Yoga Classes at Wellness Center offer more than just yoga

Yoga teacher and personal trainer, Terrie Allen, teaches yoga classes that include strength training for people of all ages at the Northeast Iowa Wellness and Recreation Center in Postville.

Allen, who lives in Postville, said she started taking yoga 14 years ago, in 2010, because she was under a lot of stress at work. 

Allen said the instructor who she was taking yoga classes from in Decorah started her journey to start teaching classes herself.

“The gal I was going to, she offered yoga teacher training. So I decided to do it,” Allen said.

“Rose, one of the students here, kept asking me, ‘When are you going to retire and start to teach?’ So that’s when I decided I would do it (teach yoga),” Allen said.

Allen has been teaching yoga for around ten years and has been offering this particular class in the Wellness Center for the last four or five years. 

Allen, when teaching her classes, said she likes to teach the same routine two times a week at the classes, and then switch to a new fitness routine, but that the routine always includes yoga and weight training. 

“Because weight training is so important as I say, especially as we age,” she said.

Allen continued, “It’s so good because you get your mobility, your flexibility work, and you get your strength training. You know, it just is a good combination of both things.”

Allen said she’s been retired for 12 years and has been doing and taking fitness training for a lot of that time, including sculpt training and quite an extensive list of other forms of training. 

“I did personal training, wellness coaching, I’ve done meditation, nutrition. I just have an active lifestyle–run 5k’s, hike, bike, play pickleball, you know, so it works out well,” she said. 

Allen said she reduced her schedule slightly to have more free time for travel, but that she used to teach nine yoga classes a week, including chair yoga, where people do yoga from sitting in or holding onto the back of a chair. She said that while she doesn’t train people separately in all the different areas anymore, she believes that all of her experience is beneficial to her yoga classes.

“It’s good because it helps me be able to teach all the different things, in that I know the form for lifting weights, and I know what they should be doing, and opposing muscle groups, and just all those different things–unilateral training is a lot, when you’re doing the one side,” she said.

Allen says that fitness guidelines recommend people do cardio as well, but aside from that, she believes most people who attend her class can get a good portion of the flexibility and mobility exercise they need in the one hour class. She also adds a bit of her own general health study or knowledge into the class, like telling the class about the book she has been reading or information about nutrition.

Allen said she thinks some of the benefits of her class are feeling stronger and better balance. She said that especially as people get older, they can be prone to falls if they are not working on balance. She said that, for example, the downward dog yoga pose is one of the only ways to help build bone density in your wrists, and that lifting weights helps the rest of your bone density. She said that breath work and breathing at the right time while lifting weights is important too. 

Allen said that she will critique people on their form in her class because she doesn’t want anyone to get hurt, but that she understands some days, people may not be able to exercise the way they can on others. 

“If you come to class and you don’t want to do anything, it’s okay to lay on your mat through the whole class, because some days you just need a break,” she said. 

Allen said they can make modifications to make the exercise routine work for individuals if they are not flexible. She said people have had a knee replacement, a hip replacement, or have bad knees and make modifications so that it works for them. She also said that people do not need to know how to be able to do yoga to attend, and that the people who attend the class also build friendships with each other over time.

While Allen does take time off for vacations on occasion, she generally hosts yoga classes for one hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Interested individuals can contact the Wellness Center for more information or visit their website, neiawrc.org.