Sweating to—and with—the Oldies

How a senior center dance class changed Suzanne Roberts' attitude about group fitness. PLUS: An open thread about participating in exercise classes.

Jan 30, 2026

Readers,

Today we have an essay by Suzanne Roberts about the healing experience of attending a dance class with her much older sister at a senior center. It’s an inspiring story about overcoming a long-standing aversion to exercising among others, finding a way to get in some upbeat, joyful cardio activity in a social setting.

Group exercise later in life is good for the heart and the mind, for strength and balance, and for improving many physical conditions. A 2023 article in the International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-Being entitled “‘It’s not time for us to sit down yet’: how group exercise programs can motivate physical activity and overcome barriers in inactive older adults,” concluded:

Group exercise programs can combat the physiological and psychological vulnerabilities associated with advanced aging. For example, exercise programs for older adults have been shown to increase muscle mass and physical function and improve chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, and obesity. Exercise programs can improve participant’s bone density and reduce the risk of osteoporosis and related fractures and improve psychological well-being, self-confidence, and sleep quality. Group exercise, in particular, has been shown to balance health in older adults both in the physical, mental, and social aspects, as a simple and sustainable method to impact physical activity behaviors and increase motivation in older adults. Exercise programs promote active lives by enhancing a sense of self-efficacy (i.e., one’s degree of confidence in performing the behavior in the face of various obstacles and challenges) through increased self-esteem and comradery with peers. Exercise can promote a reciprocal effect in which self-efficacy increases physical activity, creating a positive feedback loop, and one’s physiological state can influence self-efficacy…Experiences of success increase one’s self-efficacy and, once established, can generalize to other activities thereby influencing overall quality of life.

I thought this would be a good subject to ask you all about. In the comments, please tell us:

How old are you? Do you participate in group exercise classes? Why or why not? If you do, what kind specifically? What does group exercise give you, physically and mentally? Answer as many or as few of these questions as you’d like! (If you’re commenting, please also do me the favor of hitting the heart button ❤️ for algorithmic purposes. Thank you.)

Suzanne Roberts’ essay is just below here. ⬇️

A flash mob group exercise session at Cerritos Beach in Baja, where Suzanne Roberts participated with her Zumba group.

Sweating to—and with—the Oldies

How a senior center dance class changed Suzanne Roberts’ attitude about group fitness.

by Suzanne Roberts

It was Halloween week, and the 80-year-old dance instructor had on an orange sweatshirt and orange leggings to match. She wore her long blonde hair loose, held back by a headband with bouncy pumpkin antennae. We danced to “Ghost Busters,” “Monster Mash,” and “Thriller,” for which we stalked across the tile floor like zombies. A woman in front of me wore pajamas and UGG boots. Another woman had a badly hunched back. My older sister, who was wearing a turtleneck, baggy jeans, and canvas slip-on shoes, danced next to me, trying to follow the steps. This was our first time at the senior center dance fitness class.

It was also the first time in my adult life that I enjoyed a group fitness class. I danced in the back, not caring if I messed up the steps. Everyone smiled at my sister and me when we arrived, acknowledging that we were new there, and welcoming us. My sister pointed to me and said, “She’s too young to be here,” but no one cared.

My sister just turned 75. She’s twenty years older than me, and she’s suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Her husband is 87, and while he has mobility issues, he also has one of those age-defying brains. For instance, he’s currently writing a memoir and studying ancient Greek. This is after learning French so he could read The Remembrance of Things Past exactly as Proust had written it. Between the two of them, they make a complete body and mind. My sister can swim, walk miles, and dance. My brother-in-law is now the brains of the operation. They moved to Santa Fe right before COVID, so they haven’t made friends. This precarious situation has them living independently, but without local support. I visit as much as I can, but it’s an entire day of travel to get there from my home in California. This last time I went to see them, I was determined to get my sister connected with some local resources, including the lovely senior center less than one mile from her house.

This was our first time at the senior center dance fitness class. It was also the first time in my adult life that I enjoyed a group fitness class. I danced in the back, not caring if I messed up the steps. Everyone smiled at my sister and me when we arrived, acknowledging that we were new there, and welcoming us. My sister pointed to me and said, “She’s too young to be here,” but no one cared.

I have always been the little sister who instigated things. She’s always been the older sister who indulged my ideas. So when I said, “Let’s go to fitness dance. It will be fun,” she went along with it. If she once knew I wasn’t into group fitness classes, she’s forgotten that now.

I picked her up and she wasn’t wearing work-out clothes; she said, “I’m just going to watch.” I told her we could stay in the back of the class and do whatever we felt like doing, which is exactly what we did. She ended up dancing the whole time, following the moves better than I did.

What I was really hoping was that she would find some community there, maybe even make a new friend. What I didn’t expect was how much I would enjoy the class.

I’m clumsy and have dyslexia, so whenever the group went right, I went left. But no one seemed to care, so neither did I. Also, as I looked around at all these older women, I realized how much strength and wisdom was in that room, how much resilience lives in an old woman’s bones. Being with them made me feel stronger and wiser, too.

Until that day in the senior center, I have always hated group fitness. When I look back and try to pinpoint when this disdain began for me, I recognize the exact moment.

When we were in the ninth grade, my friend Jane and I signed up to take an aerobics class. We thought we had lucked out—being able to engage in a more fun form of exercise to fulfill our PE requirement. This was at the height of the Jane Fonda Workout’s popularity, and the movie Flashdance had just come out. We cut our hair so it feathered (in theory) like Jane Fonda’s, and ripped the necks out of our sweatshirts like Alex had in the film. We danced at the back of the aerobics class, trying to follow the moves, but we basically freestyled however we wanted. We had fun and laughed.

