Susie Hathaway specializes in strength training for women in their middle years and beyond, helping them build healthy lifestyles to help prevent osteoporosis. She offers classes and private personal training, geared toward helping women learn full body strength training in a safe and easy manner. Location: Fairfield, Iowa at Morning Star Studio
Susie’s on a sabbatical and classes will resume at a future date.
- Safe, effective strength training, suited to women of all ages
- Full body strengthening workouts, including abs & back
- Researched-based exercises for strengthening bones
- Exercises to build muscle strength, without adding bulk
- Weights & exercises adapted to each woman’s level of comfort
- Progression at one’s own pace
- The right challenge for safe & effective weight lifting
- Accepting and enjoyable atmosphere
- Up to date research on strength training & osteoporosis
- Adaptations for low bone density and pre-existing conditions
A class is a fun and economical way to learn this unique type of exercise. Dumbbells are provided and it’s similar to private personal training, but in a group setting. Susie demonstrates the exercises, keeps an eye on everyone and moves around the group, giving advice, encouragement, and education. The workouts are done together, with everyone working at their own individual level with different size weights. This is a very rewarding and enjoyable strengthening program because the class participants usually see increases in their strength within a few weeks. As women get stronger, more fit, and continue twice-weekly strength training, their age-related bone loss can often be slowed.
The classes always begin at an easy level, sometimes even with no weights, allowing time to learn proper weight lifting form. This is important to let one’s body adapt to this new mode of exercise and prevent injury. As the intensity of the program slowly builds with heavier weights, most women are amazed at the amount of strength that they can gain, no matter what their age. Class participants often comment on how enlivened and energized they feel after a strength training session, even if they came in feeling tired. Usually, by six months to a year, women are stronger than they have been in decades.
Note: Sorry, but Susie isn’t taking any new personal training clients at this time.
Susie recommends private one-on-one personal strength training if someone:
- Would simply like the privacy of personal training
- Has pre-existing physical conditions
- Can’t make the time work for a class
- Has been inactive to the point where moving along with a class might be a strain
“Susie Hathaway’s classes are the best exercise classes I have ever taken! Susie is a highly experienced teacher – she could teach just about any subject beautifully — but thank goodness she is taking the time and energy to teach strength training for women…. you end up feeling truly successful as you grow in strength and flexibility from week to week.
–Melanie Brown
“I have participated in many different kinds of exercise regimes including: personal trainers, yoga, Pilates, but Susie Hathaway’s Strength Training Class addresses my most important exercise needs during this mid-life phase. It is vital for women (and men) to stay active physically at this time and this class provides a nicely rounded exercise regime that is always changing up and yet Susie makes sure we all participate at our own level, safely.”
—Barbara Wacknov
“Susie Hathaway’s weight training classes have made a positive and strengthening difference in my life. I have osteopenia, and when I started her classes I could hardly carry one metal chair back to the storage room at a time. I had to do most of the moves with no weights at all. Now I easily carry two chairs at once, and use weights heavier than I even dreamed of when I first began.” –Gloria Foster
“Somehow you get us over the dread of making a physical effort and the rewards are great. I am much stronger than I was two years ago when I started and that makes me very happy (and healthy).”
–Elaine Pomfrey
“As a classical singer, I need a lot of good breath support. My abdominals have to be in really good shape to sustain long phrases and fast runs. Not always easy as you get older. I noticed an immediate improvement in my ability to sing more effortlessly with Susie’s strength training. I was amazed that even just a few sessions brought me so much more abdominal strength to improve my singing. Thank you!”
–Ulrike Selleck