For 25 years, Kari Anderson has led the way in group fitness in Seattle

THEN: Women wore heavy makeup and neon spandex to work out; folks did a lot of push-ups and high kicks; the ratio of men to women doing aerobics was 50-50.

NOW: Fitness has more variety than ever; ultra-flashy outfits and leotards are not the norm; you're lucky if you get a quarter of a class to be made up of men.

Throughout the rise of the exercise-class craze, Kari Anderson has seen it all. For the past 25 years, she has led the way in the group-fitness movement in Seattle, having opened one of the first aerobics studios in the area. In that quarter-century, Anderson has made more than 25 fitness videos and DVDs. Many have won awards and all feature members of her gym.

None made her a household name like contemporaries Kathy Smith and Denise Austin. Anderson had a shot at the big time and decided to stay local.

What makes her unusual is that Anderson, 49, is still at it when many gym owners hung up their teaching shoes long ago. Anderson, who leads six classes a week at her two Pro-Robics studios, is consistently called a pioneer in the industry.

"Pioneer?" she jokes. "Dinosaur."

Though she looks as lithe and toned as ever, Anderson insists her body isn't the same.

"I've noticed my shape changing," she said. "I can't get my legs up where I used to, and I'm not as flexible."

The early days

A junior champion in synchronized swimming, Anderson was a serious ballerina-in-training who began dancing at age 5. After high school, she moved from Seattle to New York with a scholarship to study with the Joffrey Ballet, but she decided she didn't want to dance professionally.

"There was very big pressure for me to be very thin, because I was very tall," said Anderson, who was expected to maintain her 5-foot-8 frame at 100 pounds. "I was so lonely for my family, so far away."

She returned home after nine months.

Anderson was 23 and waiting tables at Ray's Boathouse when she took her first aerobics class.

"I just fell in love with it," said Anderson, who has a degree in speech communication from the University of Washington.

Within six months, she was teaching aerobics, and soon started her own class in rented space at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Ballard. In 1982, when Anderson opened Pro-Robics on the top of Queen Anne, there were only two other aerobics instructors in the Seattle area, she said.

This was the nascent aerobics era, before really good cardio machines were developed and jogging was the favorite aerobic pursuit of many. Pro-Robics was initially bare-bones: no front desk, no weights, no dressing rooms, no showers. Fifty to 75 people would sweat it up at Anderson's hard-core workouts, which were almost like boot camp.

"It was all high impact -- lots of jogging, jumping jacks. Then you'd get down and do 100 push-ups, then you'd hop back up and do kicks," she said. "Boy, we were beating ourselves up. I would teach three classes a day and wonder why I had shin splints."

The mixed tapes played, and people came in head-to-toe outfits, with matching belts, headbands and leg warmers -- fashions she's not sad to see are gone.

She did like the almost even balance of men and women, which brought a different, more charged energy to workouts.

"Now, if you can get 25 percent guys in a class, you're doing great," Anderson said. "I think it's because there are so many other options."

Anderson married her college sweetheart, Mark Pavlovic, not long after opening the gym, and a few years later they had the first of three children, who are now 20, 15 and 9. Pavlovic headed up the business operation, as well as the production and distribution of the workout videos, while Anderson taught and developed fitness programs. The couple opened a second Pro-Robics in Laurelhurst in 1989.

So closely do they work together that Anderson said she's not sure who's CEO and who's president.

Evolution of fitness

One of the drawbacks of early aerobics training was that it was so new there were virtually no standards. Instructors sometimes took an anything-goes approach.

Anderson went back to school and designed a bachelor's degree in exercise science at Seattle Pacific University. At the same time, she got certified as an aerobics instructor the first year such a program was offered by a national fitness group.

During the mid-'80s, a turning point occurred when low-impact aerobics was born. Keeping one foot on the floor at all times -- instead of hopping and jumping -- made aerobics more dancy, more accessible. A dancer like Anderson thrived, bringing movement and choreography to exercise.

She began going to national fitness conventions, where she became a popular workshop leader and instructor of instructors. People began asking whether she had routines on tape, so she shot her first video in 1989 in a gazebo next to a beach in Poulsbo.

"It was really a new thing and we had no idea how to do it," she recalled.

Anderson was named instructor of the year in 1994 by the IDEA Health and Fitness Association, a group for fitness pros, and found herself featured in national magazines, including Self, Shape and Family Circle.

Over the years, Anderson had offers to do national fitness shows on TV, but she declined. She didn't want to move or be on the road constantly, especially while raising children.

But she did travel around the world on her own terms -- to Russia, China, Japan, Australia, Italy, Sweden and other places -- to teach her techniques. Sometimes, she was able to take her husband and children with her.

"Very few people in our region really know how amazing she is," said fitness instructor Tricia Murphy, who was 18 when she took her first classes with Anderson. "When the industry went from jumping jacks and high kicks, Kari's the one who took that information and helped it evolve into step and everything else that came in group fitness."

Murphy said Anderson has been a mentor to many instructors.

"She encouraged me every step of the way," said Murphy, who until recently ran the Urban Fitness gym in West Seattle.

Present and future

Anderson, who is known for teaching moderate and advanced fitness classes, said the fitness industry is much better now because of the immense variety of offerings. Still, she sometimes finds it frustrating that people hop on and off the trend bandwagon.

"Sometimes people can be a little fickle," said Anderson, who also owns a minority stake in six Gold's Gyms in Western Washington with her husband. "They'll go for the newest, hottest thing."

Her response to the perennial question of how to keep folks motivated to exercise is to work out with a friend or friends.

She said everyone should do some form of resistance training or weights, especially as they age and lose muscle mass. Ideally, she recommends two to three weight sessions a week, interspersed with three or four cardio workouts, and a little stretching.

Her crystal ball shows that technology and screen culture will increasingly become part of the gym experience, with people checking e-mail or playing video games as they treadmill or StairMaster.

Anderson wants to turn more kids on to exercise, and she plans to keep teaching as long as it's fun.

"I joke that I'll be 90 and doing an interesting chair or hip-hop class," she said. "My husband keeps asking me the same question: 'Don't you want to retire yet?' But each time I go and work on new moves, I love that."

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