HONOLULU (KHON2) — An Oahu woman has been teaching exercise classes for years while being legally blind.
Every day of the week, you’ll find Robin Bush here, exercising in her living room and showing others online how to do the same.
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Bush teaches everything from Zumba, to k-pop pilates, to strength training. She’s come a long way since a doctor’s visit 20 years ago.
Bush said, “I weighed 92 pounds and I had pneumonia and I was very sick and he said we’ll get you admitted.”
Bush wanted to go home.
“He says you have to promise me that you will exercise and I said what? I can barely sit up. I said you know, when I get better I’ll exercise, and he said no, that’s wrong, you don’t get better in order to exercise, you exercise in order to get better,” said Bush.
So she started to move and built up her strength and stamina. The Honolulu resident didn’t let anything get in her way.
Bush continued, “I was born three months too early, which messed up my eyes and my lungs and so I can see all the way to the end of my nose.”
Bush is legally blind. But that hasn’t stopped her from staying active and healthy. She’s even been in 20 marathons.
“Actually what I do is they run with me, they just don’t know me. So I just focus on hearing someone’s steps hit the ground in front of me and if I match my steps to their steps, even though I’m quite a bit behind, say 10 feet, if they didn’t trip over something, then I won’t either,” said Bush
When Bush isn’t leading exercise classes, she’s teaching computer science and web design at the University of Maryland Global Campus.
“I had a friend say ‘I hate exercise, I’m not doing any kind of exercise except for this.’ And I said, ‘well can you do that with both hands?’ Wherever you are, you can start and you can build.”
“During your golden years, you want to be able to travel and play with the grandkids and do things like that, So you can live better. Just start now,” said Bush.
