A 72-year-old fitness influencer isn’t letting age slow her down. Ellen Ector, an Atlanta-based mom of five and a grandmother of four, still has a body that makes jaws drop.
Her inspiring transformation started at age 40 when she saw a picture of herself that was all “butt and gut,” she told talk show host Sherri. “I just didn’t like the way I looked.”
After 20 years as a social worker, Ector quit her job in 2009 and began working out. She eventually opened a gym, Gymnetics Fitness, and launched a training system called Aging Blackwards. But her goal was not simply to turn heads. Ector has a deeper mission to break down barriers that hinder Black women from exercising regularly.
“The reason why we took this bold move was because the fitness industry had completely forgotten about African-American women,” Ector said in an interview with BlackDoctor. “You don’t see our faces on the fitness DVDs, you don’t see our faces on the magazine covers, so we wanted to come out with something for us, for real women.”
Half of all Americans do not meet the national recommendation of 150 minutes per week of moderate-to-vigorous exercise. But for African-American women, the stats are even more worrying, with just 34 percent reaching the national requirements, according to a study published in the “Journal of Racial and Ethnic Disparities.” Barriers to regular exercise range from caregiving and work responsibilities to access to affordable gyms and workout equipment, research by Arizona State University found.
Ector runs her mini-empire with her daughter Lana Ector, and the duo created workouts with these concerns in mind, keeping prices affordable for those who can’t invest in pricey gym memberships. All of the home video routines can be done with minimal or no equipment.
“Your body is a machine!” Ector enthuses. “We have no fitness models in our DVDs, just real women who want to lose weight.” The mother-daughter team also penned a healthy-eating cookbook called “Black Girls Gone Vegan.”
Ector is candid about the harrowing health events that motivated her journey to help others. First, she lost her mother to uterine cancer at age 62, and then years later, her daughter, Leah Taylor, was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer at 27 years old. Leah is currently cancer-free.
Black women have the lowest incidence rates of breast cancer yet are more likely to die than any other race or ethnicity. Uterine cancer, which can be cured if detected early, also disproportionately affects Black women, who are twice as likely to die from it than other groups.
“Being a witness to the effects of chemotherapy and radiation changed my family’s life unexpectedly, and ever since, I’ve been more committed than ever to promoting wellness and support through our events,” she wrote on her website.
Ector never stops spreading her fitness philosophy, running 5k races, appearing on talk shows — and looking fabulous while doing it. As she says on her Instagram, “Being Fit Over 50 is a VIBE that starts on the inside! This GLOW is real! Not only physically but most important mentally! Living My Fit Life To The Fullest And Aging Blackwards!”
