Fitness
Innovative Bungee Fitness Fills Gap in Senior Exercise Market
A pioneering fitness studio in Pasadena is revolutionizing senior exercise through bungee-assisted workouts, adapting the concept from Thailand to serve those with physical limitations. Martha Bustos, recovering from her second hip replacement and currently using a walker, opened Bungee Fun FITT Studio on January 4, 2025, drawing on her experience with rehabilitating her right hip from 2022.
The concept emerged after Bustos, a former track and field, softball, basketball, and tennis coach with a master’s in kinesiology, found traditional gyms lacking. “After that surgery, I noticed that gyms do not cater to senior students. The compliance was just not there. And they wanted to set me up with a private instructor. But even there, I mean, I would notice their focus was not on me looking around, oh, do this, do that, but not really focus on my needs,” she explained.
Similar to the Silver Sneakers program for adults 55 and older, Bustos’s “Soaring Seniors” program uses a specialized harness system. Each station incorporates “a link, a carabiner, a swivel, and then bungee cords, and then another carabiner, and then the harness,” engineered to support 500 pounds. Basic setups use eight bungee cords providing 134 pounds of support, with single cords offering 17 pounds of resistance, doubles 34 pounds, and triples 50 pounds. Additional cords are added based on participant weight — for example, a 146-pound person requires one extra cord.
Participants begin with a 15-minute registration session, documenting weight and height for proper harness sizing (S, M, L, XL). The 45-minute workouts for seniors follow Bustos’s “Move to Improve” methodology, featuring instructors Taylor, Lisa, Star, Ashley, Rick, and Jackie leading warmups with “lunges, butt kicks, everything” before progressing to choreographed routines. Instructors call out moves like “knee up, knee down, knee up, knee down, and then around the world” to music, with participants advancing from Level 1 to more intense Level 2 classes.
Comparing the experience to “The Twilight Zone” episode “Kick the Can,” where seniors regain their youthful abilities, Bustos noted, “They’re going to be moving to improving and at the same time doing things they hadn’t done in a long time.” Participants report burning 300 calories per session on their Fitbits.
The studio, which opened to the public on January 7 before a temporary fire evacuation, fills a regional void — similar facilities exist only in Utah, Arizona, and Oklahoma. The timing proved prescient, with recent class-action lawsuits against LA Fitness and 24 Hour Fitness regarding Americans with Disabilities Act compliance.
Operating through word-of-mouth rather than social media, the studio offers bronze, silver, gold, and platinum memberships under the “Let’s Heal Together” campaign, providing year-long discounts. Weight restrictions range from 90-260 pounds, with strict safety protocols including liability waivers. Each class is recorded, and participants receive photos of their achievements, particularly the popular “Star” pose where they “jump and fly up in the air”.
Bustos, pursuing partnerships with Ultimate and LA Care (preferring Ultimate), sees her own journey — being told she couldn’t “cross your legs… do burpees… do squats” — as testament to the program’s importance. New participants must complete a mandatory two-day introductory class (Level 1) before advancing to Level 2, ensuring proper progression in what she calls a “low impact cardio assisted workout”.
The studio also offers a Bungee Fitness Studio app for class registration and has a six-hour cancellation policy. Participants are advised to wear athletic sportswear or padded bike shorts for comfort. Those who have had surgery in the past six months or are pregnant should consult a physician before participating.
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It never feels like there’s enough time in the day – after prioritising your kids, work and other commitments, simply finding an opportunity to get in the gym can prove tricky. But instead of obsessing over gym sessions, Lawrence Price – former professional rugby player, coach and recent guest on MH’s Built for Life podcast – says busy dads should instead prioritise three weekly pillars.
These pillars are less about creating a perfect environment and more about building consistency that works with your life. The idea is that if life gets hectic and one pillar drops off temporarily, the other two pillars keep progress moving.
‘If pillar one is out the window because we can’t train for a couple of weeks, we can still manipulate things by making sure we’re hit hitting pillar one and three by getting those things on point,’ Price tells MH.
The 3 Pillars Every Busy Dad Should Follow
1. Increase Your Daily Movement
Price is a big proponent of increasing your NEAT – non-exercise activity thermogenesis – which is the energy your body uses for daily, non-structured exercises. These include things like walking more, taking the stairs instead of the lift or escalators, and moving during phone calls.
‘If your training window for the day has gone, then the reality is you can still take phone calls on your feet, you can take the stairs. It’s just boring to talk about – it’s unsexy, it’s uncool. But if you get people into that mindset where, whatever your life looks like, you’re prioritising that need. It’s 15% of your total daily expenditure or more,’ Price says.
‘Even even when your training window is put on the back burner, because the hierarchy of needs outside of your own health needs is obviously undulating and sometimes it pulls us away, whatever circumstance you have during the week, just moving more is something you can go towards.’
2. Strength Training
There’s no such thing as training too little – if you’ve only got time for one gym session a week, then make the most of that time and incorporate some strength training. Compound movements help to stimulate muscle growth efficiently.
‘Resistance training is the second pillar. Even if you only get one or two sessions in a week and it’s a really targeted, simple, basic functional hypertrophy routine, you know that when you’re sitting at your desk or when you’re doing the school run, your body is trying to adapt to that stimulus.’
‘If pillars one and two are the energy output pillars, pillar three is the energy input pillar,’ Price concludes.
‘If we have a rough idea of eating in alignment with our energetic needs and body composition goals, even if the environment changes we can still embody the habits and actions that align with our goals and and our visions.’
