On March 3, 2011, Virgil Miller - who’d become concerned about the effects of stress on his health - started walking for fitness. And he decided to let others know about it via Facebook.
“Got up at 4 this morning; started walking at 5 a.m.,” he posted to his wall. “Did three miles. My goal is to walk five miles a day. I have to do this for my mind, my body, and my spirit and my heart. I need your encouragement, my Facebook family.”
In response, “I got 44 likes and 30 comments,” recalls Miller, 61, who serves as Community Reinvestment Act officer for Arvest Bank.
A former college track runner, Miller continued walking each day, moving his starting time up an hour.
He was reluctant to ask anyone to go out with him that early, so “my walking partner was really my Facebook friends,” he says.
He’d post immediately after his walks, sharing how many miles he’d gone, making observations about the weather and his surroundings and ending with phrases like “Let’s get this day started.”
Gradually, the walks became longer. People began to follow the posts, Miller says, and the host of likes and comments became an encouragement. If he skipped a post, he’d get questions as to his whereabouts. “So I started to feel a little pressure to keep it up.”
He walked daily 268 days straight, combining his activity with a decrease in food portions for a resulting loss of 70 pounds and a lowest weight of 198. The last 200 of those days, he walked eight miles each morning.
“I’ve had plenty of people come up to me and say I encouraged them,” Miller says. “They would just come up to me and start talking about it.” Some told him about days they’d originally planned to ditch their workout, but decided not to do so after reading his post for that day. His daughter Ravyn told him his posts were a ministry.
Funny thing was, he never meant to motivate others - “that was not my intent,” Miller says. “I found Facebook to be a vehicle that encouraged me and, knowing that, I used it.”
KICKSTART
Like Miller, other people have discovered their social media accounts provide a personal pep squad.
TweetReach, a website that helps Twitter users measure the effectiveness of their tweets, comments on this trend in an article posted on the TweetReach Blog: “Social networks evolved out of a desire to connect and share in a new way with people already in our lives, then further evolved as a way to reach out to new people. ... Using these networks to seek out those with similar goals and struggles for both accountability and support is a natural extension of this.”
The blog goes on to encourage fitness seekers to take advantage of social-media support, citing a study by researchers at the University of South Carolina’s Arnold School of Public Health that found Twitter tobe “a valuable support system.”
Kimara P. Randolph of Little Rock would agree that social media has such value.
Randolph, 42, coordinator of career and volunteer services and leadership development for Philander Smith College, and owner and principal event director of Platinum Events Management, has been working out regularly since September. Currently training for the Little Rock Half Marathon and on a mission to manage her blood pressure, she also puts in some serious gym time for a total of eight to 10 hours a week.
About two months ago, she began posting about her workouts. “The primary goal of my posts is self-motivation and accountability - sort of a virtual workout diary or journal,” she says. But “it’s a wonderful benefit that others are inspired.”
Randolph credits the national running group Black Girls Run! with giving her the idea. The group uses Facebook as a tool for its various affiliates to keep in touch with and encourage one another. Its central Arkansas subgroup, Black Girls Run! Little Rock, is one of a couple of members-only Facebook groups Randolph belongs to and to which she has posted pictures of her progress.
“I always get positive encouragement from people who know how hard I’m working to get to my goal,” Randolph says. Like Miller, she has had others tell her that her posts inspired them to exercise.
“They feel a sisterhood with me because I am just an everyday woman they know trying to reach fitness and nutrition goals.” SOCIAL TRAINING
It didn’t take long for trainers such as Wayne Bashay, owner of the 5-year-old River Market Boot Camp, to see the benefits of social media in the fitness realm. Bashay, whose clients call him by his last name, holds classes outside the Clinton Presidential Center and nearby in his facility at 508 McLean St.
When people document their fitness efforts on social media, their followers realize that they, too, can achieve the same results, Bashay says. “Another thing - it’s free,” he says. “You have to pay big bucks to get in some of these classes.” And “people are starting to gain huge followings” among friends of friends - people they’ve never met.
“It’s one thing to actually have something out there that’s [on a website] … and it’s another thing when people can talk to you directly,” Bashay says.
In addition to his website, rivermarketbootcamp.com, Bashay uses Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to post photos of him and his clients working out. He says almost all of his clients share their own workouts via social media.
