In Golden Years, These Strongmen Pump Iron : Lifestyles: Local athletes over 70 lift weights to keep them young. A doctor calls them ‘the pinnacle of what can be achieved.’

A lean woman in a purple bra top and black spandex shorts studied her body in the 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-carpet 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 one’s teeth, Bill Reale is your man. Even if he is 97 and only one-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.

Theo Hasapes got the idea for the group years ago when his daughters urged him 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 the 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, whose motto could be, “Just say no to drugs--and surgery.”

There’s Chris Christiansen, 70, 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 upon emigrating 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 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,” the 74-year-old said. “It’s not just lifting weights.

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

It also intimidates some of the young bucks 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, conditioning 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 after retiring 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 strength and ensure 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.

“One of the major milestones in the disability of old people is when they become too weak to walk or too much in fear of falling to walk . . . and from there on, it’s a pretty bad life,” Solomon said. “Increasing strength of leg muscles, particularly, is absolutely critical.”

That’s the gospel Hasapes carries with him when his troupe of seniors 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. Sixteen years ago, his doctor told him: “Get your house in order” because he had been diagnosed with leukemia.

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

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

“Being mean helps, too,” he said.

What it comes down to, group members say, is they need the energy afforded by exercise to enjoy their other interests--grandchildren, acting, competitive skiing, or even running a business.

“You can’t be sick and do all these things,” Hasapes said. “We don’t have the luxury of time. They may not be here next year. I may not be here next year.”

At his age, every year is a blessing for Bill Reale. But the 124-pound Canoga Park resident, now 5-foot-2--”I used to be 5-4. I shrunk two inches”--plans to spend every day he has left punching the black “speed bag” hanging in a corner of his garage. He’s been using the familiar boxer’s workout tool since he was 16, since before he served on the battleship New Hampshire in World War I.

“That’s why I’m 97,” he said.