This is crucial for when you might not have time to train as much as you’d like – adapting your nutrition will still keep you on track with your goals, even if you’re expending less daily energy.
If there’s one thing Kori Sampson knows, it’s how to optimise your body composition for performance. To tap into his knowledge as an elite athlete and coach, we asked him to create a 4-week plan to help you move faster, recover quicker and keep pushing when the fatigue sets in – all while improving your muscle-to-fat ratio.
Ready to build muscle, burn fat and come out the other side looking, feeling and performing better? Click here to get 14 days of free access to the plan via the Men’s Health app.
Ryan is a Senior Writer at Men’s Health UK with a passion for storytelling, health and fitness. Having graduated from Cardiff University in 2020, and later obtaining his NCTJ qualification, Ryan started his career as a Trainee News Writer for sports titles Golf Monthly, Cycling Weekly and Rugby World before progressing to Staff Writer and subsequently Senior Writer with football magazine FourFourTwo.
During his two-and-a-half years there he wrote news stories for the website and features for the magazine, while he also interviewed names such as Les Ferdinand, Ally McCoist, Jamie Redknapp and Antonio Rudiger, among many others. His standout memory, though, came when getting the opportunity to speak to then-Plymouth Argyle manager Steven Schumacher as the club won League One in 2023.
Having grown up a keen footballer and playing for his boyhood side until the age of 16, Ryan got the opportunity to represent Northern Ireland national futsal team eight times, scoring three goals against England, Scotland and Gibraltar. Now past his peak, Ryan prefers to mix weightlifting with running – he achieved a marathon PB of 3:31:49 at Manchester in April 2025, but credits the heat for failing to get below the coveted 3:30 mark…
You can follow Ryan on Instagram or on X
Fitness
Lawlor: It’s a fitness exercise, but there were lots of positives – Fleetwood Town Football Club
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The latest NHS exercise guidance reinforces what we’ve been preaching for years: hitting that 150-minute weekly movement target isn’t necessarily a get-out-of-jail-free card. It states that prolonged sedentary time is independently harmful, even for those of us who diligently carve out time for the gym. Verbatim, it says ‘prolonged sitting is harmful, even in people who achieve the recommended levels of moderate to vigorous physical activity’.
Chief Medical Officer Professor Sir Chris Whitty has been especially vocal about how detrimental it could be, highlighting hybrid working as a potential health hazard. ‘Without wanting to exaggerate, I think it’s important people think through, for example, hybrid working means quite a lot of people could very easily do very little other than leave their homes, where previously people would be routinely going to work, and that often meant at least some physical [activity],’ he said at a briefing.
I understand his logic, but it’s pretty reductive. Working from home isn’t the villain here – working from one chair is.
When we label remote work as “bad for your health”, we risk throwing the baby out with the bath water. In reality, for many – certainly the whole of the Women’s Health office, but also my less-fitness-conscious sister and stepdad, plus my entire friendship group – working from home often means being more active. It means more time to fit in a lunchtime run, to get some steps in before work, or to run some errands on a quick break.
On the other hand, plenty of office workers are more sedentary than they are at home. They sit at a desk for nine hours straight before driving home, whether to be seen to work tirelessly in front of their manager, or simply because they’re pulled from pillar to post in an office setting. For those who do have an office commute, eliminating that often stressful period of the day allows for better sleep, and more time for the movement breaks we need to break up the dreaded sedentary time. Not to mention that many commutes are almost entirely sedentary on a train/tube/bus.
The potential problem, the advice suggests, is the lack of incidental movement – the walk to the train, the stroll to a meeting room, or heading out for lunch – that’s naturally baked into your day when you’re in the “official” office. Without a commute or a day in the office, the onus is on you to manufacture movement in.
Regular stretching counts as a movement break
Without sounding evangelical, I’ve made this a non-negotiable part of my day. On WFH days, I work out or walk every single morning before I log on, and walk again every evening, even if just a lap around the block. During the day, I have a personal rule: if I’m downstairs, I use the upstairs toilet (and vice versa). Sounds excessive, but it forces me to activate my muscles and add to my step count every few hours.
Beyond that, the options are endless if you’re intentional. Use a standing desk or put your laptop on a kitchen worktop during calls. Take every phone meeting on foot, pacing your hallway if necessary. Set a timer to stand up every 30 mins to stretch, grab a glass of water, or do a quick load of laundry.
We don’t need to return to the office to be healthy; we need to bring movement back into our homes. The goal: to stop being professional sitters.
As Women’s Health UK’s fitness director and a qualified Pilates and yoga instructor, Bridie Wilkins has been passionately reporting on exercise, health and nutrition since the start of her decade-long career in journalism.
After earning a first-class degree in journalism and NCTJ accreditation, she secured her first role at Look Magazine, where she launched the magazine’s health and fitness column, Look Fit, before going on to become Health and Fitness writer at HELLO!
Since, she has written for Stylist, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Elle, The Metro, Runner’s World and Red. Today, she oversees all fitness content across Women’s Health online and in print, spearheading leading cross-platform franchises, such as ‘Fit At Any Age’, which showcases the women proving that age is no barrier to exercise.
She has also represented the brand on BBC Radio London, plus various podcasts and Substacks – all with the aim to encourage more women to exercise and show them how. Outside of work, find her trying the latest Pilates studio, testing her VO2 max for fun (TY, Oura), or posting workouts on Instagram.
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