Salli Benedict thought she was over-the-hill in 1987.

“I had just turned 40 and I thought, ‘I’m so old.’” Not a sentiment Benedict would tolerate today from her workout class, most of whom are twice that age.

It was the same year Benedict, now 62, turned 40 that she took a “wellness retirement training” course through the Body Recall and started teaching an exercise class for seniors. Initially, the class was part of her job with UNC’s School of Public Health, then she taught it through Chapel Hill Parks and Recreation before it moved to its current home with Orange County. Though the class has changed some to reflect evolving thought on exercise theory, Salli’s Senior Workout, at 23 years and counting, is one of the oldest continuously running exercise classes in the Triangle.

On a recent Wednesday morning in a small exercise room in Chapel Hill’s Seymour Senior Center, Benedict gathers Nell, Sylvia, Connie, Stella and Betty in a conga line for a workout warmup — shoulder massages. It is without doubt the most well-received warm-up ritual I’ve seen in an exercise class. But the relaxing warm-up is deceptive; although four of the five are over 80, Benedict proceeds to put them through 60 minutes of constant activity. There are yoga moves, some done seated, some done using a chair as a prop. There are aerobic exercises. There is plenty of stretching. All done to an eclectic boombox soundtrack that ranges from Louis Armstrong to Bobby McPheron.

The workout is in tune with the physical needs of seniors, dealing with flexibility and mobility issues, bone strength, basic functional fitness. It’s also in tune with the social needs of the group. Benedict is adept at keeping the workout moving along while letting the group catch up with one another. Topics range from a lunch several attended the previous week, to a weekend yard sale, to a 90-year-old class member — a devout member for 16, 17 years — who has fallen ill.

Benedict’s career has been devoted to bringing good health to populations for whom good living can be a challenge. With a Master’s in Public Health, Benedict has spent 31 years working with the poor, the elderly, the obese and women. Through her current work with the school’s Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, she’s project director/manager for the Seeds of HOPE program) she spends most of her week in a five-county area of Eastern North Carolina working with the problem of obesity in poor income areas. It’s a staggering challenge: A lack of public transportation to get to fitness facilities, minimal access to healthy foods, a lack of jobs, the related stress of simply surviving … .

“You can’t ignore the poverty,” Benedict says of the roadblock it creates for healthy living. To live a healthy lifestyle in such conditions is a challenge. “You’d have to be a hero to do it,” she says.

At the very least her students must enjoy what they’re doing. To that end, Benedict says, “My goal is to make fitness fun. To most women it’s a chore.”

Often, that “fun” involves incorporating dance into her workouts, gospel music, too. Lately, she’s been tossing in some Nia, (not to be confused with Nena) which she describes as a melange of dance and yoga with a mind-body emphasis. (Benedict became a certified Nia instructor last year.)

Just as Eastern North Carolina is, unfortunately, an ideal location to try and promote healthy living among the rural poor, so is Chapel Hill a perfect location to promote an active lifestyle in an aging population.

“Chapel Hill is a retirement Mecca,” she says. “They understand the importance of staying active.

“When I started,” she continue, “there were hardly any exercise programs tailored to the needs of seniors. Now,” she says in the lobby of the Seymour Senior Center, “this center is almost all fitness.”

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To reach more seniors, the fall version of Salli’s Senior Workout will be offered free-of-charge (there had been a $6 per class fee). For more information on the class, call the Seymour Senior Center at 968-2070.