Staying strong is an easier lift for local ‘legends’

Published 11:30 am Tuesday, November 25, 2025

November sunlight pours through both open garage doors at Vashon Strong, flooding the small studio with gold on a recent Wednesday morning.

It’s deadlift day for the “legends,” the gym’s 65-and-older strength class, and the room hums with the rhythm of the workout: a 250-meter row, a 50-foot farmer’s carry with kettlebells, a sled push, ring rows and a wall sit to close out the circuit.

Music thumps, with claps and “woohoo, good for you!” echoing through the studio.

Coach Shannon Seath Meyer stands in the circle, warming up alongside the group as she looks around. “Does anyone have anything going on with their body that I don’t know about?” she asks.

The class moves through its stations, each exercise some variation of resistance training or weights. For Seath Meyer, who spent 30 years as a massage therapist on the island, these movements grew out of decades of watching how people age.

“I saw people age, and it occurred to me that what they really needed was strength training,” she said.

There were fitness options on Vashon before, she said, but not many opportunities to lift heavy — and lifting heavy is what makes a difference, she said. So she brought the idea to Vashon Strong owner Josh Thorn. It took time to build the program, but she created it with a clear audience in mind: her longtime clients whose mobility, strength and confidence she’d watched slowly erode.

“You have to lift heavy if you are going to get the stimulus,” she said. “You don’t get stronger unless you give your body enough of a stimulus to create more muscle.”

When the legends class launched, it surprised her.

“I created a program and basically the group that showed up just blew me out of the water,” she said. They lifted more, moved better and progressed faster than she expected.

Legends must be 65 or older. The class mirrors the format of other Vashon Strong sessions but includes longer warmups and plenty of scaling options for chronic issues or days when someone simply isn’t feeling their best. Most participants come two or three times a week.

A major reason the program works, Seath Meyer said, is that she doesn’t work out alongside them. She watches. She adjusts form. She prevents injury.

At 77, Erik Johannessen has been part of the class since the beginning. He was one of Seath Meyer’s massage clients for nearly 20 years before she urged him to join after he retired and noticed his upper-body strength fading. A former contractor, house builder and heavy equipment operator, he knew what it felt like to rely on his body — and what it felt like to lose that certainty.

“It’s done a whole lot of good,” Johannessen said.

Just last week, he cut and split a load of firewood. Two years ago, he said, he would have stood in front of the pile thinking, “I’m too old to do that.”

“Some of that was strength, but a lot of it was attitude,” he said.

He doesn’t heat with wood, but uses his fireplace enough that he had considered buying firewood — something he’d never done.“I’ve never bought firewood in my life,” Johannessen said. “But I was about to start.”

“The coach’s enthusiasm and encouragement to add more weight — helps a lot,” he said. The camaraderie helps too — lifting is far harder without a supportive group around you, he said.

Johannessen, along with a couple of the class members started with Seath Meyer from day one.

Johannessen said one of his early fears was that he wouldn’t be able to lift that firewood — now, he can. “It makes me feel a lot better about myself,” he said. “You have this idea, or a notion of what a 77-year-old is like … but that preconceived notion of what age is, when you’re real young, doesn’t have to be that way. It can be a self-fulfilling prophecy but it doesn’t have to be.”

For 73-year-old Leslie Drahos, the transformation has been equally striking. When she started the class a year and a half ago, she could hardly lift the 15-pound bar. Now she’s at 100 pounds.

“I just love it,” Drahos said. “I’ve always been very active, and then I retired and all of a sudden my activity level wasn’t great, and I noticed I was starting to lose some of my abilities — like being able to get up when I’m gardening.” Now she gets up from the garden just fine.

“They don’t spare us at all,” she added with a laugh.

She sees the changes in her body and strength. She couldn’t do a pushup before she started — now she can. “I’m getting stronger and more agile,” Drahos said.

Equally important is the camaraderie. “We’re all in the same space, we all have our ailments now, because we are getting older, but coaches are so attentive, and they work around everything that we possibly have.”

At the beginning of every class, there’s a question of the day — sometimes lighthearted, like favorite burrito toppings; sometimes deeper, like dreams from childhood. “This binds us,” Drahos said.

Some members were friends before the class, but many weren’t. Now they swap recipes and meet for coffee.

Patricia Haley joined after a friend told her she felt safer and stronger around her horses because of the class. Haley wanted the same security.

Her goals were straightforward: deadlift 110 pounds — the weight of a hay bale — and lift 50 pounds, the weight of a sack of peanuts. She can now do both. “It’s a huge difference,” said Haley, who has sacroiliitisis (SI), an issue that can cause inflammation in the the joints where the lower spine and pelvis meet. “… This has helped me make sure I’m doing everything correctly.”

Her body composition check at the gym shows her muscle mass has increased, progress that reflects her simple goal: staying strong enough to live independently.

“We’re all trying to stay in our homes,” she said. “We want to stay healthy and be able to take care of ourselves.”

The oldest member of the class at 82, moves steadily through her deadlifts. When she finishes her third 75-pound rep, a classmate cheers, “Elizabeth is super strong!” She beams as she sets the bar down.

“What a difference it makes in your everyday activities,” she said. “It is challenging — but so much fun.”

Owner Josh Thorn thinks the class points to something bigger happening on the island. “Maybe Vashon will turn into a blue zone, where there’s a high population of people over 100, living great lives,” he said.

The legends are the first elder class Vashon Strong has offered, and the bond among participants is unusually deep — something Thorn says matters, given how common isolation is for this age group.

After their final exercise — a wall sit — the legends gather their things and head out into the cold, talking as they go.

The studio briefly falls quiet before the next class arrives, the morning’s work still evident in the space where islanders continue to build strength.

For more information about Vashon Strong classes, visit vashonstrong.com.

Editor’s note: The median age on Vashon is 51.7, and about one-third of residents are 65 or older, according to 2020 census data. Staying active, and connected, is woven into daily life here.

This is the second edition of a recurring column that spotlights islanders who defy expectations of age and live with creativity, vitality and purpose.

If you know someone who embodies that spirit — or if that someone is you — please reach out. Share your story at aspen.anderson@vashonbeachcomber.com.