PHOTO BY MARC RAINS
Find Something You Love
While Tulsa resident Aaron Waken participated in martial arts at an early age in his childhood, events in his life, such as moving from his hometown of Enid, led to a long term pause to his training. In third grade Waken was diagnosed with absence seizures. He began to take seizure medication that affected his metabolism and caused him to develop a heavier frame. He dealt with bullying and harassment in middle school, largely because of the weight gain caused by his medication, and he adopted a more sedentary lifestyle, playing video games to cope with the stress. Over time, his weight increased to 265 pounds. Six years ago, Waken decided to make some changes. He pursued his love for the martial arts again by taking classes with Carter Hargrave, a twotime World Martial Arts Hall of Fame instructor in Tulsa. Waken also discovered parkour, a style of running that encourages looking for new ways to move
TRAINER TIPS
through the environment. Waken now weighs 185 pounds (“181 on a good week,” he says) and stays active through both martial arts and parkour. “The discipline I have gained from practicing the martial arts has transferred not only into the way I train Parkour, but
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One of the best choices a person can make with a fitness routine? Change it up. Adriane Lakin, a trainer at Saint Francis Health Zone, says changing up your fitness routine does more than keep you out of a mental rut. It also has physical benefits. “Our bodies get so used to the activities that we do that you need to put your body through different ranges of motions, different intensity levels and different exercises,” she says. “Our muscles adapt pretty quickly, then they get kind of complacent. So we need to keep shocking them and doing as much as we can to shake them up a bit.” New workouts such as high-intensity training (quick burst workouts with low recovery time) are gaining popularity, but those programs are even more beneficial when coupled with workouts such as a barre or yoga class, which exercise the body’s stabilizers instead of just the large muscles in the body. Lakin says many people underestimate how OKLAHOMA MAGAZINE | JANUARY 2017
my daily lifestyle as a whole,” he says. “Together, American Combat Kempo and parkour have been the driving forces to my lifestyle change. Thanks to the awesome combination of these training methods I have lost the weight, and because these arts, especially parkour, are so physically demanding, I have also gained a want and need to improve, causing me to drill and condition on my own time on a regular basis.” Waken says he would get discouraged occasionally as he worked at losing weight, but he kept the mental image of what he wanted and remembered his goal of losing weight to keep him going. “When it came to the question of, ‘Do I want to eat this candy bar as I sit on the couch and watch TV, or do I want to get my speed vault down?’ my love for the arts I practiced always outweighed my interest in instant satisfaction,” he says. “If I messed up on my diet or exercise on any given day, I’d try not to hold it against myself, and instead I told myself I would do better tomorrow.” Not only has Waken managed to lose 80 pounds and change his lifestyle, he also plans on becoming a certified personal trainer and life coach. He works with students as a level 2 certified American Parkour instructor and is an assistant instructor as a Nidan (2nd degree black belt) at Hargrave’s school. “The best advice I could give anyone trying to adopt a healthy lifestyle is this: Find something active you really enjoy doing and want to excel in rather than trying to stick to a boring workout routine you will likely fall out of,” he says.
Spend Time With Your Family
Greg Heiple, 52, was a competitive road rider on bicycle and played indoor soccer until he was 47, but he never expected to take up rock climbing. “It was the wildest,” he says. “I drive home one day, and I notice that my son was hanging from the second story of our house. I knew that he’d been watching climbing videos on YouTube, and just out of raw fear I put him in the car, and I drove out to Climb Up [a climbing gym
difficult barre or Pilates may be, but the classes are gaining popularity – even with men. “It only takes one time for them to try it out, and they realize how hard it is in some cases,” she says. “In barre and Pilates, you can see every part of your body start to shake and quiver. You may look at someone lying on the mat doing the smallest, tiniest movement, but it requires every bit of your body, and people don’t realize that. I think the more men try it out, the more they realize it is a workout.” Health Zone offers small group personal training for people who feel like they’re getting into a rut in their workout routine. The program, called ZoneFit, pairs a trainer with a group of two to eight people and focuses on teaching a new kind of workout. “I just did a session with six people in it,” Lakin says. “They had been members of the Health Zone for years and years, but had never used weights. I got to work six weeks with them, three times a
week, and now they have a whole new workout they can come in and do.” For people just starting a fitness routine, Lakin says it’s important to realize you may not see instant results and to not give up early. She tells people they have to give her two weeks of a class before they decide if they like it or hate it, and that people need to give themselves 3-4 months and realize it can be challenging. Lakin is also passionate about the role of a trainer in keeping people motivated. “I think for any new member, they have to realize it’s never instant gratification,” she says. “Your body is a very complex machine, and it’s going to take a while for your muscles to respond and tear down and regrow. “I think a lot of that falls on us in the fitness industry. We really need to take the time to educate people and sit down and talk to them and set their goals with them and really help them understand their expectations and keep encouraging them.”