Fitness guru gran is still teaching after 40 years
MAXINE Kempson is undoubtedly North Staffordshire's answer to the Green Goddess.
Like Diana Moran, who shot to fame performing exercise routines in a green leotard and tights on BBC's Breakfast Time, Maxine has carved a career out of keeping people fit.
She has been taking exercise classes in Chesterton for 40 years, and during that time has branched out into yoga and step-aerobics.
And despite suffering from arthritis, the 71-year-old grandmother, of Hempstalls Grove, Newcastle, continues to teach and insists on doing the routines with her class members.
"I first got into keep fit 44 years ago when my daughter was about a year old," says Maxine, who is mum to Nick, aged 48, Lesley, aged 45, and Lee, aged 41, and has four grandchildren.
"My sister, Jill Phillips, and I both had babies seven weeks apart and we were looking for somewhere to get fit."
The two women found a class at Watlands School in Porthill.
"It was called 'keep fit and movement' then," says the widow, whose husband Arnold died 12 years ago at the age of 64.
"And while we did aerobics as part of it, it wasn't called that then. Aerobics was the name given to young people jumping around in the 1980s and 1990s.
"We built up little routines during the class, always to music, and we also did skipping.
"I could do it because I'd always been an athlete. I played netball until I had children, and at school I used to throw the discus and javelin."
Maxine and Jill continued attending the sessions every week, and within two years Maxine was teaching her own class – inspired by her own fitness teacher Doreen Whittaker.
"I wasn't working at the time," she says, "and once I started teaching that became my job and has been ever since.
"I took to keep fit because you could choose great music to exercise to and you could use the whole of your body. It's like a type of dance, I suppose."
Maxine's first class was held at Chesterton Community Centre on a Monday night in November 1969, and she still teaches in the same room, on the same night, "and one lady, Marilyn Cartlidge, has been coming to the class from the beginning," she adds.
Back then, all Maxine's class members were in their twenties or younger, and even though she faced a room of 30 people she says her nerves never got the better of her.
"You don't have nerves when you're young," she says, "as you think you can do anything. I even had a proper pianist who sat on the stage with a grand piano."
During her thirties, Maxine did a keep fit teacher training course, run by the education authority at Burslem Gymnastics Centre, and then took five O-levels at Newcastle College.
"I'd left school at 15 without any qualifications," she says, "but that was quite normal for girls at the time.
"After doing my O-levels I did a further education teacher's certificate, which qualified me to teach at places like Cauldon College."
In the 1950s and 1960s, the type of exercise men did held no appeal to the fairer sex.
"But when women realised they could do keep fit to lovely music with lovely body movements, I think that's what inspired them," she says.
"At that time, women were starting to do things for themselves. Joining a class was the thing to do. It gave them a night away from the kids."
Soon after starting to teach, Maxine found she was earning good money, and during her career she has produced three demonstration items at the Royal Albert Hall and her class has appeared at Jollees in Longton as part of the cabaret.
"I spent about 20 years working for the education authority," she says.
"I used to work four nights a week and some afternoons, and I later became self-employed."
Maxine's late husband, a joiner by trade, fully supported his fitness guru spouse, who managed to fit her teaching around family life.
"For the first 10 years or so I only worked at night, so my husband looked after the kids while I was teaching," she says.
Before long, Maxine's daughter Lesley was old enough to join her mum's classes.
Meanwhile, eldest son Nick joined in with the yoga, and her youngest, Lee, came along to the step-aerobics sessions she did for a while.
"My children have always supported me and they're all into sporty things," she says.
"They've always been active, doing things like swimming, running and football, and I think that's because their mum always has been. This is how you inspire your children and my grandchildren are following on too.
"I believe your kids are lazy if you are."
But what does Maxine think about the changes to keep fit trends over the years?
"You can't push the body too much now," she says.
"We're going back more to thinking about moving the body, rather than jumping up and down."
Maxine's classes began with a warm-up, and she also included skipping or movement around the floor, followed by work on specific muscle groups through exercises like sit-ups.
"In the old days you always finished with a sort of communal type of dance," she recalls, "but after a while most people finished with a stretch of some kind."
As you'd expect, being a fitness instructor for so long has kept Maxine trim and healthy.
"I always eat healthily, but I think people did years ago compared to now," she says.
"There were no takeaways, except the fish and chip shop."
And Maxine admired the style of the Green Goddess, who she believes inspired a lot of people.
"She moved elegantly, which a lot of women liked, especially those who were getting older," she says.
Maxine expanded her instructing by taking classes in Harpfields and also started teaching yoga.
"It was a new thing to this country," she says, "and I heard about it through the Keep Fit Association.
"Yoga fitted in with my philosophy of movement and I taught it for 30 years."
Now in her early seventies, Maxine has cut back to teaching just one keep fit class a week in Chesterton.
"The members range from their early forties to their mid-seventies.
"I'm not interested in teaching younger people now because they need a younger teacher, as I only teach as long as I can do it myself and I do find it harder work now," she says.
And while she believes people in general don't do enough exercise, she says it is possible to do too much.
"You should only do just enough to keep you fit," she says, "as I have arthritis in both my hips.
"But I think proper exercise helps women to live longer and socialise better.
"So while I may have hung up my leotard, I haven't ditched my training shoes."
Maxine will hold an open night to mark 40 years of her keep fit classes at Chesterton Community Centre, London Road, Chesterton, on Monday, November 16, from 8pm to 9.30pm. Former members are invited and the event will include a mini-class. Fitness sessions take place at the community centre every Monday, between 8pm and 9pm.
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