Samsons in Their 70s : Health: Age doesn’t stop a workout-loving group of senior citizens. ‘We want to be role models,’ one says.

A lean woman in a purple bra top and black spandex shorts studied her body in a mirrored wall as she walked across the gym floor, too busy admiring her own reflection to notice the slight man with thick black-rimmed glasses sitting on a weight bench.

But in this chrome-and-carpeted mecca of buns of steel and bulging biceps, Bill Reale is a standout. He is not, to borrow from gym lingo, buff. And he probably would be a bit awkward in a hip-hop aerobics class. But when it comes to lifting 40-pound barbells with his teeth, Bill Reale is your man. Even if he is 97 and only a third of those teeth are really his.

Reale is the oldest member of an iron-pumping, treadmill-pounding group that calls itself the Samson Seventies Strongmen. The fitness enthusiasts, a few dozen men and one woman from the San Fernando and Antelope valleys, consider themselves walking billboards for the benefits of exercise.

The idea for the group came when Theo Hasapes’ daughters urged him years ago to start the samson Sixties Strongmen.

“There’s too many strong people in their 60s. I’ll wait till I’m 70,” Hasapes, now 73, told them. “That’s when you separate the men from the boys. It’s like putting 200,000 miles on your car. Some part is going to break down.”

Over the past four years, the Strongmen have become more than just a weightlifting club. They take a weightlifting vaudeville act to nursing homes, county fairs, even high schools to show that exercise can mean the difference between, for instance, spending their golden years on a couch watching “I Love Lucy” reruns and having the energy to take up a sport or start a second career.

“We want to be role models,” Hasapes said. “Most adults--seniors--are couch potatoes.”

Not this gang.

There’s Chris Christiansen, 70, who became the first female Strongman. The Woodland Hills resident plays tennis every day and golfs when she can fit it in.

“I can stand on my head if I have to and I jump rope. I do all sports,” she said, with the accent she brought with her when she emigrated from Austria in the 1940s. “There’s an Arnold Schwarzenegger. Maybe I can become a Chris Christiansenegger.”

As Christiansen spoke, Tom Gumpper, an aspiring actor who will turn 74 in March, grimaced a bit as he squeezed the last few crunches in a set of 100 sit-ups, one of five sets he does every other day.

Sam Douglas works out for 2 1/2 hours every day in the sprawling Racquetworld gym in Canoga Park.

“Exercise, as far as I’m concerned, is a physical and psychological way of living,” said the 74-year-old. “It’s not just lifting weights.

“For me to be able to come here and stack that machine,” he said, motioning to a machine with a set of weights totaling 250 pounds, “it gives me a psychological uplift. It makes me feel good about myself.”

It also intimidates some of the relative youngsters around him.

“Many young fellows don’t like to work out with me,” he said shyly.

For 79-year-old Ben Stone of Sherman Oaks, exercise has been a lifelong commitment. Stone, who tried out for the Olympic diving team in 1934, swims laps and lifts weights three times a week.

He retired seven years ago. “Usually, when people retire in their 70s, they sit around,” he said. “They get old in no time. You’ve got to move.”

Doctors agree.

“The more physical activity that people get, the lower their mortality rates, particularly from coronary heart disease,” said Dr. Jerome Fleg, senior investigator with the National Institute on Aging.

Fleg, whose research focuses primarily on aged but highly trained endurance athletes, said many of the Samson members probably can thank genetics in part for their abilities. “They are the pinnacle of what can be achieved at an older age,” he said.

There also has been a growing emphasis nationwide on weight training for older people to increase their strength and ensure their mobility.

“The current gospel is that older people can benefit at least as much as young people, maybe more, because they are less strong and less aerobically conditioned to start with, so there’s more room for improvement,” said Dr. David H. Solomon, director of the UCLA Center on Aging.

That’s Hasapes’ gospel when the troupe hits the nursing home circuit.

“We are a physically unfit nation, seniors especially--they rely on medication and so forth,” he said. “If you don’t move your blood, circulate that blood, you’re going to die.”

When Dick Sondel travels with the group, his isn’t a tale of staying young, it’s of staying alive.

At 67, Sondel is a “junior affiliate member” of the Strongmen whose doctor told him 16 years ago, “Get your house in order” because he had leukemia.

“I’m supposed to be dead statistically,” the Calabasas resident said.

Sondel believes lifting weights and playing full-court basketball has given him the physical strength to keep going.

“Being mean helps too,” he said.