Ultrafit: Maven of movement
STEPHEN REGENOLD, Star Tribune

The year was 1974, and Lonna Mosow had begun promoting yoga, a form of exercise and meditation new to the Western world. But her sessions weren't getting many takers. "I couldn't fill a class," she said.

It was the early days of voluntary exercise in America, a pre-Jane Fonda era in which jogging was still gaining steam and aerobics, at best, was considered eccentric.

Yoga, with its postures and poses like Virabhadrasana, may as well have come from outer space.

"People thought I was a kook," said Mosow, who opened her first workout studio -- a bare-bones space with a wood floor and mirrored walls -- the same summer that President RIchard Nixon resigned.

Mosow, a ballet dancer from Colorado who turned to fitness in her 20s, has long been ahead of her time. Indeed, Mosow said the very concept of a workout studio -- a place where people could exercise in groups away from home -- was generally unknown in the Midwest when she opened her namesake business on France Avenue in Edina.

"I had trouble getting a lease," she said. "No bank would give me a loan."

But despite skepticism, Lonna Mosow's Hot Workouts, as the studio was called, flourished as a trailblazer on the burgeoning local fitness scene. Yoga was initially a bust, although Mosow's aerobics classes, choreographed hourlong routines incorporating music and drill-sergeant-style instructions shouted over a microphone, became a hit.

Bolstered by her TV appearances -- Mosow hosted the long-running "Figure Fitness" on Ch. 11 and was a regular guest on KSTP's daytime talk show "Good Company" -- the spry dancer gained a following. Leading multiple sessions a day, Mosow built her business by working thousands of local exercisers into a calorie-burning fervor.

"During a workout, you want to catch the energy wave she has going on," said Ellen Hancock, a 54-year-old finance worker from Hopkins. "For that 45 minutes, it's pure exhilaration."

Hancock, who started attending sessions led by Mosow after the birth of her second child, said a personal connection to her instructor is what keeps her coming back -- up to four times a week for the past 20 years straight:

"If I ever think of blowing off a class, Lonna's face registers in my head, and then I have to go."

Keeping it personal

Mosow weighs just over 100 pounds. She stands 5 feet 5 inches tall, lanky and thin, with muscles shaped from a lifetime of movement. This July marks her 34th year in business, but she has no plans to retire. "I don't even know what that means," she said.

To compare Mosow to the Energizer Bunny might be an understatement. For 25 years she got up and ran at dawn, never missing a day. Then she went to the studio to exercise and inspire, leading classes every day and putting in 80-hour workweeks for as long as she can recall.

In the 1980s, when Hot Workouts had expanded to three studios, Mosow shuffled from Edina in the morning, to downtown Minneapolis at lunch, then to a studio in Minnetonka for an evening session.

"The goal was to keep it personal," she said. "I wanted to be teaching the classes, to keep my face in the picture."

But demand for the Mosow method outstripped even her capacity. She began hiring instructors, managing a staff of 30 trainers and teachers who led classes on aerobics, stretching, strength and -- by then fully embraced -- yoga.

"I credit my lifelong health routine to Lonna," said Gwen McCourt, 51, of Scottsdale, Ariz. McCourt, who travels for her job selling electron microscopes, lived in Minnesota for 23 years. She began training with Mosow in 1984, and still makes it to three or more sessions a month. "My travel schedule revolves around coming back to Minnesota and making the classes."

Although personal connection is her forte, Mosow has a flair for theatrics. In addition to her TV work, Mosow led large-scale productions in the 1980s that included a thousands-strong aerobics class at the Metrodome and a multiweek contest at Minneapolis' First Avenue nightclub called "Survival of the Fittest."

"They were high-level aerobic workouts with the hottest, best music of all time," she said.

To add oomph to workouts at her studios, Mosow hired a stage lighting company and a computer expert to coordinate strobes, disco balls and music -- all synchronized with a workout routine she created based on dance moves and aerobic technique. It was 90 minutes long, with music pulsing, lights coursing and gym-goers in a trance.

Mosow, up front with the microphone, was the sweating, straining dancing queen of her own show.

Enter Pilates

The pace changed in the 1990s. Aerobics, the cutting-edge workout of the Reagan era, lost its hold as exercisers turned to new activities.

Mosow scaled back, going from three studios and more than 30 staffers in the mid-'80s to just one studio by 1990.

She dropped the "Hot Workouts" name and reoriented her business. Her new studio, off Shady Oak Road in Eden Prairie, would be christened Lonna Mosow's Center for Mind Body Fitness.

Pilates, an unknown practice at the time, was a new passion for Mosow. Her studio soon became a certifying center for the discipline.

Yoga continued to grow, as did spinning classes featuring stationary bikes and an instructor up front. In 2001, Mosow began teaching Gyrotonic and Gyrokinesis, yoga-influenced workout techniques that focus on flexibility and the stimulation of the spine.

But aerobics, Mosow's longtime love, never lost her attention. A core group of exercisers, almost all women, continued to attend her Basic Fitness Method class, leaping, marching, punching and striding to music like they'd done for years. "It's like that feeling you get when you're singing to yourself in the car," Hancock said.

"There's this magic blend with Lonna -- of commitment and exhilaration and artistry -- and you feel just lifted up."