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Robert Robillard, 68, and Earl Brown, 69, discuss their physical fitness.

Geffen instructs Robillard on proper form.

46

FRIDAY, AUGUST 10, 1990

rad Geffen's appear-
ance leaves little doubt
the 41-year-old has been
physically fit a long time.
Watch him work out and that
little doubt disappears.
But there's more to Brad
Geffen than just appearance.
For starters, he sold a
lucrative electronics business
to return to college full-time to
earn his undergraduate
degree.
And now, as a staff member
of Oakland University's
Meadow Brook Health
Enhancement Institute — a
combination health-club,
research center and training
ground for work in all aspects
of physical health — he's
created an intensive program
of weight training for older
adults as he goes after his
master's degree in exercise
physiology for that age group.
He even donated his own
free-weights equipment to
help make it happen.
The people he works with in
the Institute's 60-Plus age
group on Mondays,
Wednesdays and Fridays in-
clude healthy senior adults as
well as those who have had
heart attacks, open-heart
surgery or cardiac warning
signs. Under proper medical
screening and supervision,
he's brought them into a
revamped 60-Plus program
that includes vigorous free-
weight training where, before,
there was only light aerobics,
stretching and only mild exer-
cise on the Institute's high-
tech weight-training
machines.
"In the old days," Geffen
notes, "a heart attack patient
went to bed for six weeks.

MIKE ROSENBAUM

Special to The Jewish News

Now, I've got some cardiac pa-
tients who do better in their
exercise programs than some
of our staff members.
"They often surpass their
trainers, which gives them a
feeling of accomplishment
similar to those of other,
healthier older people." -
The story starts with Gef-
fen, who had his own family
experiences with heart
attacks.
Two months after he left col-
lege in 1970 to start Elec-
tronics, Etc., a custom elec-
tronics installation company,
his father Al died of a heart
attack.
For Brad Geffen, it was a
shock that would reverberate
until he finally left his
business.
"I was not a happy person,"
he realized later. "I was in-
credibly stressed out. And I
looked around and I said, 'I'm
taking such good care of
myself nutritionally, and such
good care of myself in a
physical sense,' but emotional-
ly I was killing myself with
that business.
"My dad had his first heart
attack at 40. He died after his
third at 47. And I said to
myself, life is too short, this
just isn't worth it.
"I was making some good
money and I had a real nice
lifestyle, but I wasn't happy.
Emotionally, I was not where
I should've been."
The pressures of dealing
with employees, customers,
vendors and bankers only
grew worse, he says. During

the final five years as business
owner, Geffen knew he wanted
out, but "I couldn't bring
myself to do it. I was too en-
trenched in a certain lifestyle.
But it finally got bad enough
where I was desperate enough
that something had to hap-
pen."
That "something" became
returning to school full-time.
He soon realized it meant giv-
ing up the business.
In 1988, he sold what was
then called The Geffen Group.
It wasn't easy, he says. "But I
have no regrets. This is the
best decision I ever made!'
In his first month at
Oakland University he met
Cindy, whom he married this
year. Geffen has two children,
Adam, 14, and Jenny, 11, from
his first marriage.
Geffen wasted no time
before starting to shake things
up at the Health Institute.
Geffen preferred free weights
(barbells and dumbbells) but
had to prove himself first.
"It (free weights) was a
dimension that they just
hadn't explored," he says.
"They now understand that,
with free weights, you can
work all three planes of mo-
tion instead of one!' For exam-
ple, a weight machine may of-
fer resistance only when you
push it in one direction, but
when you lift a free weight,
you get resistance whether
you push it up, move it
sideways or pull it down.
"With the proper spotting —
which you have to have to
show people the right way to
do an exercise so they don't in-
jure themselves — you can ac-
tually do things the machines