Christine Interviews Her Personal Fitness Icon: Her Cousin Kathy Noseworthy

Maybe *your* mental image of an athlete is someone famous but *my* mental image of an athlete is my cousin, Kathy Noseworthy.

She has always been the fittest person that I know and most of my memories of her involve her being in motion.

I can remember being around 3 or so and she would come to dinner at our family’s apartment before going to practice on the field behind our house. I remember being impressed by all the sports awards she won (I still am!) And I have a clear image of me and my Mom looking after one of Kathy’s baby daughters so she could go out for a run. It was the first time I realized that having a baby didn’t mean that everything in your life had to be all about the baby (an important lesson for a young teenager.)

Kathy turned sixty last year and her Facebook posts are as action-oriented as ever. Her activities have changed but the way that fitness shapes her life has not. (And she’s every bit as inspiring to me now as she has been all along.)

Kathy is a retired Physical Education teacher who teaches yoga at Modo Yoga St. John’s and I was delighted when she agreed to chat with me about fitness, exercise, and the changes she has made so her body keeps feeling good about her activities.

My questions/comments are in bold.

Tell me a bit about yoga – your teaching and your personal practice.

Right now I’m just teaching yoga virtually, and I’m about to take July and August off. I’m going into my sixth year teaching yoga so this is a much needed break.

I’ll do my own practice. I’ll usually do yin, that’s what my body needs mostly. Because I get the yang part of my fitness in my other activities. I need to do yin yoga to keep up my flexibility, my agility, and you know, all of that stuff. And yin does that for me at this stage in my life. That feels the best in my body.

I love that as a measure, what feels best. 

To me, that’s the piece that people miss, no matter what they’re doing. They’re so goal-oriented or just like, “I’m just going to do it, it doesn’t feel good but I’ve just got to do it. I know I got to do it.” And I’m like, “Well, if it doesn’t feel good, you’re not going to keep doing it.”

So aside from yoga, what are your other activities?

Well, I do a fair bit of biking. I run but not as much as I used to, because that no longer feels good in my body. So, on a good week, if I run three times when that would be it.  But I’d say, on average, maybe twice a week.  The distance would depend on how I’m feeling, I never have a set distance in mind. 

I generally don’t go less than five but I rarely go more than eight anymore. That’s where I am with that and that feels ok. 

The thing I am probably most adamant about these days are weights because of my age (60 and I don’t want to lose my muscle mass. Even though that’s kind of inevitable but not if you want to work hard enough at it. I just lift weights to retain what I have, I’m not really that interested in becoming super strong, I just want to be functionally strong. 

So, I lift weights and again, my goal is three times a week. 

I walk, I do a lot of walking. 

The new thing I’m doing now is pickleball. That’s a cross between badminton and tennis, I guess. It’s a great sport, a paddle sport that you play with a wiffleball. I’ve been playing since last fall and I love it. 

Oh, and paddleboard. For me, that’s just a leisurely activity out on the water. It’s so nice, so relaxing.  

So, how have your activities changed over time? You don’t play frisbee any more, right?

No, not anymore.

Now, I’m more concerned with maintaining a healthy body. Because I don’t think I would be a very nice person if I ended up getting injured and couldn’t do the things I want to do.

I’m very particular. I gauge the activity in terms of whether it’s going to be worth it to me,   and what’s the cost if I get injured? 

So, I stay away from things that I can’t control. Team sports, I don’t play team sports anymore because you don’t have control over everybody on the field so I tend to stay away from that. 

I’ve definitely shifted from team sports, which is, a total shift because that’s all I ever did. The traditional sports: basketball, volleyball, soccer, even frisbee. I used to really enjoy it but now I’m just a bit more of a loner in terms of what I do. 

That’s how I’ve shifted and that’s more toward protecting my body. It’s not that I wouldn’t enjoy the sports, it’s just about what makes sense at this point in my life. 

What about what about non physical benefits from your exercise? How do you think it helps your mental health, for example?

Oh, that’s so huge. I rarely take a day off but when I do try to take a day off, by mid-afternoon, I need to do something. It’s a mental thing.

That just might be a walk. I don’t consider that something that I couldn’t do on a day off.  

I don’t know where I would be if I didn’t have activity as my outlet. 

I almost don’t know how to answer this question because I have never not exercised. It’s almost like something that just happens to me naturally. It’s not something I have to force or motivate myself. 

I mean, sometimes I have to motivate myself to go to the gym or go for a run. But, generally speaking, if I’m feeling like I don’t want to do anything, that’s when I need to do something because once I move, that inspires me to move more. 

But if I sit on my butt all day and do nothing, it just doesn’t put me in a good place. 

Once I start moving, I’m like, “Ok!” And I want to move more.

How do you feel about the idea of fitness as a feminist issue, as part of women feeling empowered?

It’s funny that you asked that because I was saying to my friend last week, just as it pertains to lifting weights, when you feel strong physically, you feel strong mentally. I think the benefits there, I wish more women could take that on more.

I think some women are like “I don’t want to have muscles, I don’t want to get big.” but they don’t understand how hard you would have to work to get big. But knowing that when you touch your arm, you feel the muscle, you feel strong, that translates to you mentally. It’s hard not to feel empowered when you have that strength.

Lifting weights empowers women.

I didn’t always feel that way, I didn’t even think about it, really.

But now, I see women at the gym, lifting weights, and they are just so confident, the way they carry themselves, they just like how they are.

That’s empowering.

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Thanks for the great chat, Kathy!