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Well Being: The first step toward modern fitness?

When did the modern fitness movement begin? With Teddy Roosevelt? Charles Atlas? Jack LaLanne? Dwight D. Eisenhower? John F. Kennedy? Frank Shorter? Bill Rodgers? Arthur Jones? Jane Fonda?

When did the modern fitness movement begin?

With Teddy Roosevelt? Charles Atlas? Jack LaLanne? Dwight D. Eisenhower? John F. Kennedy? Frank Shorter? Bill Rodgers? Arthur Jones? Jane Fonda?

Hard to say, exactly. Much depends on your definition of modern.

Here's another name worth considering that you probably don't recognize - Will Wilkinson. The Aston, Delaware County, inventor has been called "the father of step aerobics," which launched a craze and, by his lights, sparked the fitness revolution, 25 years ago this year.

That claim may be arguable, but Wilkinson, who holds dozens of patents for fitness equipment, made a major contribution when he came up with the idea of a portable, adjustable step for exercise.

The story begins in the late '60s and early '70s when Wilkinson was training for the Olympics with the Philadelphia Pioneers track team.

Genes were on his side. His father, Bud Wilkinson, of Riverside, N.J., was a superb all-around athlete who earned the sobriquet "the white Jim Thorpe."

Endowed with a phenomenal physique, he competed against and was admired by Jesse Owens and scored the first touchdown in the first Orange Bowl game, helping Bucknell win the national collegiate football championship. His dream of winning gold in the 1936 Olympics was derailed, however, by the need to support his family during the Depression.

Part of his son's motivation, as he trained at Penn, was to realize his father's ambition. It kept Will Wilkinson motivated as the Wharton MBA student sprinted up the wooden benches at Franklin Field, wearing a 35-pound vest.

In spring 1975, during a landscape project at the family farm, Will Wilkinson was struck in the back by a railroad tie that slipped from a chain hoist. The impact ruptured a disk, but Wilkinson was so determined to compete in the 1976 Olympics against decathlon ace Bruce Jenner that he continued to train.

The injury grew worse, and by the following fall, Wilkinson was in incapacitating pain. He underwent surgery - the first of seven operations - and to hasten recuperation, he used the metal step on his hospital bed as well as the hospital stairwell.

"I realized that stepping is tremendous exercise," Wilkinson says, "but not everyone has a stairwell. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone had a step to exercise on?"

In his father's workshop, Wilkinson and his dad constructed an adjustable prototype. He dubbed it the SuperStep. In the early '80s, he perfected the design, and in 1985, at a sporting goods convention in Chicago, he showed his step to Reebok founder Paul Fireman, along with a copyrighted program of aerobic exercises. Fireman was not interested; Reebok would rather concentrate on shoes, he said.

Four years later, in 1989, Wilkinson returned to the show, where his adjustable step caught the attention of Gin Miller, an enthusiastic aerobics instructor, performer, and popularizer. She connected Wilkinson with a company in Atlanta, and to make a long story short, the collaboration led to the formation of the Step Company, and the manufacture of consumer-oriented adjustable steps.

A year later, in 1990, Reebok partnered with the company to create Step Reebok, making Wilkinson a founder of the new venture.

In the early '90s, Wilkinson gave Jane Fonda step equipment, he says, so she could make her first step video. The "magic sauce" was marrying music to the workout, and Fonda, more than anyone, popularized the craze, selling millions of units and filling her own purse to bursting. Cher and Madonna soon muscled in on the act.

One reason step aerobics was and remains so popular is that it provides a superior workout. Wilkinson calls it "the greatest exercise you can do."

"Athletes know there is no better way to train than to run up hills and stadium steps."

For the ordinary person, step aerobics is low-impact; involves large muscles such as the quads and glutes; utilizes the strength-building resistance of gravity; makes the heart pump vigorously, thereby offering a dandy cardiovascular benefit; requires simple equipment (or no equipment at all); and if one holds and lifts dumbbells simultaneously, offers total-body exercise.

Despite holding more than 100 worldwide patents on exercise equipment, Wilkinson, 69, is decidedly low-tech. He stays in shape by walking, swimming, climbing stairs, and, occasionally, still running the steps at Franklin Field. He wanted this story told, he says, to set the record straight about the origins of step aerobics.

"To me, this is a Philadelphia story of perseverance and how a shattered Olympic dream rose from the ashes 25 years ago, giving people everywhere a great way to exercise. Knowing that when I'm gone, people all over the world will go on making their lives better every day 'one step at a time' with the adjustable steps my father and I first built is worth more than all the gold and glory that might have been."