San Francisco's Best Fitness Centers for Seniors By Carolyn Koenig

Staying active and healthy is important, no matter your age: it has a powerful influence on the quality of your life and your overall happiness. It also helps prevent or manage various health conditions, such as diabetes, heart disease and arthritis, maintain your targeted weight and contribute to your sense of well-being.

For older adults, staying active is particularly important but not as easy, perhaps, as it was when you were younger. While motivation and commitment play a huge role in this goal's success, finding activities you enjoy and comfortable places that support them is critical. These activities can be gentle and low-impact or more intense to increase your endurance, focusing on flexibility, balance, strength and coordination.

With a well-deserved reputation as the healthiest city in the U.S., San Francisco offers a wide variety of fitness centers and classes tailored for seniors that will help you meet your goals and encourage your regular participation. These also have the additional benefit of social interaction and being part of an active community, a secondary but essential element.

While some San Francisco health plans and HMOs offer fitness opportunities for their members, there are numerous options for all seniors to find classes and centers that will keep them active, engaged and healthy. Here are a few:

Of course, YMCA comes to mind immediately: it’s been serving San Francisco since 1853! It encompasses a range of classes, including instructors trained to work with older adults and their particular needs. One of the most popular is water aerobics, a low-impact way to build strength and flexibility, without putting stress on aging joints. These feature a warm-up, cardio- and strength-training exercises and a cool-down. You can expect to do exercises such as water walking, bicep curls, leg lifts and kickboard moves. (This isn’t a swimming class, and most of the workouts are conducted in the pool's shallow end.) These YMCA aquatic classes are available at the Embarcadero YMCA, the Presidio Community YMCA and the Stonestown Family YMCA.

Another is chair yoga, which is exactly what it sounds like: a gentle form of yoga that’s done while participants are seated or standing, using a chair for support. In this practice, it’s possible to move into poses like cat/cow, warrior, sun salutations and forward folds – all well-known poses that yoga practitioners may have enjoyed over the years but discontinued as they became older.

Always Active has been a part of San Francisco for 17 years. This fitness program, which is designed to promote continuous physical activity, offers older adults group exercise classes and incorporates movements that you can do on your own, at home. They have trained staff in 20 locations throughout the city, held at On Lok 30th Street Senior Center, some YMCAs and other venues. They also offer a 12-week Fall Prevention program that will improve your balance, strength and mobility.

Geared toward adults who are 60+, Sequoia Living Community Services operates two long-time centers. Probably the best-known is Aquatic Park Senior Center on Beach Street, tucked into the city’s Maritime Museum. This is a hub for chair and mat yoga, moderate and challenge exercise classes, tai chi and much more. Conveniently accessible by public transportation, it’s a highly rated hang-out space in a beautiful setting for seniors.

Its sister center, the Downtown San Francisco Senior Center on O’Farrell Street, also has a full weekly calendar of fitness activities. This includes active movement (seated or standing exercises, with resistance bands and dumbbells), qi jong (focused movements to flex and expand your range) and the typical tai chi and chair yoga options.

Folded into an unusual venue on Diamond Street, the Castro Senior Center presents classes such as aerobics, general fitness, tai chi and chair yoga, as well as a variety of social and health-promoted activities. In a friendly, supportive environment, it focuses on seniors, people with all disabilities, LGBTGIA+ and transgender or non-binary participants from around the city.

Located in the northwest corner of Golden Gate Park, Golden Gate Park Senior Center attracts participants who are 55 and older. In addition to the standard exercise and movement classes, it also offers dance classes, which are particularly helpful for individuals affected by Parkinson’s disease.

For older adults who enjoy mindful physical activity and a have a sense of adventure, there’s an organized tai chi practice between 7 am and 9 am each morning in Washington Square Park (North Beach on the cusp of Chinatown). This is a well-known, often photographed, hotspot in the city that’s popular with nearby Chinese residents but is friendly and open to all to participate.

By choosing a program that suits your needs and preferences, you’ll be motivated to keep moving – active and fit – in a supportive community with the same goals.