20 more years please!

It was early in 1990 and I had just started working out – I recall that only because my youngest daughter was 6 months old and she just turned 21 this past June. Ursula, the instructor I was taking hi/lo classes from, asked me if I’d be interested in teaching and handed me a brochure for a ‘workshop’ that weekend called Bench Blast by Gin Miller. I said yes and she put me on the schedule for the following week. When I went to sign up for the workshop, I learned it was cancelled – Gin had signed on with Reebok.

So here I was committed to teach a class that I had never even done before… and I remember looking at the newly painted wooden box and wondering “what the heck can I do for 50 minutes on THIS thing?” The night before my very first experience in teaching, I laid awake…. very, very worried about everything. How I would warm up, how I would cue, what would I actually call things… and moves, what moves? Up, up, down, down… okay I can do that for awhile – and THEN what? I guess I must have done the classic ‘fake it till you make it’ because I remember more about the laying awake all night worrying than the actual class.

After class, the members were very gracious, but I remember one member suggesting certain things I could have done, even though it wasn’t exactly step stuff. I told her I didn’t want to steal someone else’s moves. It was then that I realized… pretty much everthing in fitness is ‘stolen’ – or at least a variation of another pattern of movement!

That’s my story – my first class was the first step class taught at that little gym in Acworth GA – and I survived to teach again another day – and getting close to 2 more decades more at that.

Shortly thereafter, I picked up a class at the City Club in Canton and became friends with Beth, the aerobics director, who helped out at Gin’s office. Gin was traveling a lot at the time and things were really hectic… so I didn’t actually meet Gin until I went to Sara’s City workout in Atlanta the next summer. She offered me a job in her office and I’ve worked for her ever since – quite a ride it’s been!