in Orange County.
Women At Large provides an “embarrassment-free atmosphere,” says Joanne Glass, owner of the Orange franchise. Glass herself has lost “more than 100 pounds in the past year and a half” and says she still has about 70 pounds to go.
“But whether you’re 100 pounds overweight or 10, it’s difficult to go to those ‘muscle mills’ where everybody’s so thin,” she says. “Especially here in Southern California, where people are so conscious of appearance.”
Glass is also an instructor at the club, having been trained at a three-week “boot camp” at the chain’s Washington headquarters. All Women At Large instructors are themselves large women. “None of our instructors is under 150 pounds,” says Glass.
That’s a lesson Powell says she learned the hard way. When she opened her first club, she took the advice of consultants who insisted that the instructors should be thin. The club quickly folded. “Large women may want to look like thin women, but they can’t keep up with them,” Powell observes. So she started again, this time as her own instructor. As business grew, she hired other large women and taught them to do the same low-impact exercises she did.
“Our instructors are planning on losing some weight, too, so people will be able to see them getting smaller as they work out,” Glass says.
Powell is now down to “between a Size 14 and 16,” but she isn’t trying to become any thinner. “I couldn’t even tell you realistically what I weigh,” she says. “I never get on the scales.”
“There are many large people who are happy being large,” Glass says. “But they want to get in shape.”
Powell says that “between 35 and 40 million women in the United States are over a Size 16. And many of them are so beaten down, they don’t think they even have the right to exercise, let alone the ability.”
“Large women are always being put on diets, but it’s been proven that diets just aren’t successful without exercise,” Powell says. “But until now, there’s been no place for (large women) to go. They can try walking, but that’s a solitary activity, and some people just can’t exercise that way. They need a supportive, encouraging environment. And that’s what we provide.”
Potential Women At Large clients must fill out a health questionnaire, and “if we spot any trouble areas, they have to get permission from their doctors,” Powell says. Physician approval is also required for advanced workouts.
Powell has now opened two similar clubs for men. “They love the program as much as the women,” she says. “We tried co-ed classes, but it does not work at all. The men don’t mind it. But the women do.”