Western Racquet's Kari Merrill has a passion for fitness, a special bond with people with Parkinson's and a love for hairless cats

Western Racquet’s Kari Merrill has a passion for fitness, a special bond with people with Parkinson’s and a love for hairless cats

Posted by Admin October 17, 2024 Fitness

GREEN BAY – You only need to sit in on one of Kari Merrill’s Rock Steady Boxing classes at Western Racquet & Fitness Club to know she’s right where she was meant to be.

With a wireless mic, her hair pulled into a high bun and the kind of smile you could rotate a solar system around, she leads a group of people living with Parkinson’s disease through a 75-minute workout that begins with shoulder rolls and finger flicks and works its way up to throwing punches and doing “The Chicken Dance.”

“Stand up nice and tall. Chin to chest. Wiggle your toes inside your shoes,” she says to start, as “Grateful” by callmestevieray and Connor Price bounces through the sound system.

The participants, who range in age from their late 40s to their early 90s, are there to use fitness to fight back against the progressive neurological condition that can cause tremors, imbalance, muscle stiffness, slowing of movement and flexed posture. It’s not a cure for Parkinson’s — there isn’t one — but it’s a way to improve the quality of life for those who have it.

It’s personal for Merrill, a Manitowoc native whose grandfather had Parkinson’s 30 years ago, long before anyone knew classes like Rock Steady can help with balance, strength and agility to delay the disease’s progression. She was in her late teens when he went into a nursing home. She understood little about what was happening.

Merrill wasn’t able to do for him then what she does for others now. To watch her in action, you get the feeling perhaps she’s making up for lost time.

She is a dynamo. An unwavering beacon of positivity, joy and encouragement at the center of the floor as the participants around her — a man with “Fighter” written across the back of his T-shirt, another in a U.S. Navy veteran cap, a woman with pink boxing gloves — concentrate intently to punch a speed bag, do jumping jacks and put one foot in front of the other.

It puts a lump in your throat and makes your heart soar at the same time.

“I’ve never seen a group of individuals fight like that,” said Merrill, who brought the national Rock Steady Boxing program to Western Racquet in 2018.

She also teaches cardio kickboxing and strength classes, along with fitness at the police academy. She loves each class for different reasons, but Rock Steady is special.

“I come into Rock Steady and I see they do not give up. They don’t give up,” she said. “They have to fight for something all of us at times can take for granted.”

One of the first things she’ll tell you about Rock Steady is that she never wants it to be about her. The program would never be able to make the difference it does if not for the entire team of five certified coaches and 20-plus volunteers who are as dedicated as she is.

But this is a story about Merrill, an animal-loving former correctional officer who fell head over heels for fitness later in life. When she did, it saved her. She’s been paying it forward ever since with the kind of infectious spirit that can make a squat, push-up or high-five from her the best part of somebody’s day.

“She is probably one of my favorite people in the whole world,” said Greg Engles, who volunteers at the Rock Steady classes and has known Merrill for 20 years. “Her energy, her personality. She has a passion for it.”

From the night shift as a correctional officer to full-time fitness instructor

Before she found her way to Western Racquet, she worked as a correctional officer in a jail for 13 years, the majority of her time on the night shift. It was a difficult job, often around uncooperative people. It eventually began to take its toll on Merrill, a self-described “connector” who has always wanted to help and save others.

“I felt I was just spiraling into this cynical person that didn’t want to be around people, that didn’t like people, that was cautious of people,” she said.

When she was promoted to corporal and moved to days, she discovered fitness as a release from the stress and started teaching.

“I would hang up my uniform and put on my fitness outfit and my high bun and I would go teach and it was just like, ‘How can I do this full time?’”

She became a personal trainer, went to every fitness conference she could find and taught every class she could teach. When Western Racquet was looking to grow its group fitness offerings, she quit her job with Brown County (and the retirement that came with it) in 2010 for a 22-hour-a-week position with no insurance.

