Senior exercise coach helps peers increase flexibility

Goodfriend's class, titled Therapeutic Exercise, is targeted toward those recovering from injury or other physical problems. Many of the exercises employ chairs, and the routines are geared so that students can follow along at their own pace.

"When you get past 80, you get pretty stiff," says Emil Barish, 81. He has been attending the class for three years and feels that it helps keep him flexible.

"Ibi is wonderful!" he says.

The endorsement is seconded by Don Van Derby, an oncologist who suffered a stroke in 1990 and has been attending the class ever since. "She deals with invalids like myself. It's superlative," he says, adding, "It's not PR that I say that."

Van Derby is one of Goodfriend's major success stories, having started the class seven years ago in a wheelchair. "It's taken years, but he now walks out on his own," she says.

Goodfriend, who was a child gymnast in her native Czechoslovakia, has been teaching the exercise class at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco for 16 years. Back in 1981, she herself was attending an exercise class at the JCC when a young woman on staff asked if she'd like to volunteer.

"I looked around, and saw that two people in the class were crying because they couldn't walk," recalls Goodfriend. "So I said to her, `Sorry, but emotionally I couldn't handle it.'"

But she was persuaded to try teaching the class just once, and found that she could handle it after all.

Now, she says, "It's like a club. The students show me so much appreciation. I love it."

Lenore Naxon, the JCC's director of development, says she would like to see more seniors teaching at the center.

"It's totally different for people to be dealing with a peer. They relate far more to the teacher; the pace is different. It's a win-win situation."

Certainly, Goodfriend is no Jane Fonda. She never shouts, preferring to motivate her class with gentle encouragement. Occasionally she might exhort the group to go a little faster, but her soothing voice assures students that whatever they can manage is just fine.

And for this, her students repay her with devotion. "She really is wonderful," says 75-year-old Harriet Kossoff, who has been in the class for four years. "I was on a cane; now I'm walking without it. She makes us work."

With her movie-star looks and limber frame, Goodfriend is an inspiring model for her students. Kossoff recalls a particularly enthusiastic former student named Benny. "In the part of the class where we hug ourselves, he'd always call out, `We love Ibi, we love Ibi.'"

Goodfriend's students will be relieved to hear that their teacher has no intention of hanging up her sweatpants anytime soon.

"I don't know what the future holds," she says, "but I'll go on teaching the class for as long as I'm able. Maybe even another 16 years."