“People are motivating people,” he says.
When someone skips a class, their classmates will “inbox” them - send them a private message. “If you’re in a class setting or in an online group-sharing thing, people can keep tabs on you.”
Whereas he used to have to email or send texts, now he can leave a message on a client’s Facebook wall.
Bashay adds that using social media has lowered some of his overhead costs and brought him added attention.
“We have people following us all over America now,” he says. Some have become clients: “Now I can shoot people direct videos. It’s basically given me the ability to train worldwide through my phone.” SOCIAL GADGETS
Instead of creating posts directly on social media, some exercisers use phone devices and applications that track their fitness efforts and results and upload charts and maps to their pages. Programs such as RunKeeper and Endomondo Sports Tracker enable users to see fellow users’ workouts, thereby creating niche social communities.
In December 2012, Sara Franke Bowling, 49, decided to run the Little Rock Marathon’s 10K, her first race ever. The North Little Rock resident looked for apps that would help her track distance, pace, calories and keep a map of where she ran so she could post that information. She completed the March 2013 10K with a time of 1:31:59.
The two apps she uses on her phone are RunKeeper and 5KRunner. “Lately as my running distance has increased, [I] just tell Facebook how far I ran as sort of an update,” she says.
Her social-media friends have become her cheerleaders, says Bowling, who began walking and eventually running a year and a half ago out of dissatisfaction with her weight. She was carrying 35 extra pounds.
“After I could run my first mile, I felt I could post it on Facebook,” she says. “Besides my family and great neighbors who cheered me on from their porches, no one knew I was working out, and I needed the extra love from my Facebook community.”
Bowling did lose the 35 pounds. Besides social media, she looked to books for inspiration. She found Jeff Galloway, a former Olympic athlete and author she sees as “very active” on Facebook. When she ran a 5K at Walt Disney World in Florida last summer, she had the chance to meet him in person and share her story.
In turn, others have told her that she has inspired them. “And since they know how I used to live - sedentary - they are impressed,” Bowling says.
She, too, is training for the Little Rock Half Marathon, walking and running at least five days a week for 20 to 25 miles a week.
BIGGEST LOSER
Social media and home workout DVDs helped 32-year-old Rebecca Privitera of Cabot lose more than 200 pounds. In early 2010 she missed four weeks of work because her blood pressure was so high her doctor put her on bed rest and medication. She weighed 381 pounds.
In June 2011, Privitera announced on Facebook that she was going to start working out and getting fit.
“I believe that sharing it, and putting it out there, kept me accountable,” she says.
After doing home exercise DVDs, especially Beachbody’s TurboFire and P90X, Privitera would post her workout time, her activity, how she felt - “the bad days and the good days,” she says. Whenever she felt like stopping, she thought of the people following her story online.
Privitera’s total weight loss so far: 214 pounds. Her Facebook page has more than 3,000 Likes. She created an Instagram account in early 2013; more than 7,500 people follow her there. CNN Health told her story Nov. 18. And she leads group exercise classes at work.
“I’ve gotten so much good feedback about how I’ve inspired a lot of overweight women to really push themselves to do something,” she says. One woman who’d followed Privitera for a year told her that she’d saved her life for her children. “That was one of the biggest compliments I’d ever received.” CUTS BOTH WAYS
Although chronicling fitness efforts can serve as powerful tool that keeps a person feeling accountable to his online audience, that can be a double-edged sword.
Miller’s daily walks were eventually interrupted by a bout of plantar fasciitis, and the resulting advice from his doctor to lay off. He has resumed walking but now does “only” 3 miles, three times a week.
He has not yet resumed his Facebook posts.
“I feel like I’ve become a victim of my own success, and I feel embarrassed to just post three times a week,” he says. “I’m … a little gun-shy about posting again because I set this bar so darn high for myself.”
But there’s a consensus among these fitness seekers that social media have come to play a vital role in the quest for fitness … a role that will only expand. Not only are face-to-face fitness groups using social media, there also are virtual groups such as those spawned by cellphone apps and Twitter chat groups like #FitBlog and #FitStudio.
Such an advantage, Bashay says, may end up creating one big disadvantage:
“I imagine it will start costing some money.”
ActiveStyle, Pages 27 on 02/03/2014