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Home » Fitness » Fitness teacher: Exercise is best cure for many senior complaints

Kathy Werstein fondly recalls the first fitness class she ever participated in - it was led by Jack LaLanne.

"My mom did exercises with Jack LaLanne in front of a little black and white TV," said Werstein while sitting in her classroom at the Washington Park District Building before a yoga class recently. "It was the 1950s and I was 4 or 5 years old."

Known as the Godfather of Fitness, the California-based Jack LaLanne introduced America to the daily workout session through the brand new medium of television. Werstein did sit-ups, leg bends and jumping jacks side by side with her mother.

"I think that's why I get a kick out of working with the kids," said Werstein, who teaches all ages from preschool to senior citizens. "The best way to promote fitness is to start 'em young."

Werstein, 60, has been teaching fitness classes in the Washington area since the mid-1980s. For several years, she owned a business called Fitco, which was located in the Cherry Tree Shopping Center and later in the little building that now houses McKenzie River Pottery in Main Street. After closing Fitco in 1998, Werstein kept on teaching at various locations throughout the city through the Washington Park District.

"I think I had keys to every church in the city because we'd do classes in all the area churches," she said.

While Werstein recalls an active childhood on her parents' farm in Michigan, she didn't get interested in exercise classes until she was a young mother.

"In the mid-1970s I took my first aerobics class," she said. "I just fell in love with it. My husband had a job where we moved a lot. I went to the local YMCAs to meet people."

In the 1970s, aerobics was a new thing. Popularized by Jane Fonda, the aerobic workout was created for a culture that was becoming more and more sedentary.

"I went through the Jane Fonda era when everything was high impact, a lot of jumping up and down," said Werstein. "And then they realized that was hurting people, so they made it lower impact, but we were still waving our arms around in the air a lot. Then people got joint problems, so they stopped doing that. And then came step aerobics."

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Fitness teacher: Exercise is best cure for many senior complaints

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Home » Fitness » Fitness teacher: Exercise is best cure for many senior complaints