MARCELA CREPS | INSTRIDE
Brad Wilhelm does floor exercises during an early morning workout at Next Generation Personal Training in Bloomington.
“The easiest thing to control was our habits,” Ivy said. “I said, ‘Why don’t we start there, and see where it leads?’” There were other advantages to this effort. “Workout feels more like recess when Brad’s there,” she said, smiling. It’s not always easy, though. Just months ago, Wilhelm injured the sacroiliac joint on his pelvis and had to cut back on his regular routine. “It is a struggle,” Wilhelm said. “There are times when I fall.” He’s not just facing aching joints and rising blood pressure — all normal for a 52-year-old man. “It’s the way we live, and the way we look at ourselves,” he says. “It’s really hard to swim against the tide of culture.” But in small ways, Wilhelm’s tide is changing. He said his daughter, now 17, benefited from health education he never received as a kid growing up in Connersville. She spends time sleeping in, not exercising (“She’s an internet kid,” Wilhelm says), but she eats healthfully and keeps an eye on her dad. “She got the information and the stuff that I didn’t get,” he explains. And although Wilhelm doesn’t talk about fitness in his professional life, he has made a career working with young people — first at Rhino’s All Ages Club (now Rhino’s Youth Center) in Bloomington and now in Martinsville — who give him another reason to extend his one simple, but singular, goal: to live. Q HT-105083-1
18 INstride • September 2016