Photo by Amy Veneziano Fitness instructor Melody Williams is armed and ready to work – out, that is – with a Swiss ball near her temporary Tonasket home.
TONASKET – There’s a new fitness option in town if sweating it out on the treadmill just isn’t your style.
Melody Williams, who recently moved to Tonasket from Missouri, offers three different fitness courses two to three times per week out of the Tonasket Foursquare Church.
“I believe in exercise,” she said. “I’ve seen the things it can do for people. It helps to alleviate stress and depression, it gives people more energy for the things they need and want to do.”
Williams teaches four courses: traditional aerobics, Pilates, a Swiss ball class and a “getting started” class, which is meant to introduce people who haven’t been exercising to the movements, terms and activities involved.
The aerobics and Pilates course are offered three nights per week and the intro course is offered two nights a week. The Swiss ball class is one night per week. Williams charges $60 for six weeks of classes and students can come to any class they desire, she said.
Currently, she has about 10 students.
“They rotate between the three classes,” she said. “They aren’t locked in to just one class. They can come to two or three classes per night if they want to.”
Her classes can accommodate up to about 15 people, she said.
Williams offers a different approach to fitness, she said.
“I’m 44,” said Williams. “I haven’t always been fit and strong. I understand how the adult body works and moves – and how it doesn’t move!”
Williams, her husband and three of her children moved here from Missouri to be closer to her fourth child, who is living in British Columbia with her husband and new baby.
“I had to be close to my new grandbaby!” Williams said.
Her husband is a surgical nurse at North Valley Hospital. Her four children range from age 11 to 20, she said.
Williams doesn’t have any plans for expansion yet, except to hold the group together through the summer, she said.
“We’ll see what happens in the fall.”
Contact Williams at (509) 486-1260 for more information or to sign up.
