Earnestine Foster is not just a survivor, she’s a thriver. She’s earned that distinction after a bout with COVID in the early period of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States.
For more than a month, things did not look good for Foster. She was hospitalized in March 2020 after her son found her on her floor, sick, saying she needed to go to the hospital. It’s hard to remember much after that, she says.
“I remember them taking me back [in the emergency room], but after that, I really don’t remember the whole scenario,” Foster, 63, of Merrillville, Ind., says. Diagnosed with COVID, she slipped into a coma and was put on a ventilator for weeks. “The doctors actually wanted to take me off of the ventilator, but my son would not let them. I was almost out of here. I guess at that particular time, the doctors felt like I wasn’t progressing, I wasn’t doing better.” She woke up in the hospital about 30 days later, not knowing how sick she had been. But then there was more bad news. While she was in the coma fighting the virus, her circulation was affected, particularly to her left foot.
“My foot — the toenails — they were getting a little black,” Foster explains. “It was one of those situations where every time they tried something, nothing was working.” Doctors told her they wouldn’t be able to save her foot. She left the hospital in May after 47 days, and then in July, her left foot was amputated. After some time in rehabilitation, Foster was able to go home, but she was weakened from the illness and the loss of her appendage. She had been active her whole life and enjoyed running and walking, and she wanted to get back to a place where she felt confident and independent.
It was a Facebook advertisement that pointed her toward The Exercise Coach, a fitness center concept started in 2001 and franchised in 2011, now with 180 locations operating in the United States and 40 in Japan, company founder Brian Cygan says. While the focus of the company is optimizing people’s health through strength training and helping people resist and reverse the aging process, The Exercise Coach was also special because it was an early adopter of adding artificial intelligence technology to the workout process.
AI-optimized workouts
Exercise Coach members go through a testing process to analyze their baseline muscle condition, which is used by the company’s Exerbotics Intelligence Platform to create ideal personal strength recommendations for the coach and client to follow. The AI recommendations, plus real-time feedback, help members put in effective effort to get the most out of a 20-minute workout.
“What that AI does is enables our coaches to rapidly measure the unique muscular capabilities that each person they meet has, and then prescribe strength training exercise that is perfectly personalized for them,” Cygan, CEO of The Exercise Coach and Exerbotics, explains, adding the Exerbotics machines use smart resistance to match the gym-goer’s abilities in a unique way. “It literally adapts to their changing strength throughout every strength training movement.”
It’s the combination of the coach-led workout, the AI technology and the 20-minute timeframe that creates results for Exercise Coach members, Cygan says. He says a focus on working out as it applies to everyday people makes members feel seen and heard in a way they might not elsewhere.
“Typical fitness concepts just aren’t designed with the aging population in mind. They’re actually designed by fitness enthusiasts pretty much for fitness enthusiasts,” Cygan says. “For people who have felt the effects of the aging process, and have not been successful with conventional workouts before, our message of a really safe workout that’s 20 minutes, led by a friendly, knowledgeable coach in a small, private, clean environment is something that many people find very appealing. They don’t want to spend a lot of time exercising, and they need to hear that someone actually understands where they’re coming from.”
Back to independence
“When I was sick, I was very, very weak,” Foster says. “I had lost weight — just my whole body composition was off compared to what I usually had with even just walking or running. So for me, [the workouts] did strengthen me. It did give me back that muscle and the strength that I needed.”
Now three years after COVID changed her life and took her foot, she says she’s back to doing most of what she used to, with a different way of walking, a stronger body and a strengthened mindset.
“I can get up now. I put on my prosthetic. I don’t focus on the fact that I am an amputee,” Foster says. “At the end of the day, I can’t change it. I’m not going to get another leg. They can’t sew one back on for me. So, I have to make the best of it. And that’s what I’m trying to do.”
