It’s Never Too Late in Life for Exercise : A Laguna Beach studio focuses on seniors, who may benefit the most from regular workouts.

It’s the Catch-22 of fitness: You’d like to get in shape, but you’re in such bad shape that you dare not set foot in a gym. Aside from the embarrassment of exposing your fixer-upper body in a crowd of tautly toned physiques, there’s a more practical consideration: You might not last five minutes in even the kindest, gentlest aerobics class.

So what do you do?

Unfortunately, too many of us simply declare the situation hopeless and end up in even worse shape, throwing in the towel before it ever gets sweaty.

The problem is particularly bad for older people who may have gone a whole lifetime without formalized exercise. But they are often the ones who could benefit most from regular workouts.

That’s where Ian Harris comes in. A former dancer with the Philadelphia Civic Ballet and the Fusion Modern Dance Company in Miami, he segued from ballet and modern dance into working with dancers on injury prevention and then into physical therapy. Now he has a studio in Laguna Beach, focusing on seniors and others who might never have considered themselves gym material.

“Only 15% of the overall market uses health clubs,” he says. “So I decided to go after the other 85%.”

Harris sees his studio as “a safe environment for people who have never exercised.” Forget the stair-climbing machines; he has an elevator--wheelchair accessible, he’s proud to say--and he doesn’t look askance at clients who use it.

“Everything here is based on developing people’s awareness of the aging process,” he says. “A lot of people have had fitness misrepresented to them. The physical education most of us got in school wasn’t preparation for the fact that the body’s going to get older. It was mostly about playing team sports and things like that. But that doesn’t teach you how to deal with the changes in your body as it ages.”

Harris also takes his message out into the community, teaching groups such as an older women’s exercise class in the Niguel Shores section of Laguna Niguel.

“Everything we do is about opposing the flow of gravity,” he explains to the class. “The moment you forget about what your body’s doing, it starts to sink. Over the years, everything begins to drop.”

The pace in Harris’ classes is slow and relaxed. Although he does offer aerobics classes, most of his sessions focus on stretching and learning proper movement. “It’s about understanding how you’ve used or misused your body your entire lifetime,” he says. But bad habits, even decades-old bad habits, can be improved upon, if not completely eliminated, Harris says.

“We get so used to using our bodies in a certain way,” he says. “When you change that, your body shows you different aspects of your own ability.”

He concentrates on areas of the body that can be particularly troublesome for older people, such as the feet, so-called dowager’s hump and back problems.

“The feet seem to be the least consciously exercised part of the body,” he says. “And essentially, they are responsible for supporting the body for a lifetime, so it’s very important to take care of them.”

To counteract the slumping dowager’s hump that some women develop as they get older, Harris has his clients do specific mat exercises. “Try to press the back of your neck against the floor,” he says. “You may be using muscles you haven’t used in 30 years, but eventually, you’ll be able to do it.”

For back problems, Harris uses both stretching exercises for the back muscles and tightening exercises for the abdominal muscles, as well as teaching good posture.

Since neither he nor his class has to worry about being out of breath during a session, he explains constantly about the purpose of each exercise, what areas of the body it addresses and why that area is important to overall health. And he asks clients to participate in the discussions.

“Does that make sense?” he asks after one explanation.

“It does make sense, but it’s a little late now,” says one member of the class, lying on a mat with her legs in the air.

“No, it’s not too late. You can still work on it,” he says.

“I don’t want anyone to give up hope,” Harris says. “I just encourage everyone to do the best they can and be responsible for themselves.”

Many of Harris’ clients have other health problems beyond the effects of aging that must be worked around. One woman, for example, is recovering from a double mastectomy. “When I first came to this class, I couldn’t even lift my arm over my head,” she says. “But now I can move freely again.”

Another woman suffers from macular degeneration--a vision problem--and often loses her balance because she has trouble seeing. Harris instructs her to use a wider stance when exercising for better balance and teaches her ways to catch herself if she starts to fall.

But like all exercise instructors, even Harris sometimes asks more of his clients than they’re able to do.

“I’d like to see some smiles out there,” he says to a class.

“I can do all these things,” says a woman in the back of the room. “But I can’t do all these things and smile at the same time.”

“We’ll work on that,” Harris says.