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Feeling Fit at Any Age

Trained in her native Germany as a beautician, traveling personal trainer Anja Jabs-Devins is all about keeping clients and students moving

By Linda Quinlan

 

Personal trainer Anja Jabs-Devins teaches about 15 classes a week at the Irondequoit Community Center. In addition, she runs her business, MOVEment with Anja and works with clients in their homes.
Photo by Linda Quinlan

Those who may think they’re too old or too infirm to work out haven’t met Anja Jabs-Devins.

She drives around with what she calls “a gym in my car” and dubs herself a traveling personal trainer.

She will work with anyone “in any state of life.”

Devins said, “I want people to be successful and learn. To me, it’s all about structure, good form and safety.”

She has learned that the key to helping anyone become more fit is to focus on each person.

“I’m always teaching according to who’s in front of me,” she explained. “I want people to stay active. There are still a lot of things people can do.”

Her training and classes —she teaches about 15 classes a week at the Irondequoit Community Center — are generally tailored to the aging population, but she does work with any age.

Devins, now 56, has had her own business, MOVEment with Anja, since 2020 and really wants to focus more on private clients.

“I find the older population is scared when they hear ‘personal trainer.’ They think I will yell at them or make them run around the block,” Devins said with a laugh. “But I’m really all about age and ability first.”

Dale Heffer, 77, has been taking her classes for years and even started subbing for Devins when needed. Devins calls her “my godsend.”

A former gym owner herself, Heffer said, “Anja pushes you, but not beyond your limits; she’s really observant … and remembers everyone’s name, something I could never do!”

Devins explained that she really does not want people feeling like they don’t belong or that they’re outsiders.

“I try to take that out of the equation,” she said.

She met Heffer and now close friend Savona (who goes by just the one name) at Rochester’s Maplewood YMCA, where she started taking group exercise classes not long after she moved to Rochester.

“I am a military souvenir,” Devins said with a smile. She met her husband, Aaron Devins, when he was stationed in Germany from 1984-86. They later reconnected and she and her son moved here in 2002. She spent the initial years applying for her green card and going through the process of becoming a permanent resident.

Trained as a beautician, cosmetologist and barber in Germany, Devins learned she had to go back to school — she already had a bachelor’s degree — to get a license if she wanted to continue, here, in the career she had expected to retire from.

The group exercise classes kept her busy and ended up leading her down the path she’s on now.

“I’d either do something different myself or see someone else in class struggling and it just morphed into what I do now,” Devins said.

She did enroll in a three-month aerobics instructor training, but was already asked to teach before the course was complete.

“I really do teach from the gut or the heart,” Devins said.

The group exercise eventually introduced her to yoga and she completed another training.

“To me, yoga was warm, fuzzy … maybe a little lame,” she said, but now yoga is one of her biggest draws, as is silver sneakers, a class geared to strength, cardio and stretching for senior citizens.

She molds everything she does to suit her students or clients.

“I like to read the room and pay attention to what’s going on; look at people’s facial expressions,” Devins said.

“She all about breathing, too,” said Savona, who just turned 70 on Aug. 24. “She has taught me a lot about breathing.”

That seems simple, everyone breathes, Devins explained.

“But I found people weren’t taking time for themselves … You have to do you and what you can, when you can,” she said.

Sometimes that’s simply starting with a cleansing breath.

Yoga, for instance, is about body awareness, balance, strength and agility, Devins said, adding, “Everybody can do it; it’s just finding the right level. You have to try it at least once.”

Devins teaches everything from classic yoga to chair yoga (where participants have something to hold onto).

Her classes are “one big happy family,” Savona said, adding that people keep coming back.

A resident of the Maplewood neighborhood of Rochester, Devins not only teaches large and small group classes, but also goes to people’s homes.

“The aim is to keep people independent; it’s amazing, the results I see,” she said.

She currently has clients in Irondequoit, Penfield and Brighton. She hasn’t turned her back on her roots. She has clients that not only work out with her, but also have her cut their hair.

“I was raised from 1 to 16 by my grandmother and I want to give back what I was not able to give my grandmother,” she said. “It’s all about dignity.”

She recently did a haircut for a friend’s dad before he died.

She practices what she teaches, but admits that she has to train herself and build endurance, too.

“Today, for the most part, I’m watching; I don’t want to get injured,” Devins said, but adds that teaching and training is still mentally exhausting, since she tries to build in variety and new moves.

She obviously loves what she does and now has Savona as her “go-to guy” at most classes. He also practices yoga right along with his friend’s classes, though he notes that since he has a bad knee and ankle, “I do what I can.”

“He [Savona] is almost like a brother … or like Uncle Fester [from the Addams Family TV show],” Devins said with a laugh.

There’s mutual admiration. Savona, a bachelor who also does martial arts and has a gym in his Rochester apartment, said he has become best friends not only with Anja, but also her husband, son and cats.

While he’s been a vegan for 48 years, Devins (she is not a vegan) even cooks Sunday dinner for him every week, Savona said and taught him how to cook.

Devins likes Rochester, too. She hadn’t been back to Germany in 13 years, but three years ago, started traveling back once a year to see her parents, who had been visiting her in the U.S. once a year.

“It’s nice there and the food is great,” Devins said, but Rochester is her home.

She wants to keep growing her business.

“My focus is really about learning to listen to your body and what you can do,” Devins said. “It’s all about the person on the mat.”