We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Dr. Beth Templin a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Dr. Beth, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Have you ever experienced a times when your entire field felt like it was taking a U-Turn?
When I started my Physical Therapy career, the focus was on how we could help people recover after an illness, injury or loss of function. We are now in the middle of the swing, where more and more Physical Therapists are seeing their role in how to help prevent these issues from happening in the first place. We are switching our focus to fitness and wellness to be proactive and limit declines, especially in our aging population.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I worked in geriatrics for 13 years, before starting HouseFit five years ago. The biggest problem I saw was people did not have access to the services they truly needed to stay active and independent, to be able to enjoy their retirements, or age in place, which is the goal for most people. Older adults are often brushed aside and ignored because they are“old” to actually get better. I created HouseFit to fill that gap, to be able to provide better options to the aging community.
The name of my business is HouseFit, which literally proposes a question – as you age, are you fit enough to keep living in and managing your home? Are you HouseFit?
We are passionate about assisting people 55 and older, and those living with Parkinson’s Disease to be proactive about maintaining their lifestyle and fitness levels so they can remain active and independent throughout their lives. We offer traditional Physical Therapy services at our South County location and we also have a Mobile Team that will travel to work with our clients throughout the St. Louis area.
Beyond that, we offer fitness options to help people improve their fitness levels and stay active and independent. We truly believe that age is just a number and that fitness is achievable at any age. It doesn’t’ matter if you’ve never exercised before or if you have multiple medical issues. We are here to help you.
Our specialty is working with people who are medically complex, or have not had success with some of the big box gyms due to not feeling welcomed or understood. All of our fitness classes are created and taught by our Physical Therapists. This means we can easily modify activities to accommodate for client’s aches and pains or physical limitations.
Everything about our business is created to serve our seniors better. We have a large flat parking lot, which creates easy access to our facility. We have handicapped accessible restrooms that allow for caregivers as needed. And we play 60’s music all day long. It’s a happy and joyful place to be.
The thing that makes me most proud is when someone new comes in and tells us we are exactly what they have been looking for.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Resilience is defined as “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.” Being a small business owner, I am constantly faced with challenges. The biggest one I have had to face so far was COVID. Being a health care provider during the start of the pandemic was overwhelming, especially when you are serving a high-risk population like ours. I was torn between providing care to our clients, who desperately need our help and protecting them. I ended up closing the business for 4 weeks at the start of the pandemic because there was just so much we didn’t know about COVID.
Once we understood how to protect our clients and staff, we resumed our in-home visits. It was emotionally exhausting for myself and my team. There was so much fear and lack of information, but so many of our clients had already experienced massive declines after not having access to us for the previous month. It was heartbreaking, so we suited up and went out to provide care to them. As the benefits of what we were providing began to outweigh the risks, we opened the gym space to 1-1 visits again one month later. It took us another month to feel confident about resuming our in-person classes.
There was a time where I didn’t know if the business would ever look the same again. How much it would change? Would I be able to keep it open? Or would this pandemic would be the end of it? I’m happy to report that we have not only survived, but have grown substantially, allowing us to make an even bigger impact on the aging community we love to serve.
Do you think you’d choose a different profession or specialty if you were starting now?
I would absolutely choose my profession and specialty again. I think it’s hard to sometimes put into words what I have the opportunity to do every single day, so I will will try to capture it in a recent success story. Kathy is a client of ours who had a fall and “shattered” her hip. The surgeon told her she would never walk again. Kathy had previously worked with the team at HouseFit and knew that if she was every going to stand or walk again, we were her best chance.
When she started, she came to her first visit in her wheelchair. After 6 months of working with us, she can walk with a walking pole, go up and down a full flight of stairs in her home, get up and down from the floor independently and is back to driving. Nothing in the world can capture the joy you feel when you get to help someone accomplish the impossible, when you get to give some back their life. It wasn’t an easy journey, but we were confident we could help her reach her goals and reclaim her life. Success stories like this happen every day at HouseFit. It’s truly my happy place.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.housefitstl.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/housefitstl/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/housefitstl/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCschju6c18P-VEyCNDhjBAg?view_as=subscriber