NORTHRIDGE : Senior Women Work Out for Health Study

Call it sweatin’ with the oldies.

Three times a week, 50 golden girls meet in a gym at Northridge Medical Center. They are old enough to be grandmothers, or even great-grandmothers. But over the next 12 months, they will work out more than many women half their age: three times a week for an hour each day.

A Cal State Northridge professor will monitor their progress, hoping to learn more about the cardiovascular capacity of older women in general.

Nearly 50 women volunteered to participate in the study that began last week under the direction of Steven Loy, who teaches exercise physiology at CSUN.

Loy also hopes to determine whether some exercises are better than others at improving the women’s cardiovascular fitness.

He has divided them into three groups, one that will use stair-climbing machines exclusively, another that will only do walking drills and another that will lift weights.

The study is patterned after one Loy did several years ago with college women. In that study, Loy compared the effects of running on a treadmill to stair climbing, which involves walking up rotating steps similar to an escalator.

After 12 weeks, Loy found that the college women who exercised on StairClimber machines three times a week showed significant cardiovascular improvement.

He later conducted a similar study targeting middle-age women and got with similar results.

Now Loy wants to prove that the same exercises can “improve the quality of everyday life” for elderly women, he said.

June Davis, 70, of Northridge said she wants to be in the study to build muscle strength. Since being diagnosed with muscular dystrophy 20 years ago, Davis has only been able to engage in minimal physical activity.

“So many (senior) women have health problems these days,” she said. “This study is giving me the chance to improve my condition now and hopefully lessen my chances of getting another physical disease.”

At 83, Granada Hills resident Bo-Ching Tong is the oldest participant in the study. Tong said she signed up to build up her leg muscles.

“I used to teach tap dancing when I was younger,” she said. “Who knows? Maybe when the study is over I can start teaching again.”