All of this changed the day we were made to weigh in.

Our PE teacher didn’t look like the typical 1980s aerobics instructor: no long feathered hair, headband, or leotard. She had short fluffy hair and wore sweatpants. I remember thinking she was old, but back then, when I was a teen, that could have meant she was 30. Jane and I went up to the scales together. She had always been tiny, and she weighed in at 94 pounds, which they had to record as 094 since they needed three digits for the records. Our teacher gave Jane a nod of approval.

I stepped on the scale, and the PE teacher gasped. She scratched the number onto her clipboard: 139 pounds. Then she said, “You must do something about this. Do you see you weigh nearly 50 pounds more than your friend? If you don’t do something, you’ll be 200 pounds before you graduate from high school.” I remember some talk about eating fruits and vegetables and then, later, Jane telling me not to listen to her, that I was beautiful just as I was. But I knew the other kids had heard this exchange, and I felt self-conscious from then on. I worried that within three years, I would be 200 pounds, which the teacher stated with the kind of finality reserved for speaking about a terminal illness.

When we were in the ninth grade, my friend Jane and I signed up to take an aerobics class. We thought we had lucked out—being able to engage in a more fun form of exercise to fulfill our PE requirement. This was at the height of the Jane Fonda Workout’s popularity, and the movie Flashdance had just come out. We danced at the back of the aerobics class, trying to follow the moves, but we basically freestyled however we wanted. We had fun and laughed. All of this changed the day we were made to weigh in.

Aerobics class was now the opposite of fun. To avoid ever having to suffer through it again, I joined the high school track team. Even though I was slow, no one made me step on a scale or berated me for my weight. Along with being cruel, that P.E. teacher had been wrong. I weighed the exact same on the day I graduated from high school. And I have basically spent my entire life at that weight, with very little fluctuation, despite my teacher’s predictions. I feel lucky she didn’t send me spiraling into an eating disorder.

From that day on, I not only hated her class, I also swore off all group fitness classes: jazzercise, dance fitness, kickboxing, Zumba. The violence of Dodge Ball in elementary school had meant that I would grow up and refuse to play all sports with a ball. That humiliating weigh-in would mean that group fitness was out now, too—except yoga classes, where I don’t wear my glasses, direct my gaze inward, and pretend I’m alone with my mat. And even then, I prefer to do yoga via Zoom, keeping my camera off.

But the thing I loved most about that senior dance fitness class with my sister was being with all those old women—women who had ignored catcalls and fought off unwanted advances in their youth, who’d had to “prove themselves” in the workplace. They had each bled for thousands of days. Some had given birth. Some had likely lost pregnancies, or like me, had ended them on purpose. They had cradled children and cared for aging parents. They had watched loved ones die. Their bodies had fallen in love and enjoyed blissful moments yet had also betrayed them in a hundred different ways. Gray hair, lined faces, sagging skin, and old scars held stories of love and grief, joy and sorrow, struggle and triumph. Their bodies had been objectified, sexualized, and disregarded, yet here they were, claiming their bodies back with each swish of their hips. They had made it another year, another day. And now, they were here dancing.

As I age, I’m learning that old women in our culture become invisible to some. But there in the back of that senior center activity room, I saw them and I loved them. I enjoyed being a body among bodies, dancing and laughing, hooting and hollering. I felt grateful that my body has brought me this far. And I loved this way of being with my sister—enjoying a dance fitness class together—putting the worry and fear around her diagnosis on hold.

I know how hard it is for my sister to do new things, to talk to new people, but I’m happy to report that she has since returned to the dance fitness class and loved every minute.

If my sister could try something new, then I could, too. When my friend Kate invited me to her Zumba class in Todos Santos, where I stayed after visiting my sister, I said yes to the class before the old worry and fears got in the way. I said yes because of that senior center dance fitness class.

I still can’t keep up with the moves: I struggle to clap or tap my foot in time, and when everyone else goes right, I go left. When I can’t follow along, I just do whatever I want, but do you know what? I have fun while I’m doing it. I love the community and the way they have welcomed me into it.

As I age, I’m learning that old women in our culture become invisible to some. But there in the back of that senior center activity room, I saw them and I loved them. I enjoyed being a body among bodies, dancing and laughing, hooting and hollering. I felt grateful that my body has brought me this far. And I loved this way of being with my sister—enjoying a dance fitness class together—putting the worry and fear around her diagnosis on hold.

Recently I remembered that back before the aerobics class weigh-in, one of my favorite childhood past times was making up dance routines to the music of the all-women 80s band, The Go-Go’s. Jane and I spent hours practicing to our favorite: “We Got the Beat.” That senior center dance class reintroduced me to something I had forgotten I loved.

So now in Zumba class, I try to follow along but mostly make up my own routines, and the others in class give me a wide berth. One woman recently said, “I love your moves.” As soon as she said it, I thought she must be making fun of me, but then I reminded myself that not everyone is as judgmental of me as I am, so I accepted the compliment of my creativity. A few days later, another woman came up to me after class and told me she liked my vibe and invited me to participate in her theater troupe. As it turns out, others appreciate my improvisational dance moves. I even participated in a flash mob at the beach with my new Zumba group—Dancing there in the sun, I felt the freedom and joy of my 12-year-old self again.

Okay, your turn…

How old are you? Do you participate in group exercise classes? Why or why not? If you do, what kind specifically? What does group exercise give you, physically and mentally? Answer as many or as few of these questions as you’d like! (If you’re commenting, please also do me the favor of hitting the heart button ❤️ for algorithmic purposes. Thank you.)

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