Virginia Couple Say “I Do” to Working Out Together

Image by Mabel Amber from Pixabay

Do you work out with your significant other at the gym?

For Laura Rodin and her husband of 40 years, Don Rubin, the answer is, “I do.”

Almost every Friday, Rodin and Rubin show up to take my Essentrics® class at a local YMCA. Upon arrival, they find a spot in the exercise room and set up their mats, preparing for class to begin. Once the warmup music starts, they get into the swing of things, moving to the beat with robust arm and leg movements. For the next 40 to 45 minutes, they do the workout non-stop, side by side.

Rodin says the class provides a way for the couple to spend quality time together as they take part in a fun, yet challenging workout. Essentrics® involves stretching and strengthening the muscles without the use of heavy weights. It draws on tai chi’s flowing movements, ballet’s strengthening theories and physiotherapy’s healing principles.

“I think that we both feel more limber, more flexible, especially Don who's not at all flexible and doesn't do other stretching the way I do. I think we feel our joints feel looser. You know, we joke that we find muscles we didn't know that we had,” Rodin said in an interview on Zoom.

Bonding

Working out together as a shared experience is one way that couples can connect and bond, says Sara Oliveri, a life coach in the Washington, DC area. Oliveri illustrated three benefits of working out with your significant other.

No. 1. The time spent provides “more time to connect … the more time and togetherness that you invest in your relationship, generally speaking, the stronger the relationship will be.”

No. 2. “When you feel better, you feel better about your relationship, and exercising is a proven way to feel better, right?”

Oliveri added, “Thirdly, as indicated by these examples, exercising together is a microcosm for life, and learning how to communicate effectively, how to adjust expectations, how to cooperate.”

Yvany Peery, a psychotherapist and licensed clinical social worker in the Washington area, echoed similar sentiments. In a telephone interview, she added one of the benefits of exercise is stress management.

“When you talk about exercise as a coping strategy, what you’re really talking about is something that people do together” that provides other physiological benefits, Peery said.

“One of the reasons that people are drawn so much to exercise is because it helps them regulate their central nervous system” and helps manage the release of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, she said.

Peery also noted that working out together should be something couples have to be willing to do. She said trying to get one partner to do something that might not be of interest to the other person will, in her words, “backfire in your face.”

Rodin and Rubin discovered Essentrics® around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rodin said the low-impact nature of the exercises resonated with both of them. Yet, she acknowledged the dynamic nature of the workout.

“I think one of the things that we often say is that we just feel great when we're done. You know, we just feel energized. We just feel like we worked. And you do work hard. It's not like … you're just sitting there, like a massage. You're definitely actively engaging with it, but it's still not aggressive, but you still feel like you just did a strength class,” she added.