Say You Can Aerobics Champ At 42, Susan Docktor Proves That It Is Not Too Late To Get Fit

Just when you thought, “Oh, no, 40 - helloooooo flabby thighs and sagging tummy,” along comes Susan Docktor, who’s fit, firm and sporting an aerobics champ medal around her ageless neck.

She’s 42, by the way.

Docktor is a Coral Springs mother of three and personal fitness trainer who won the National Aerobics Masters Championship for women over 35 earlier this year. In case you’ve never seen this sport, it incorporates one-armed push-ups, sky-high kicks and soaring leaps, all done to feverishly fast music.

“At first, I thought, I could never do that,” says Docktor, who moved to a 156 beats-a-minute techno-pop version of “Phantom of the Opera” wearing an emerald and black sequined costume so tiny that balled up, it barely fills your hand. “I thought, it’s too hard. I’m too old,” she says. But she quickly shed that thinking and started training hard, not just to compete, but to go for the top. And that’s what’s behind her message today: If she can, you can.

Not that she wants you to turn super athlete overnight. She means you can look and feel better by eating well and exercising regularly. And once you look and feel better, you can stop finding excuses for other things you think you can’t do. No matter your age.

“I gained so much confidence preparing for the competition,” Docktor says. “It left me thinking, there’s nothing I can’t handle.”

Like almost everyone today, Docktor wakes up each morning with a full schedule. She and husband Gregg share a five-bedroom home with sons Josh, 18; Adam, 15; and Benjamin, 8; plus a dog and two cats. Gregg operates kennels that sell purebred puppies, and Docktor is a personal fitness trainer and aerobics director at The Quadrangle, a Coral Springs fitness club.

Here, in a mirror-covered room where women huff and puff at her command, Docktor works motivational magic.

“If there’s a 19-year-old leading the class, you think, of course, she can move like that, she’s 19,” says Betty Silva, 55. “Because it’s Susan …”

Because it’s a middle-aged working mother of three, Silva means, there’s no excuse not to try just as hard.

Karan Sproul, 39, went from a “tight” size 10 to a size 6 during 2 years in Docktor’s classes. The mother of two says she lost weight and gained much-needed confidence for a job search.

“I didn’t know what I was going to be able to do,” says Sproul, who now teaches an adult ed class in country line dancing, something she’d never done before. “Now I feel like, ‘What do I want to do?’ “

Docktor understands the connection between physical conditioning and personal confidence. A dancer with the Philadelphia Civic Ballet in the early ‘70s, she has always watched her weight and worked out. But nine years ago, she gained 35 pounds during her third pregnancy and struggled to regain her figure at 34.

“Everything settled in my hips, and my butt and my abdomen were shot,” she says. “The reality hit me. I’m not young anymore.”

Time ticked on and by 40, Docktor noticed her face was fuller, her stomach wasn’t ironing-board flat and “this stuff was hanging from my upper arms.”

At 5 feet 3, she weighed 122 pounds, the most ever, barring pregnancy. About the same time, an aerobics instructor friend suggested training for national competition. Docktor started training in earnest in October of ‘94. Today she weighs 112.

“You don’t have to take exercise to the max to see the benefits,” she says. “But you have to do something, and the more you put into it, the more you get out of it.”

That’s because the battle of the bulge is no middle-age myth. As time passes, muscles lose elasticity. Without exercise, arms grow flabby, the buttocks drop and the scale registers additional pounds that don’t go away, though you’re not eating more.

The reason: Time slows your metabolic rate - the rate at which your enginelike body runs. Body fat increases. Because it takes fewer calories to fuel fat cells than muscle, caloric needs decrease.

But cutting calories won’t automatically trim pounds. Your fuel-efficient body responds by lowering your metabolic rate. The answer is a sensible diet combined with exercise.

Though an exercise program takes time, it’s time well spent, Docktor says.

“If you don’t invest in yourself, who will?”

Docktor pushes no one harder than she pushes herself. When she decided to compete, she intensified her training. She worked out four to five hours a day, five to six days a week, lifting weights and doing aerobic routines for five months before regional competition in September. She kept up the killer regime through the February finals.

At the finals in Los Angeles, she competed against nine contestants culled from regional competitions. Though 13 years had passed since Docktor had publicly performed, when she walked on the stage in front of 1,500 spectators, she was calm.

“It was lights, music, action - I was back there again.”

A panel of nine judges, praising her dance skills and smooth presentation, gave her winning marks.

“I feel like a role model for other women,” she says. “Don’t say you can’t. Say you can.”