Trainer for over-50 folks in same age group

[attach]4398[/attach]She’s on the cusp of 72, but York Mills resident Edna Levitt is living proof not just of the idea that 70 is the new 50 — but also that it’s never too late to get in shape.

Levitt’s business, 50-Plus Fitness, is in its fifth year providing personal training to 50-plus folk.

Though she offers personal training sessions in her clients’ homes, Levitt has a loyal following at the Better Living Health Community Services on Don Mills Road at Lawrence Avenue East, where she’s been teaching a senior fitness class twice a week for the last three years.

“It’s been amazing for me,” Levitt says.

She’s different from personal trainers who focus on her age group, she says, because she’s the age she teaches to.

“There are people out there who are much more qualified than me,” she says. “But they’re not my age.”

She’s empathetic to her clients, most of whom are in their 60s and 70s, because she can relate to some of the issues they may be having physically and can take it slow with them if need be, she says.

“I’ve got arthritis in my thumbs as well.”

One husband and wife duo she sees once a week is 85 and 78, respectively.

“They absolutely love it,” she says. “They’re grinning ear to ear.”

Another woman was so out of shape when she started that she couldn’t get off the floor. Now Levitt has her doing pushups on her stairs.

One client came to her at 87.

“She shuffled.”

Levitt got her to walk down the aisle with her grandson on his wedding day, and even dance a few dances at the party. Levitt’s strategy: lunges and squats.

In a weird twist of fate, perhaps, Levitt got her start in fitness at the age of 50.

Her son called her and told her she should go to a gym, as she was middle aged, so she joined the YMCA on Sheppard Avenue East and Bayview Avenue, she says.

“I did three days of walking around the track, incredibly bored.”

She joined an aerobics class and says she’s been doing the same class every morning for five days a week ever since.

“That was the morning I became a fitness groupie.”

But she didn’t think of getting into business until six years ago, when a complete stranger approached her at a restaurant and asked her if she worked out.

After joking the next day with a pal at the gym about becoming a personal trainer for old ladies — the idea stuck.

“The more I thought about it, the more I liked it.”

A course to become a certified personal trainer followed — which was so brutally hard in the sciences area, she says, that she hired a tutor and took the test twice before passing it.

Levitt still works at the Y and credits her instructor there, who develops the fitness programming at the facility, with her professional development.

Moving forward, she’s looking to expand her speaking engagement circle, having done some public speaking at conferences and events, both locally and nationally, about her story and the benefits of strength training. It’s a great opportunity to sell her book, Personal Trainer to Go, which she self-published last year.

Her philosophy these days is if you don’t use your muscles, you lose them.

“I think any one over the age of 55 who doesn’t lift weights is nuts.”