Pat Bernet of West Windsor has a long work day. She commutes to New York for her job as vice president for human resources at Foot Locker Inc., and her average day, including her commute, clocks in at 13 to 14 hours. But several times a week, Bernet, 60, doesn’t drive directly from Princeton Junction train station to park herself on her couch. She keeps driving down Princeton-Hightstown Road to the Windsor Center, where she takes a Jazzercise class with Mary Jane Brady.
“Jazzercise and Mary Jane have provided me the opportunity to relax, work hard, and improve my physical well-being all at the same time,” says Bernet, whose husband, George, works part-time at Monmouth Park. “The varied schedule that Mary Jane offers accommodates my hectic schedule and allows me to participate numerous times each week. I am 60 years old and wouldn’t think of not having Jazzercise and Mary Jane as part of my life. I’ve been taking class with her for 10 years.”
Sue Thornton of West Windsor also has a long commute as a director at Technical Engineering Service Corporation of Toms River. Like Bernet, she has also taken class with Brady for 10 years. “The cardiovascular benefits of aerobic dancing help me manage my high blood pressure. I feel great, walk with a faster pace, breathe easier, and sleep very well. Another bonus is that I’ve actually lost weight, and that makes me watch more closely what I eat.
“Jazzercise is a fun environment where I love to dance to the latest songs,” says Thornton, whose husband, Chris, is a tax accountant with his own business. “Mary Jane is so warm and caring that she makes each of us feel so special.”
Who sticks with an exercise program for 10 years — or more? Plenty of people, apparently. Since 1981 Brady’s adoring students have fallen under her spell — saying she’s part cheerleader, part therapist, part stand-up comic, part life coach, part BFF. Taking a class with her is like talking to a girlfriend on the phone. She announces births and engagements. She makes everything fun — or funny. In a routine with a stomp, she says, “Stomp on your boss, stomp on your bad day.” In an ab routine on the floor, she says, “Don’t you feel like you’re at the gynecologist?”
This month Brady celebrates her 30th year teaching Jazzercise — and a brand new studio in Windsor Center in East Windsor — with a week of free classes starting Saturday, June 11, and an all-out bash for current students on Friday, June 17. With a team of instructors Brady offers 20 classes a month at the new center and averages 325 students a month — with more than 50 percent coming from West Windsor or Plainsboro.
Jazzecise is the phenomenally successful exercise program founded in 1972 by Judi Sheppard Missett, blending the fun of jazz dance and the physical benefits of aerobics. Today Jazzercise has 7,800 instructors in 32 countries; there are 32,000 classes weekly. Missett, now 65, still choreographs all the routines, but has passed the baton of the company presidency to her daughter, Shanna.
The music is a healthy mix of top 40s, oldies, jazz, and even country. A careful sequence of routines effect the correct “workout intensity curve” of the heart rate during each 60-minute class, which includes warm-up, light or heavy cardio, toning for the quads, gluts, abs, and arms, stretching, and cool down.
Today it is a fusion of a dance-based cardio segment, Pilates, yoga, and other influences including resistance training, kickboxing, ballet, and body sculpting — all in one hour. “We use music from Lady Gaga to Michael Buble to Springsteen. Students hear top of the charts and old classics, that makes it fun,” says Brady. “The iPod was our saving grace.” In the old days, instructors had six seconds in between to change those little 45 rpm records, then cassettes, then CDs, which had to be purchased through Jazzercise. “Now we just drag and drop from iTunes, making a playlist for each class,” says Brady.
Brady, who just turned 60, doesn’t look a day over 35, and her body will make you nominate her for “Dancing with the Stars.” Born in Brooklyn, she grew up in the Bronx and Staten Island, under the thumb of a strict Italian father, a photographer and camera man.
After pursuing a secretarial major in college for two years, in 1971 Brady married her Catholic high school sweetheart, Jim Brady (who recently retired as the custodian of records for the Board of Social Services, Mercer County). Three months later she was pregnant with the first of three daughters. She got hooked on Jazzercise at the Nottingham Firehouse and became certified soon after. The Bradys just celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary.
Since the beginning it has been Brady’s dream to find a Jazzercise studio to call her very own.” Now, 30 years later, Brady’s search is over. In December she moved into the Windsor Center. The economic downturn and the glut of available commercial real estate has actually served Brady well. For 29 years she offered her classes through the recreation and community education departments of Plainsboro, West Windsor, and East Windsor, holding class in the gyms of various schools. When East Windsor’s community ed program closed last spring, and West Windsor revamped its community ed program this past fall in ways that made Brady realize she wouldn’t be able to retain the control and low prices she and her students were used to, she knew she had to find her own space, and fast. (She still offers three classes a week at Plainsboro Municipal Building.)
