FINDING THE RIGHT BALANCE OF TRAINING

Lest he lose a step to advancing age, making his fox trot look more like a faux pas, Bill Howe Sr. decided he needed to upgrade his dance-floor fitness.

But he didn’t want to get lost in any join-a-gym and wait-for-the-next-machine shuffle.

Not at age 70. Not when his goals were balance, flexibility, fluidity and enough strength to linger on his toes before busting a ballroom move.

Howe found what he was looking for at a personal training studio in Pacific Beach, where stability balls, medicine balls, resistance bands and balance platforms outnumber conventional weight stacks and machines.

Operated by 26-year-old Addie Merrill, whom some San Diegans may remember as the first female football player at Madison High School, it reflects a trend toward functional fitness. The goal: one-on-one training and rehabilitation designed to fit an individual’s needs regardless of age.

In Howe’s case, it was better ballroom performance. For Helen Faye, 82, it was increased stamina for day-to-day activities.

Despite a discouraging beginning—“I started with an hour session, and it practically killed me”—Faye made steady progress in 3-1/2 months. “I’m stronger, and I rarely have tired days anymore,” she said.

“I hated the whole idea, but I knew that exercise would help. I just thought it was stupid at my age to join a gym and get into machines. I’d already been doing yoga for an hour and a half a week in a class for older women.”

Merrill teams with her husband, Tyler Merrill, a 28-year-old exercise physiologist and veteran of WellStrong, a fitness and rehabilitation program affiliated with the UCSD Department of Orthopedics.

A former runner-up for Miss Clairemont under the name Addie Jacobs, she insists she was more a “girlie girl” than a tomboy at Madison High. But she beat out guys for the varsity placekicking job her sophomore year. “I nailed every point after touchdown,” she said.

Her best sport, though, was soccer. She chose Cal State San Bernardino from 18 college scholarship offers and excelled as a goalkeeper. But when her father, who had been her coach since she was 4, suffered a disabling stroke, it rearranged her priorities.

All set to transfer to the University of the Pacific in Stockton, she came to the aid of her family in San Diego instead. Dispirited by chronic back pain and her father’s condition—which grew worse after a brain hemorrhage—she gave up soccer.

“I believe everything happens for a reason,” she said. “I’m doing something I love now.”

And she’s doing it with someone she loves. Her husband, a former body-building champion, specialized in injury rehabilitation. With yoga and his expert help, her back problems have largely subsided.

In June 2001, after five years of developing a devoted clientele as a personal trainer at Powerhouse Gym in Pacific Beach, Merrill opened Addie’s Studio One on One, a 1500-square-foot space at 4434 Ingraham St.

Hoping to stay on what she calls the “cutting edge” of fitness, she relishes the challenge of keeping clients such as Howe from feeling their years.

Working on balancing apparatus that “feels like Jell-O,” Howe finds himself developing abdominal and leg strength as he enhances his equilibrium.

“It’s a very low-tech operation, which is what I want,” he said. “And I think it’s making me a smoother, stronger dancer.”

You need a certain muscle strength to rise on your toes and hesitate for a moment before you take the next step.” For Howe, that’s the kind of functional fitness that takes precedence over a drop-dead physique.

“Learning how much weight I can lift was uninteresting to me,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll be taking my shirt off at the beach and flexing my muscles anytime soon.”