GAINESVILLE, Fla. (WCJB) – Some cardio workouts don’t just get your heart pounding, they can help strengthen your muscles too.

Gainesville Health and Fitness trainer Jonathan Ross shows us the stair climber in this week’s Your Fitness.

RELATED: Gainesville Health and Fitness: Shoulder stretches part 2

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In 1992 Rae Earl was a student at home in England watching a BBC program called TV Hell.

The show was a compilation of “diabolical moments” from British television history — programs that quickly disappeared into entertainment purgatory.

Featured was a show from 1972 called Boomph with Becker, an aerobics program for seniors presented by an eccentric fitness guru called Sue Becker.

“I was fairly entranced as much as the nation was,” Ms Earl told Leon Compton on ABC Radio Hobart.

Described by the BBC as idiosyncratic, Becker starts off in a green dress but is soon prancing around elderly people in a black leotard encouraging them to “boomph” with her.

“It’s wonderful, it’s so eccentric,” Ms Earl said.

Thirty years later, and now an author, Ms Earl would begin dedicating her time to finding out more about Becker’s life and writing a PhD about her.

She discovered there was much more to Becker than her moment in TV Hell.

A ‘fascinating’ life

About seven years ago BBC Archives shared the clip of Boomph with Becker again, and Sue Becker was back on Ms Earl’s mind.

Ms Earl was now living in Tasmania, and discovered that Becker had spent a decade on the island as well.

“I couldn’t find much about her, but the more I did find, the more interesting she became,” Ms Earl said.

“I started to look into her life, she was fascinating.”

Born in England, Becker attended the revolutionary I.M Marsh College of Physical Training in Liverpool.

Becker then travelled widely, and in the 1950s she moved to Papua New Guinea by herself to reportedly learn native dance.

She married the doctor who treated her for malaria and hepatitis and lived there for about six years, before getting divorced.

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TV aerobics fame

In 1966 Becker ended up in Australia, and shot to TV fame through her own aerobics show on the ABC called Swing In Time.

“She wore diamanté fishnet stockings with a black leotard, her figure was to die for,” Ms Earl said.

In the 1970s she took her manager to court over what she believed was an unfair deal.

It settled out of court but hampered her ability to work in the industry in Australia.

This led to the infamous one-off season of Boomph with Becker in the UK, which would be repeated for decades to come.

Just last month BBC Archives re-shared a clip from it and it received 380,000 views.

Beckers Broadside

As well as her aerobics programs, Becker was on air for the ABC, initially in Sydney and then all throughout the 1980s on radio in Tasmania.

Her program Beckers Broadside was one of the earliest talkback radio programs, and one of the first with a woman hosting.

The hour-long program saw her interview all types in a very matter-of-fact way, including prime ministers and premiers.

Her signature deep, gravelly voice became an iconic sound across Tasmania.

A transcript shows Becker hotly debating Malcolm Fraser over the cost of living and interest rates.

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“She’s a talkback presenter in the 80s, and female.

“There were not many of those.”

Ms Earl said her PhD would explore the relationship radio presenters had with their audience, and what happened when they were no longer on air.

“She allows me to examine women in the entertainment industry, it’s also a story of empire, it’s a story of post-war Britain and Australia.”

Ms Earl also plans to write a book about Becker, and wants her to be remembered for more than Boomph With Becker.

“She’s kind of been forgotten, and I think this is an act of criminality,” she said.

“She was on air for the entirety of the 1980s so I would really like to get her back into the public consciousness.

Becker parted ways with the ABC in 1990 and moved to Queensland to be closer to her son.

She died in 2007.

ABC listeners remember Sue Becker

ABC Radio Hobart listeners shared memories of Sue Becker on the Mornings program.

Cathy: “Sue Becker, wow, a blast from the past! I was one of thousands who tuned in wearing my sports gear and joining in with exercising.”

Melegueta said: “The way she was, she put a lot of people’s backs up but in herself I thought she was just wonderful.”

Mary: “She was dynamic, exciting. I had four children under five in the 70s so I was frantically busy but I wanted to be fit too. She was a real drawcard when I had time to hear her. I do remember her very fondly, she was an exciting personality.”

Keith: “She was quite outrageous in some ways.”

Kay: “I remember the husky voice, black leotard and colourful scarf around her neck.”

Sue: “We were living in Port Moresby in the 1960s and 70s and Sue had a show on air on aerobics.”

Ms Earl would like to hear from people with memories of Sue Becker via suebeckerproject@gmail.com

Build up the length of your walks slowly 

Walking is the starting point for someone who wants to strengthen their heart and lungs. Quinn advises against high intensity. “If anyone’s going to suffer a cardiovascular episode, an arrhythmia or atrial fibrillation, it will be someone in that older age bracket – the heart is ageing as well. I prefer duration and frequency rather than intensity.” 

Walking is underrated, adds Mallace. “It helps strength in your legs and your balance. Walk fairly briskly. Get a stopwatch, go out for a walk and time how long you walk before you want to stop. Note the time. If it’s 10 minutes that’s your baseline, increase really slowly and do 11 minutes the next time and build until you can walk half an hour at a reasonable speed.” She recommends walking every other day until you’re able to keep going for 25 minutes then you can do it every day.”

A study carried out by an Oklahoma-based team said that “walking briskly for 30 minutes per day for five days can reduce the risk of several age-associated diseases. Additionally, low-intensity physical exercise, including walking, exerts anti-ageing effects and helps prevent age-related diseases”.

Have milk in your coffee or cheese with your wine

The array of fashionable superfoods that catch our eye every now again is not the answer, according to Prof Mary Hickson of the dietetics department of Plymouth University. She says that appetite can diminish in our 70s and 80s partly because our sense of taste and smell is less sensitive. This means every meal needs to be nutrition-packed as it could well be smaller than those we enjoyed in the past. “An ideal plate would be half vegetables, a quarter protein and a quarter carbohydrate.” 

How much protein older people need is not entirely clear currently. “There is some debate about protein and older people and there seems to be a consensus slowly emerging that older people do need more.” A study by the University of Sheffield found that many older adults do not eat sufficient protein. “More than half of older adults aren’t consuming enough protein to reach national recommendations.”

Prof Hickson says: “The recommendation for younger adults is 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day, and for older people it may go up as high as 1.2 grams per kg of body weight, as we age.” A 90-gram chicken breast contains 24 grams of protein but Prof Hickson reminds us lots of foods contain small amounts of protein adding to your total score – a slice of toast will have 2.5 grams, for example.

The carbohydrate element is important especially if you are active. “Complex carbohydrates are the best because they are broken down more slowly rather than sugar which gives you a spike of glucose,” Prof Hickson adds. “Whole-grain bread, cereals and pasta are all good choices, and you should have some at every meal.”  

If life with brown rice and chicken breasts feels a little spartan, Prof Hickson says coffee within the two-to-three cups a day limit is fine, some sweet treats are permitted if they are appropriately infrequent. She is also comfortable with alcohol within the 14 units a week but warns about dehydration. “The proportion of water in the body is less for older people so it’s easy to become dehydrated, so alcohol will have more of an effect.” Have milk in your coffee or cheese with your wine. Bone health calcium is important, and guidelines from the British Dietetic Association recommend three portions of milk-based products per day.