Nova Grad's Video Promotes Shaping Up While Sitting Down

HEALTH

If graduate Jodi Stolove has anything to do with it, you might end up doing the tango - IN YOUR CHAIRS!

Her video, Chair Dancing - exercise for the ultimate couch potato - allows people of all fitness levels to stay in shape, she says.

When Stolove returns to Hollywood in a few weeks to reunite with classmates from her pre-disco days, she should be sitting pretty.

That's because her creation is slowly being adopted across the country by the likes of The Mayo Clinic, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Pritkin Longevity Centers, Scripps Clinic and Kaiser Permanente.

Dr. Carol Weed, director of the Sports Injury Clinic at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, Calif., says Stolove's program "is an easily accessible form of nonweight-bearing exercise. It's a good way of avoiding injury."

Stolove says the program isn't just for people with a medical condition but can work for anyone, she says. But she says most people are skeptical when they first hear about Chair Dancing.

"The name itself definitely makes people laugh," she says. "People say `Oh, a couch potato's dream.' There is definitely an impression of disbelief."

But Stolove says even people who once sat idle see results when they begin following her 40-minute program, which incorporates leg and arm movements to raise the heart rate.

"Now, I've gone from [getting) disbelief to [getting) respect," says Stolove, who lives in San Diego.

Stolove was a dance instructor at Broward Community College in 1984 when an accident left her with a broken foot. Determined to continue teaching her class, she pulled up a chair and led her students while sitting.

That's when she realized she was doing everything she did standing up, sitting down. "Necessity was the mother of invention," she says.

Stolove says she remembers always wanting to pair a psychology degree with dance, but says, "I just didn't know why at the time."

But Stolove, who shared a ballet class with Madonna while at the University of Michigan, has figured out how to combine the two.

Now she's playing musical chairs with the national media, appearing on the Today show, Good Morning America and Mike & Maty.

"The best feeling is that I've really helped people," she says. " It's the kind of exercise program where people say, "Yeah, I can do that.'''