Pearl works out

BY Michael Quin

Pearl Lipshut is firing on all cylinders. The grandmother of three has already made the gardener’s breakfast, cleared out her email inbox, gone for a walk and taken an hour-long gym class before the shops have opened.

At 70, she's just become the newest instructor at her South Yarra gym. She says it feels like a dream.

Pearl used to complain to her personal trainer and Reach4health director, Margie Wilson, about the lack of fitness among her peers.

“All they talked about was which doctor they went to and what hurt and I was so frustrated,” Pearl recalls. “So [Margie] said well, do something about it, there’s a whole lot of oldies out there that could really benefit.”

And so the year-long journey to become the gym’s oldest instructor began.

Margie says many older people can be intimidated by gyms, but that Pearl’s journey is an amazing example of what can be achieved.

Pearl believes the government should support training like hers for the money it saves the health system, and is convinced that people her age get more out of life by taking a proactive approach to wellbeing.

“The thing I find with my peers is that life constricts and they worry about their bodies all the time. All they think about is Monday I’m going to the physio, Tuesday I’m going to the nutritionist, Wednesday I’m going to the doctor because I have to get this checked. They become consumed by it,” she says. “But when I see the people that I’m training now, I’ve changed their lives dramatically.”

Reach4health’s holistic approach to wellbeing focuses on general health and state of mind as much as weights programs. On arrival, new clients are asked to rate themselves from zero to ten for vitality. Both Margie and Pearl give themselves a nine.

As Margie explains the benefits of alternative practices like chi gong, feldenkrais and tai chi, Pearl interrupts.

“That’s my next ambition!” she says. “I’m going to do tai chi, and also line dancing. I think if you did dancing with music, you’d have a lot of laughs and you’d get the heart rate up. So I’ve got to find somewhere I can do line dancing.”

While Pearl talks about line dancing, then mentions carrying her 8-year-old grandchild up the stairs on her back, one wonders where all this energy comes from.

“The more you do, the more energy you have.” she says. “Even if you wake up in the morning and think oh I don’t feel like it, after you’ve been here for an hour the oxygen’s pumping. The less you do, the less you feel like doing and the worse you feel.”

Apart from feeling good, Pearl wants to enjoy playing with her grandchildren at the park or even on the monkey bars, which she confesses to never being good at, but is apparently improving on.

Pearl’s enthusiasm must be infectious; she says her husband’s been recruited to the cause and now works out at the gym, as well as revisiting the pursuits of his youth.

“My husband’s now training my granddaughter in basketball. He played basketball when he was 18, he’s not played since. So he came in the other morning to pick her up and he had his shorts on and I haven’t seen him in a pair of gym shorts for a long time,” she says.

As well as getting more “oldies” into gym shorts, mastering the monkey bars and line dancing, her sights are set on increasing the gym’s membership with her message that, at any age, seizing the day is the only way.

“Life’s too short just to be a vegetable. There’re so many exciting things to do out there,” she says.