Lee Janogly is 81 years old and a grandmother to seven, but she’s also a fitness instructor and personal trainer.
She is walking, jumping, flexing proof that age is just a number, and she wants you to know that it’s never too late to bring fitness into your life.
She still does nine sessions of exercise every week, much more than most people in their 20s can manage. But she insists there’s no secret, it’s just about making movement a habit.
‘It all depends on how important keeping fit is to each individual person and whether they are prepared to make the time to do it regularly,’ Lee explains.
‘I’ve never given my age a thought. It was only when I had my 80th birthday that it occurred to me that 80 is a huge number so I must be old.
‘Then I thought, you know what, I haven’t got time to be old right now, I’m too busy, so being old will just have to wait.’
Lee teaches every week and attends classes as a participant to give someone else a chance to call out the instructions for a change.
‘It pleases me to think I can still keep up with the younger members of these classes.’
Fitness and exercise are an integral part of Lee’s life, but it took being dragged along to a keep-fit class around six decades ago to kickstart this lifelong love affair.
‘After giving birth to someone-or-other (I forget who), my mother took me along to the keep-fit class she attended in a local church hall,’ Lee tells Metro.co.uk.
‘It was not very inspiring and I was grumbling to a friend about how boring it was when someone overheard our conversation and offered to take me to her jazz class at a studio in Covent Garden.
‘She warned me to stay at the back as it was a class for professional dancers and a clumsy lump bumbling around might not be entirely welcome.
‘I hid behind a pillar and did my best to join in. To my surprise I wasn’t too bad and picked up the routine quite well.’
That was it. Lee was hooked. From that moment, she knew that movement would always be a big part of her life, no matter what stage of life she was at.
Dancing became the perfect antidote to the stresses of Lee’s busy life as a mother. Then one day, the dance teacher failed to turn up and the class was left standing there at a loss for how to fill the time.
‘I heard a voice saying; “I’ll take the class”, and was shocked to discover it was mine,’ Lee explained.
‘By then, I knew the routine backwards and with a bit of help from another regular, I took the class through the exercises and got a round of applause at the end.’
That was all the encouragement Lee needed to train up to become a fully-fledged instructor. And fitness quickly became the life-raft she needed.
‘I can honestly say that going to an exercise class every day for an hour kept me sane whilst bringing up five children,’ she says.
‘Every parent knows how easy it is to get bogged down with the trivia of children’s lives, but being fit and strong and feeling good about myself allowed me to deal with life in a positive way and stave off the depression which I am prone to occasionally.’
Lee says that using your body – whether doing something slow and concentrates like Pilates, or something more strenuous like aerobics – clears your mind and brings about a sense of deep calm.
‘There is also the social aspect of attending a class; meeting the same people each week, you naturally start chatting and form new friendships which can only enhance your life,’ she adds.
As you get older your body changes, Lee has experienced this first hand. But she doesn’t think it has to stop you from being active, you simply have to adapt to what you are able to do.
‘Your spine shrinks a bit so you lose height and after the menopause, fat seems to appear round your waist and your back which stubbornly refuses to go,’ Lee tells us.
‘This doesn’t mean you are less supple, but you concentrate more on maintaining muscle mass with light weights and add balancing exercises to your routine which is so important to prevent falls.’
Lee’s definition of a strong woman is someone who is comfortable with who she is and makes positive choices to benefit her own health.
‘The strong woman knows that the only important things in life are family and friends and the older you get, the less you’re bothered about what other people think and the happier you are. Bring it on.’
Lee Janogly is the author of Getting Old: Deal with It (Mensch publishing), £9.99 paperback, out now.
Strong Women
Strong Women is a weekly series that champions diversity in the world of sport and fitness.
A Sport England study found that 40% of women were avoiding physical activity due to a fear of judgement.
But, contrary to the limited images we so often see, women of any age, size, race or ability can be active and enjoy sport and fitness.
We hope that by normalising diverse depictions of women who are fit, strong and love their bodies, we will empower all women to shed their self-consciousness when it comes to getting active.
Each week we talk to women who are redefining what it means to be strong and achieving incredible things.
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