“Strong is sexy! And I am sexy, baby!” shouted the women in Mubarakah Ibrahim’s early morning “boot camp” exercise class. By fall, more women may be shouting those phrases — in free classes at a new not-for-profit gym in Newhallville.
Ibrahim — New Haven’s own exercise entrepreneur, friend of Oprah, and Obama dinner guest — is in the homestretch of a plan she’s been working on for three years. It stems from a realization she came to during her 13 years as a personal trainer: “People who need me the most can’t afford me.”
Poor and minority communities are hit the hardest by health conditions like diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, and heart disease. All of those conditions can be controlled through regular exercise, but paying for zumba, aerobics, and kickboxing classes isn’t cheap.
Ibrahim said people with limited finances show up in her classes when she has a special sale or discount, but they often can’t afford to stick with it long enough to make a real difference in their health.
“That bothers me,” Ibrahim said after wrapping up her class Tuesday morning in her fitness studio on Davenport Avenue in the Hill.
To address the problem, Ibrahim is opening Fit Haven, a non-profit gym for women and girls. She has teamed up with the Clifford Beers Clinic, which just received nearly $10 million in federal money for “wraparound” health services for children and families. By partnering with Clifford Beers and other organizations, Fit Haven will be able to offer subsidized gym memberships for qualifying women and teens.
The gym will have group and personal training, exercise machines, nutrition classes, and free babysitting.
Ibrahim is in final negotiations on a lease in a space in Science Park, in the base of the parking garage.
Ibrahim said she’s also inspired by her mother, who single-handedly raised her and five siblings in Springfield, Mass., after her husband died of a stroke when Ibrahim was a girl.
“My mom had diabetes for a very long time,” Ibrahim said. But her mom never got the health care she needed. It wasn’t until she’d had the disease for 25 years that a doctor referred her to a nutritionist.
Ibrahim’s mother died two years ago after struggling with the effects of diabetes — glaucoma, neuropathy, an amputated foot. “In the end, it was the diabetes that killed her.”
Diabetes is common in low-income communities, Ibrahim said. After seeing their parents and grandparents deal with it, people have come to expect they’ll develop diabetes as they get older. Come middle age, they’re ready to start injecting insulin.
The attitude, Ibrahim said, is: “I’m about 45, let me go get my needles.”
“It disturbs me a lot,” she said. Diabetes isn’t just a part of life; it’s treatable with diet and exercise. “It’s such a myth and a misconception.”
The same goes for obesity, high blood-pressure, and heart disease. Fit Haven is designed to counteract these four conditions plus stress, which exacerbates them all.
Exercise helps nearly everything, from treating mild depression to increasing bone density, even lowering the recurrence rate of cancer, Ibrahim said.
Ibrahim said she chose Science Park because of its location near Dixwell and Newhallville, where a Yale study found that 71 percent of neighbors are overweight or obese and rates of high blood-pressure and diabetes are above the national average.
She chose to make the gym only for women because “if you affect women, you affect the entire family.” It’s the women in families who do the shopping and cooking and pack lunches for kids. If they start eating better, everyone else does, too, she argued.
Fit Haven will also target girls in middle school. That’s a crucial time to reach girls, Ibrahim said. It’s when they start to become more body-conscious, when their self-esteem plummets.
Fit Haven won’t serve exclusively low-income clients. People will pay according to their income level, with 60 percent of members receiving subsidies and the rest paying full price, Ibrahim said.
The gym will also have “activity-level credits,” Ibrahim said. Paying members who come frequently will qualify for discounts; free members for gift cards.
Meanwhile, Ibrahim is still raising money to make the plan a reality. She’s in the middle of a capital giving campaign, collecting donations through Fit Haven’s website, and aiming to have Newhallville women proclaiming they are strong and sexy by October.