Ahead of the Curves: Island Aerobics’ Owner Has Been Cutting Edge from the Start
Island Aerobics’ owner and director Nancy Crafts
Nancy Crafts introduced cutting-edge physical fitness to Seven Mile Beach when she opened her first studio here in the early 1990s. Ever since then, Island Aerobics’ owner and director has offered dynamic workouts and yoga classes to keep islanders and visitors fit.
Crafts has a gift for growing businesses that stimulate physical and mental well-being.
In addition to Island Aerobics, there also is the Nancy C. Crafts Counseling Service in Cape May Court House. Crafts, the mother of three – David Cox, Davey Crafts and Alicia Eger – worked as a Middle Township Elementary School guidance counselor until her retirement in 2001.
This energetic force behind Island Aerobics caught the exercise bug in the 1980s.
“It all began with Sue Orlando at Muscle World,” Crafts recalls. Orlando taught aerobics at the Muscle World gym in Cape May Court House. “I learned Sue’s routines and taught them to teachers and others at Middle Township Elementary School for free after school.”
Crafts also taught borough-sponsored aerobics classes at the Women’s Civic Club of Stone Harbor, classes that became quite popular. “There was nothing [in the way of organized exercise for women] at the time,” she notes. “They played tennis.”
As aerobics’ popularity grew widespread, Crafts and her sister tried step aerobics at a small studio in Palm Beach, Fla., while on a family vacation. “I sensed step aerobics would be big,” Crafts says. “It is very mental as well as physical.” During step aerobics, instructors lead participants in sets of choreographed movements as they step to music on individual, raised platforms. The platforms are usually plastic aerobic steps with nonslip surfaces.
Crafts was so inspired by her experience in Florida that she decided to introduce step aerobics to the South Jersey seashore. So along with family members, Crafts rented a small storefront space at 3003 Dune Drive and set up a step-aerobics studio there in the early 1990s. “I still remember, the rent was $6,000 a year,” Crafts muses with a look of incredulity.
That same expression appears on the businesswoman’s face as she reminisces about opening Island Aerobics at its current Avalon location in 1998. Crafts, her husband Dave Crafts and triathlete son David Cox purchased the building at
3206 Dune Drive. Dave Crafts and nephew Pete Crafts proceeded to transform it from the bank that it had been to Seven Mile’s first fitness center. Removing a bank vault required a lot of muscle, Nancy Crafts recollects. Dave and Pete Crafts, along with six others, pulled an all-nighter refurbishing the place in order to open in time for Memorial Day weekend of 1998.
Up until 2013, Island Aerobics occupied the entire building. Its studio sat on the second floor and its gym on the first. Today, Island Aerobics includes the upper-level studio with its inviting solar system and starry night décor and suspended floor and its charming outside deck. Another fitness business with a different focus, Atilis Gym, now occupies the first floor.
Island Aerobics’ new digs allowed room for an increasingly popular form of exercise, spinning, which Craft’s son David Cox and his wife Kristine discovered in California in the early 1990s. Spinning participants sit on stationary bicycles where they alternate between intense cycling as if riding uphill and less vigorous cycling as if heading downhill, to music matching the degree of peddling intensity.
“The whole concept of spinning was something new around here at the time,” Nancy Crafts notes. “We are still known for our spinning.”
During the summer season, Island Aerobics offers cardio-step, spin, rowing, weight training (body sculpt), resist-a-ball, Pilates, Yoga classes and more. All levels of exercise expertise and all ages are welcome. “Our classes are inclusive,” says Crafts.
When things quiet down in the wintertime, some spin classes are offered as well as Crafts’ free yoga class in the studio at 8:30am on Mondays.
The trim exercise expert also teaches a free fitness class for seniors, year-round, 11am Tuesdays at Stone Harbor Elementary School. “I call the class ‘Forever Young,’” Crafts says of the program that she initiated after noting the need for it. Plus, “Forever Young” is offered at 11am on Thursdays at Stone Harbor Elementary with Island Aerobics instructors Carol Matthews teaching in the wintertime and Jan Burtnett in the summertime.
“My great instructors make this place,” Crafts asserts. “They’ve been with me for so long. I am so grateful to them.” Island Aerobics instructors are innovative, creative and diligent about keeping up with their training, Crafts says. “They sure don’t do it for the money. It’s a labor of love for everybody!”
If instructors’ comments are any indication, that admiration runs both ways.
“We were busting out of that old [original storefront studio] place,” recalls Marilu Sutter, now the owner of MLS Fitness in Haverford, Pa. “For years we packed the house.”
Those packed houses at Island Aerobics did not happen by accident. Craft’s combination of talents – “Nancy’s enthusiasm,” the “excitement that Nancy brings to every class, every day,” her openness to trying new forms of exercise and techniques, “Nancy’s innate ability to decide if something would work out,” and her “infectious smile” and “quiet, gentle ways” – makes Island Aerobics a welcoming spot for fitness, Sutter says.
Not only that, Crafts innovatively sold a great selection of stylish workout wear long before large companies and online outfits moved into the market, Sutter adds.
Another longtime Island Aerobics instructor agrees. “I always think of Nancy as ‘The Little Engine That Could,’” says Burtnett. “Nancy is always evolving and growing. As a boss, Nancy challenges us to be better. Consequently, all of us have become better instructors.”
Burtnett stresses the impact that this “amazing woman” has had on the well-being of Seven Mile residents and visitors by introducing them to cutting-edge fitness back in the 1980s and 1990s when the concept of physical exercise as a way of life was new. “Nancy has come full circle,” by ensuring that senior citizens in Stone Harbor have access to free fitness classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays via her “Forever Young” workout, Burtnett says with deep respect.
In her pink top and purple yoga pants, Nancy Crafts brings color to a gray mid-August day as she sits on Island Aerobics’ lovely outside deck and ponders the past couple of decades. “This place is part of who I am. The people who come here are my friends,” she says.
“I plan on being here next summer,” Crafts adds, “the good Lord willing!”