She wasn’t married at the time. She remembers asking her fiancé and now husband, Joe Merrill, if they could even make that kind of financial situation work.

“You are miserable,” he told her. “We will figure it out.”

It was a huge leap of faith, but Kari Merrill never doubted it had the potential to turn into something more. She was right.

As Western Racquet underwent a major renovation beginning in 2008 and its focus evolved, Merrill was able to create five new studio spaces. There are now more than 60 group fitness classes a week at the gym. Until last September, she ran the entire group fitness department. That position has since been split into two. She’s currently in charge of programming, including Rock Steady, and she also teaches.

“I call myself the most improved player in life, because I didn’t figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up for a long time, and then Western opened their doors,” she said. “I’ve never had a day that I didn’t put on that microphone and become a happy person. I love everything about group fitness and teaching and mentoring and just making someone’s day better by moving.”

Rock Steady Boxing is a family, silliness and happy hours included

Western Racquet is one of more than 800 affiliates around the world certified in Rock Steady Boxing training. What started with nine participants now has more than 60, most of whom come two or three times a week to one of the six classes offered weekly. They’re Parkinson’s patients from all walks of life, men and women, each with challenges unique to them.

“Parkinson’s looks different on everybody, and everybody progresses differently,” Merrill said. “When I was trained at Rock Steady Boxing, they said, ‘When you’ve met one person with Parkinson’s, you’ve met one person with Parkinson’s.’”

The disease was recently in the spotlight when legendary Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre revealed he has been diagnosed at age 55.

More: What is Parkinson’s disease? What to know about Brett Favre’s diagnosis

More: Green Bay’s Jim Runge has toured the world with rock stars. Now he’s taking on his Parkinson’s diagnosis with no regrets.

“Most people think it’s older, men, tremors, or they think it’s more of a memory thing or dementia. What they don’t realize is everything Parkinson’s can really affect, and I think that’s why it takes so long to get a diagnosis,” she said.

It can sometimes look like normal aging, including posture issues, rigidity, sore muscles and shuffling. Knowing some of those early symptoms can help in getting a diagnosis sooner, Merrill said.

“It’s a movement disorder. It takes away your ability to just move. You and I don’t have to think about it. We just get up and we move and we climb stairs,” she said.

“For them, they always have to be thinking about it, whether they have a freezing gait, going from the floor to the carpet that could trip them up, that constant fear of falling. Everything gets very small and that’s where the shuffling comes in. They constantly need to be reminded to stand up tall, take big steps. It’s like their full-time job.”

The Rock Steady classes focus not just on movement, often in smaller groups that rotate from one timed fitness station to another, but also brain health as well with puzzles and card games. Because Parkinson’s can also diminish facial expressions, there are even exercises that work on smiling.

It all happens in a room abuzz with constant activity — and music, which is key to the motivation. It can span Mötley Crüe to the “Da Doo Ron Ron” and everything in between. Merrill works in oldies that are favorites of the participants, maybe a sentimental song from a wedding anniversary or a tune from their first concert. It makes for the kind of happy soundtrack reminiscent of a roller skating rink.

“Our goal is how can we provide an exercise program that doesn’t look like a support group so that they can come in, be with people that get it, have fun and ‘Oh, hey by the way, I’m doing all these activities that are going to make me live as independently as I can for as long as I can,’” Merrill said. “That’s the ultimate goal.”

It can be physically exhausting, but it’s also so much fun that many Rock Steady people don’t want to miss out. The endorphins and camaraderie reenergize them. The silliness that’s encouraged, like Merrill putting a relay cone on her head like a hat, is a welcome distraction. Tremors calm. Anxiety subsides.

“I think one of the coolest compliments is they come in with a cane and then they’ll forget it (on the way out),” Merrill said.

It really is a family. The Rock Steady crew has gone to Green Bay Phoenix women’s basketball and Blizzard games together. They do happy hour the second Friday of the month. When a member can no longer drive, everybody else jumps in to pick them up so they can get to class.

