By Niki Desautels
Special to the Enterprise
It looks like a yoga class and sounds like a yoga class, but this is no trendy health-club gathering for 20-somethings.
In a day of high-priced medications and fad diets, these senior citizens are doing the best thing they can for their health: getting out and exercising.
Three times a week, 20 or more men and women gather at the North Creek Presbyterian Church on 164th Street SE. for the Greater Mill Creek Senior Program’s Lifetime Fitness Class.
The class is led by 73-year-old Marge Lynch. In addition to yoga, it covers warmup stretches, aerobics and weight exercises, in a program designed specifically for seniors by the Health Enhancement Program at the Northshore Senior Center.
Three years ago, Jack LaPoint was diagnosed with diabetes and his doctor recommended that he start exercising. So at the beginning of the year, he started coming to Lifetime Fitness Classes.
“Walking is just walking,” says LaPoint. “But here you exercise everything from your neck to your fingers,” he said.
Classes like this are a part of preventative medicine, staying healthy by eating right and getting plenty of exercise. Lynch’s Mill Creek class has at least two people in their 90s who rarely miss a class.
“I never hear (the participants) complain about aches and pains,” says Lynch. “In the two years that I have been teaching here, we have only lost two members, both because they fell ill and had to stop coming.
“They are amazing, they really throw themselves into it,” says Lynch of her students. “And when they walk out of here, they feel like they’ve accomplished something.”
There is another important aspect to these classes. After retirement the social circles start to get smaller, there are no longer co-workers, or PTA meetings, or many of the other activities that draw people together. Friends pass on, or move away to be closer to their children. So for many people, these classes also offer a social outlet to meet more people in the area with whom they share common interests.
“At our age, we don’t all have the social relationships we need,” said 92 year-old Harlan Pendleton. “When you can have that with aerobics, that’s even better.”
It is important for seniors to keep moving, and classes like these benefit them at both a physical and social standpoint, according to Bill Durham, manger of the Mill Creek Senior Program. Because of the preventative benefits, Group Health picks up the cost of the class for its members.
The main reason many seniors choose North Creek’s Lifetime Fitness Class is the instructor.
“Marge Lynch,” said Durham. “She is the key to the whole thing.”
Lynch, who took over the class two years ago from Joan Gleadle, also teaches a senior fitness class at the Woodinville Community Center and calls her classes “a work-out for any senior.”
“It’s a pleasure to teach seniors because they are so pleasant,” said Lynch. “They are like a big family to me.”
While not all senior centers are lucky enough to have Lynch teaching their classes, most do offer a senior fitness class, so that everyone can stay healthy, fit and active at any stage of their life.
Niki Desautels is a University of Washington student.
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