Forget the stereotype of the frail old woman who needs help carrying groceries – fitness mavens like Joan MacDonald show you can strength train at any age
Madeleine Aggeler in The Guardian (thanks to Kate B.)
Joan MacDonald is an influencer. There’s no other word for it, though she winces a little when she says it. But she is an influencer, and an extremely successful one. The fitness maven has been on the covers of magazines such as Women’s Health, modeled as part of lucrative brand deals and launched her own fitness app, Train With Joan. On Instagram, where she has more than 2 million followers, she shares pictures of herself posing in bikinis in picturesque locales and training at the gym in color-coordinated workout sets.
But there’s one small difference between MacDonald and many other social media starlets. She is 79.
“I was 70 when I started [working out],” MacDonald says on a video call from her home in Ontario, white hair elegantly coiffed. “I keep thinking I’m in my 30s.”
MacDonald’s workouts are intense, whether you’re 30 or 70. She does deadlifts, weighted planks and kettlebell swings, and casually lifts dumbbells the size of fire extinguishers over her head. Her arm muscles could put professional rugby players to shame.
She is arguably the most famous older woman lifting heavy, but she’s far from the only one. There’s Ernestine Shepherd, 89, who has more than 101,000 Instagram followers and calls herself “the world’s oldest living female competitive bodybuilder”. Nora Langdon, in her 80s, recently shared a video of herself deadlifting 225 pounds. And earlier this year, the New Yorker published a documentary about Catherine Kuehn, who broke multiple world records for deadlifting in her 90s.
Many of these lifters seem to delight in bucking the stereotype of the frail old woman who needs help carrying her groceries.
“Once you reach a certain age, it’s like you can’t do anything any more,” MacDonald says. “Trainers and coaches dumb down everything for older people, but old people are capable of more than they think.” (continued on Page 2 or here)