The Senior Niche

Over the December holiday we traveled to beautiful Santa Barbara, California, and visited with one of our long-time members, Peggy Buchanan. Peggy has been an IDEA member since the early days, presenting at conferences, writing articles, serving on various committees and winning the IDEA Fitness Instructor of the Year Award in 1997.

When Peggy told us awhile back that a senior retirement community hired her to develop a fitness and aquatic center, we had no idea just how comprehensive the project was. The Vista del Monte Retirement Community offers incredible services such as water fitness classes that run almost every hour and circuit training classes scheduled several times each day. Peggy enlists the help of the older adults who live at the retirement community, as well as seniors in the greater Santa Barbara area, to staff the front desk, help with events and teach classes. Her oldest teacher is 80, and she has a volunteer senior lifeguard who is 94!

The center offers personal training sessions in 15-minute increments for strength training and conditioning, aquatics and nutrition. Members may even bring in their own personal trainers for an additional “professional use” fee. The Vista del Monte Fitness and Aquatic Center is a wonderful example of how important fitness has become for older adults.

This special CEC issue is dedicated to examining different aspects of training for seniors, including nutrition, psychology and research. This is the first time we have focused an entire CEC theme issue on this important topic in IDEA Personal Trainer; we hope you find the information useful.

To emphasize how influential the U.S. aging population is, here are some statistics:

We hope the articles in this issue will help you take advantage of this significant market segment. We have many other resources available on this topic as well. You can access them by calling one of our member services representatives at (800) 999-4332, ext. 7.

In good health,

IDEA PERSONAL Trainer april 2002