On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, Patricia Hutson, George Kipphut, and Michael McDougal all have an appointment with their laptops and with each other on Zoom.
But this isn’t a work call or a school call.
Trainer Brittany Triplett bounds onto the screen with instructions to punch into the air, or move their feet a certain direction, or lift soup cans as weights, but this isn’t your normal online exercise class. Their mission is to knock out Parkinson’s Disease while encouraging each other to work harder.
Hutson, Kipphut, and McDougal belong to Rock Steady Boxing in Murray, a program that Triplett teaches. Rock Steady Boxing, founded in 2006 in Indiana, helps people with Parkinson’s Disease improve their quality of life through a non-contact, boxing-based fitness regime. Parkinson’s Disease is a progressive brain disorder that affects a person’s movement. As the disease progresses, people have difficulty with walking and talking.
The Parkinson’s Disease Foundation estimates more than one million people in the United States are living with Parkinson’s. According to RockSteadyBoxing.org, 60,000 people are diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease every year, and 43,500 Parkinson’s boxers train at 871 Rock Steady Boxing programs around the world.
Triplett, who sought certification through Rock Steady Boxing’s training program, brought the program to Murray in 2017. It has since grown to about 30 members.
Prior to the pandemic, Rock Steady Boxing of Murray met at the Center for Health and Wellness, but like so many other aspects of life since COVID-19 changed the world nearly a year ago, they’ve had to adapt their routines for Zoom, an online meeting platform.
“The idea behind Rock Steady Boxing is that we do forced intense exercises,” Triplett says. “And by forced, I literally mean forcing them to do it. Because we found out that if you allow them to do voluntary exercises and do it on their own, which they kind of did during the pandemic from March until August, you don’t get the same quality of workout.”
When Rock Steady Boxing could meet at the wellness center, the classes included 10 minutes of warm-up exercises, 10 minutes of riding a stationary bike or walking, a variety of boxing exercises (non-contact), balance exercises and strength exercises, followed by a cool down. The program amounted to about an hour and a half session three times a week. Members paid a small fee for the program, plus joining the wellness center.
“Every workout is designed to be very intense,” Triplett says. “And to work different aspects of the body, we use boxing because a boxer’s regime when they’re training, they work their mind; they work their balance; they work their hand-eye coordination; and they work their hands. These are all things that people with Parkinson’s Disease need.”
In the past three years, Kipphut says he has noticed improvement with his walking, strength, and balance. Hutson joined in late 2018 after she had shoulder surgery, and as she told her doctor about Rock Steady Boxing, the doctor misunderstood and informed her that she absolutely could not box after shoulder surgery.
“We do go through the things that boxers do go through, like the special kinds of punches they throw,” Hutson says.
Besides shadow boxing, their training sessions include agility and balance. When Triplett first put down an agility ladder on the floor, McDougal says he didn’t think it was such a good idea. Yet, he and the others in the class all picked up their feet and maneuvered through the course.
“I think I’m doing better physically now than I was two or three years ago because of a lot of these exercises,” Kipphut says. “One of the things with Parkinson’s you can kind of see over time is you shuffle your feet. All these exercises sort of force you to lift your legs up, and I think I’m doing better in that regard.”
Besides boxing and balance exercises, Triplett tries to help her class members open their chests and improve their posture. Parkinson’s often causes people to lose strength in their chests and slump forward while walking. Hutson says she has noticed that she has to make herself stand up straighter to walk. During the months when the program didn’t meet, Hutson and others in the class tried to walk on their own or do their own exercises, but it wasn’t the same.
While the members and Triplett focus on the physical, the classes also helps them improve their mental and emotional health.
“I think it gave me confidence in myself, confidence that I could do thinks that I didn’t think I could do,” McDougal says. “It may be a competition or trying new things.”
Hutson says she sometimes had to force herself to go to Rock Steady Boxing, but once she completed the class, her mood brightened.
The pandemic shut down the three times a week classes, and members had to figure out their own exercise program. It wasn’t the same.
Triplett gathered the group for Zoom beginning in August. “In the beginning, it was a learning curve,” she says. “I think for everybody, just learning the technology and how to operate on Zoom and finding out what exercises were going to work for everybody. When we’re in the gym, we had all kinds of equipment to choose from—we had bags to hit, or we could move out onto the floor. We had bags hanging on the wall. There were weights that we could use.”
But on Zoom, everyone had to adapt to a smaller workspace and no equipment. Enter soup cans or water bottles for weights. Chairs became balance bars. Participants had to take smaller steps in their living rooms rather than a wide-open gym. Yet, they’ve adapted.
“Certainly, it’s not like being at the gym with 15 other people,” Kipphut says. “That’s what I miss the most. But again, we are going through these exercises, which are all well thought out. It’s all been very beneficial. Certainly, we want this to end as soon as it can. But in the meantime, for me, it’s been better than I was expecting.”
Hutson agrees. “I think we all probably follow [Brittany] more than we would if we were at home and doing it by ourselves,” she says. “And the harder we work, the better off we are.”
Sometimes that amounts to peer pressure and natural competition that encourages the members to push themselves harder and push each other. As they push each other, they form bonds.
“When I do my initial assessment, I try to talk to everybody a little bit and get an idea of their Parkinson’s journey up until that point,” Triplett says. “I find that a lot of people don’t really know anybody at all with Parkinson’s, and they think they are the only person living in the world with it. And then they come to class. It opens up a whole new world of people to them that are sharing the same experience with them.”
Even on Zoom, that shared experience can help Kipphut, Hutson, and McDougal knock out Parkinson’s.
