On a weekday morning in a community hall in Parow Valley, a group of seniors moves through a routine set to music, guided by an instructor who has spent years making sure every step lands on the beat. The class is part of SeniorFit60+, a small fitness club with roots stretching back to 1978, now run by owner-instructor Juliana Le Roux Maritz.
From a Bicycle-Powered Beginning to a Local Institution
The club’s story began nearly half a century ago, when its founder, Ria Maritz, discovered a fitness class in Cape Town and was introduced to Trimgim, a movement-based exercise programme, by a regional representative of the discipline. Encouraged to start her own group, she began holding classes in her hometown of Parow Valley, advertising them with flyers pinned up at the local library and churches.
The first official class ran in a community hall in September 1980, and demand grew quickly. The founder famously commuted between morning and evening sessions on a bicycle with a portable radio strapped to the back carrier, eventually adding extra classes to keep up with interest. By the mid-1980s, the club had been invited to represent its members at the National Gymnaestrada in Johannesburg, and a dedicated seniors’ class had been launched at the Parow Senior Centre.
In 1990, the founder joined a newly formed body dedicated specifically to fitness for older adults — the South African Senior Fitness Association (SASFA) — a move that would come to define the club’s identity for decades to come.
A New Generation Takes the Lead
Juliana Le Roux Maritz joined the club in 2015 as part of a planned handover, training alongside its founder before qualifying with a National Certificate as a Senior Fitness Instructor in 2017. She officially took over the club in January 2018.
Under her leadership, the club was rebranded as SeniorFit60+, with a renewed focus on distinguishing its programme from generic aerobics or line-dancing classes often associated with older-style “Trimgym” sessions. The club describes its approach as exercise designed specifically around the realities of ageing bodies — “Say No to boring exercises” is now something of an informal motto for the group.
Today, Juliana serves as both owner-instructor of SeniorFit60+ and as SASFA’s representative for the Western Cape, helping connect the Parow club to a wider network of senior fitness instructors and clubs registered under the association.
More Than a Workout
Colleagues and members describe Juliana as a perfectionist about her craft, often spending hours refining movement sequences to make sure they are properly synchronised with music before bringing them to class. Outside the studio, she is known locally as a keen cyclist and an animal welfare advocate.
A Club Built on Continuity
Nearly 50 years after its first advertisement went up at a Parow library, SeniorFit60+ continues to operate as a SASFA-affiliated club, offering older residents in the area a structured, community-based way to stay active. What started as one woman’s bicycle-powered side project has grown into a multi-generational fixture of Parow’s community life — a small business, in the truest sense, built one class at a time.
SeniorFit60+ is a member club of the South African Senior Fitness Association (SASFA).