I’m fortunate to have family members who are also interested in fitness and take me to their favorite classes when I visit. One highlight of my frequent trips to San Diego is attending my mother’s senior exercise class. It’s inspiring to see people of all ages taking care of their health, and I always learn some moves I can use when I sub senior classes at home in Portland. It’s a fun social outlet for everybody, too.

Mom has taken classes from many exercise teachers over the years. Joshua Rap is one of her current teachers. He leads seniors in chair exercises twice a week at the Point Loma Community Presbyterian Church’s rec room. Recently graduated from college, he seems especially young to be teaching seniors. Josh indulged me by answering my questions so I could find out what led him to his current vocation.

Fitness teacher Joshua Rap teaches classes in San Diego.

 Teresa:  How did you become interested in teaching seniors?

 Joshua:  I don’t want this to sound vague but I wasn’t actually interested in it to begin with. I was approached by a friend that there may be a need for a physical trainer. My ears perked up because I am interested in physical education. He went on to say that it was for seniors and it was a paid position. And being fresh out of college with nowhere else to look, and with this being an excellent experience opportunity, I gladly said yes.

Teresa:  Has anything surprised you about working with seniors? What have you learned?

Joshua:  I have slowly realized that working with seniors at first seems just like training any other age group, but over time you start to realize that they have lost some (or all) of their coordination, or they have had some kind of injury or illness that has left them unable or even just unwilling to do certain tasks. You really have to take your time to get to know each and every one of them in order to really work with them.

Teresa:  How do you choose music for your senior classes?

Joshua:  At first, I chose a Pandora station on my phone somewhere in the Frank Sinatra genre because they unanimously said they liked him. But then due to certain circumstances there was a while where I had to use a tape player, so I would have them bring in tapes that they thought would be fun exercise tapes. But luckily I now have access to my phone again and so I get some type of high rhythm and beats for our aerobic sessions and more mellow oldies music for weights and stretching.

Teresa:  How does your Christian faith influence your fitness teaching?

Joshua:  Well this is going to be a short and sweet answer because this is how I have always felt.  Your body is a temple so why would you want to destroy it. And from a Christian perspective that temple is for the Lord, so keep it looking nice. Don’t just throw junk in it and destroy it.

Teresa:  What do you hope to do in the future?

Joshua:  I would love to eventually become a personal trainer at a gym and maybe even eventually open up my own fitness center. My eyes are sternly focused on the health aspect of exercise, so my goal is eventually to help people in the gym and around the world see that exercise isn’t about getting bigger biceps or a cuter butt, but that it really comes down to a better and more productive state of life. And yes, big biceps and a cute butt would be a byproduct of that.