Women and weights class breaks up the routine

• Her motivation: A little over a year ago, Zotti Vellotti, 58, was recovering from a broken foot. She says her injury, along with about a year and a half of a busy work schedule that left little time for exercise, made her 30 pounds heavier than she wanted to be. After seeing older family members and friends suffer from health issues because of their lack of activity, she told herself, “I gotta start doing something about it now.”

• How she got started: “I went to Enhancing Health [a Pilates and fitness studio in Duluth] and started working out with a trainer two days a week,” she says. “I cut my workday short; I go in really early so I can manage to get off at 4:15 so I can go work out.” After doing about 45 minutes of cardio, Zotti Vellotti joins her trainer and up to four other women for a class called Women & Weights. She credits these two-days-a-week, hour-long sessions with helping her to lose weight, gain muscle and get toned.

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ADRIENNE HUGHES-HARRIS/Special

Barbara Zotti Vellotti loves to workout in her Women & Weights class at Enhancing Health Studio with trainer (back) Meghan McAndrew.

THE WORKOUT
• 3170 Peachtree Industrial Blvd., Suite 185, Duluth
• 678-205-1390, www.enhancinghealthinc.com

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• A breakdown of her class: Taking the Women & Weights class gives Zotti Vellotti the advantage of a personal trainer without the high cost. “It’s affordable because there are up to four people per class,” she says. “A lot of times people don’t show up. I’ve had a lot of times where it’s just me.” She explains that the trainer comes up with a series of exercises that they each do three times. “Say if there are four people, we do four different exercises and we take turns, in a circle. When we’ve done the circle three times then she gives us another chain of exercises to do. So depending on how many people are there, we do seven to 10 exercises in an hour.”

• Exercise examples: “We have to walk the whole length of the building sideways with weights in our hands and strengthening ropes between our ankles,” she says. “We do a lot of push-ups. But we do the push-ups after we are dog-tired. They always come at the end. She always puts them in for sure when we’ve done tricep work already for 30 minutes,” she says, adding that she’s worked her way from five push-ups to 60.

“We do a lot of stomach crunches but not just lying on the floor and doing crunches. We might have a five-pound ball between our knees with our legs in the air. They’re not just regular crunches; she has some amazing workouts,” she says.

• Her workout week: Besides going to Enhancing Health twice a week for cardio sessions and her Women & Weights class, Zotti Vellotti says she “tries to be good” and work out on the weekends or go for a five- or six-mile walk.

• Why she keeps going back: “In the whole year that I’ve been there I don’t think we’ve ever done the same routine twice,” she says. Zotti Vellotti and her classmates sometimes jokingly ask their trainer, “What do you do? Sit up at night and think about these things to make us suffer?”

• What it’s done for her: In the year that she’s been exercising she says, “I’m seeing benefits. I’m seeing my body changing.” Part of that change is dropping weight and going from a size 16 to a size 12. She admits though, that she’s still losing weight and laughs as she adds, “I’m not skinny. I wasn’t even skinny when I was skinny!”