But finding a space large enough and affordable enough seemed a Herculean task. “I had all those students depending on me. How do you have customers and no store? People would say to me all the time, `If you can’t find a space, do you know how many lives it’s going to impact?’ For years my class managers and I have bought a lottery ticket every weekend – so that if we win I can get a center; that’s how much of a dream it was, like winning the lottery.”
Brady says a little bit of divine intervention saved the day. “I am a true believer in the power of prayer. I prayed for an answer to where I would go with my students. I woke up one day in November with the Windsor Center facility name in my head, drove to get the phone number from the sign in front of the building — which I had looked at a couple of years ago, and it was not affordable — and called and found out the building was being purchased by a new owner in two weeks. The new owner had space, understood my urgency to lease space, and worked to get me into the building as quickly as possible. We moved in in December. This is still unbelievable to me because I spoke to so many realtors and got nowhere. The timing with the Windsor Center being purchased by a new owner who would talk to me was truly a miracle.”
But the miracle of course isn’t the building; it’s the impact Brady has on her students, and the sense of community her classes creates. Recently checking her student database, Brady reports that 60 percent of her students work fulltime, 23 percent have been attending 10 or more years, 48 percent five or more years, and 13 students have been with her 25 years or more.
Annette Devine of West Windsor is one of those long-time devotees. “I met Mary Jane almost 30 years ago. A neighbor of mine introduced Jazzercise to me. I introduced it to a few of my friends and my sister. It became a girls’ getaway from our small children. Way back then we wore tights, leotards, and nothing on our feet. It kept me going and gave me time for myself while raising my three children. Jazzercise has changed with the times. We no longer wear those leotards, tights. Now we wear work out clothing and sneakers. We bring our mats, water bottles, and weights.
“Mary Jane is the icing on the cake. She is not only an excellent instructor, but I’d say the best. She will give you a good work out, put a smile on your face, and answer any questions you may have. On top of all that she is caring person. Everyone who enters her life is important to her.”
Adds Devine: “It has done so much for my mind and body. I receive compliments from people asking what I am I doing (for exercise). I have since introduced it to my daughter, daughter-in-law, and a friend. My husband is amazed how we all stop what we are doing and run over to class. It is so invigorating in so many ways. All of the instructors are also wonderful. Of course they have to be; they were taught by Mary Jane.”
Kathleen Shambe, a Plainsboro resident and senior manager of general accounting for the New Jersey School Boards Association in Trenton, has been taking Jazzercise with Brady for 24 years. “I know this because I have been married that long. At first I loved Jazzercise because it was ‘dancey.’ If you are like me and only get to dance at the occasional wedding, it is just not enough. The routines are changed frequently so no one ever gets bored. There is no pressure to be perfect. Some days you just don’t have the energy to work hard but you still go and move and feel better afterward.
“Now about Mary Jane. I don’t know a person who does not love her. Those of us who have been in her class for a long time, and there are many, have shared class in every school gym, church hall, firehouse, synagogue, and even dance hall in the area. We have followed her and followed her. And now we have followed her to her own center.”
Shambe and a close group of friends, ranging in age from 43 to 81, from Brady’s Saturday morning class go out for coffee afterwards and catch up on each others’ lives. “That quick cup can turn into 90 minutes of discussion about the state, education, children, husbands, you name it. These are some of my closest friends, and I have Jazzercise to thank for them.” Recently, Lorraine Lemmons, who Shambe and her friends affectionately called their “soul sister,” succumbed to her battle with cancer. “Three white chicks in class helped her through her journey and were with her at the end,” says Shambe. “I don’t think you get that in a health club.”
Brady has also had plenty of students who have stopped for periods of time due to family commitments, job loss, divorce, you name it; in other words, life happens. “I have people who used to come to me five and ten years ago, and they’ve come back to me and remember how good they felt. Life gets in the way. What do women do? We put ourselves last. Some have gone to the gym, thinking they would like having all those classes. But then they come back and say, ‘Jazzercise was always fun, it was always worth what I had to do to get there.’”
Though Brady admits her husband would like to travel, she is far from ready. “I can’t let go of this yet. I can’t imagine my life without it. I live by this rule: be fair and honest with everybody and never give up on your dream. Then you can go through every day with a clear head. I let people know, it’s all good.”
Jazzercise Grand Opening Week, 104 Windsor Center Drive, East Windsor. Free classes the week of Saturday, June 11, through Friday, June 17; for schedule visit .www.jazzplainsboro-windsors.com. Mary Jane Brady’s 30th anniversary party celebration classes, for currently enrolled students, take place on Friday, June 17, at 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. Note: Jazzercise classes are also offered at the Plainsboro Municipal Building, 41 Plainsboro Road, Plainsboro. 609-890-3252.