Rock Steady also welcomes spouses or family members to come along to talk with other caregivers. Merrill often encourages them to take the opportunity during class to leave their loved one and go to Barnes & Noble, exhale and do something for themselves during those 75 minutes.

“Because they’re going through it, too,” she said. “It’s a very frustrating, confusing disease, because every day is different. As a spouse, you’re looking at your husband that yesterday you guys had a full day and then the next day he’s struggling to try to figure out how to step on a curb or get out of a car.”

At home, she has 4 hairless cats, 2 hairless guinea pigs and a rescue Chug

If you had asked Merrill’s mom what her daughter would be when she grew up, she would have bet money it would’ve been something with animals.

She adores them. She was that little girl who wanted to bring them all home.

She has seven of her own: Gilligan, Popcorn, Daphne and Tennison, all hairless cats; Deyla, a Chihuahua pug mix rescue (known as a Chug) with an underbite; and Lenny and Squiggy, a pair of hairless guinea pigs who Merrill says look like potatoes.

“I always tell people when they’re like, ‘You have seven animals in your house?’ I’m like, ‘Think of all the animals I don’t have though, because I would definitely take a lot more if I could.’”

About the same time Merrill switched careers, husband Joe Merrill, an officer with the Green Bay Police Department, became the handler of K-9 Neo. The Belgian Malinois lived with the couple and became the longest-serving K-9 in the department’s history at more than 10 years. He died at age 12 of cancer in 2020, just a month shy of his retirement.

It was a crushing blow for their family to have to say goodbye to him, Kari Merrill said.

Neo’s personality was such that when Merrill brought home a tiny hairless cat that looked like a little rat from a breeder friend of hers, he was awesome about sharing the house with his new naked but cuddly roommate named Gilligan.

“The breeder said they’re like chips, you can’t have just one, so she decided to breed again. I was fine with just one, and my husband — he’ll deny this — said, ‘You might as well get a litter mate.’ OK, so my name went right back on the list.”

They ended up with an entire cast of characters to fill the hole left by Neo. Popcorn can open every cabinet and door in the house. Daphne, who someone was looking to rehome, has “resting b— face.” Tennison is tiny, vocal and so attached to Merrill she may as well be Velcro.

The cats all snuggle together and watch the birds. They’re equal parts clingy and cuddly, because they’re often cold. They love Joe’s beard. They occasionally get crabby when Kari dresses them in adorable clothes, but she reminds them that’s part of the deal. They all sleep with her and Joe.

“So yeah, my husband and I share a bed with four hairless cats and a dog,” she said, laughing. “Honestly, everything they do is funny, because they’re naked. Everyone says I should have a reality show, because of the stories that come out.”

Besides just changing people’s minds about hairless cats (she blames the episode of “Friends” when Rachel got a particularly unfriendly Mrs. Whiskerson), her next goal is to find property so she and Joe can have a couple of donkeys. They’re currently looking.

To see Kari Merrill in her element at Western Racquet, it’s hard to imagine she ever stops moving long enough to have what might be considered a lazy day at home, but lounging with her pets is her flip side.

“I’m either (at Western Racquet) on a microphone or on a couch with all of my animals,” she said. “That is truly what I love to do and what I love to go home to.”

She has been teaching fitness now for close to 25 years, nearly half her life, and there’s never been a day she didn’t want to put the microphone on. For her, there’s “magic in the walls” at the close-knit Western Racquet and its 50-year history.

Someone could open a new fitness center right next door to where she lives and offer her all the money in the world to work there and her answer would be a polite “nah.”

“I’m here until the end for sure,” she said. “And I would never leave my Rock Steady peeps ever. That’ll be the last thing I retire from.”

Kendra Meinert is an entertainment and feature writer at the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Contact her at 920-431-8347 or kmeinert@greenbay.gannett.com. Follow her on X @KendraMeinert.