These 10 Women in Their 60s and 70s Defied Every Aging Stereotype—And Their Secret Weapon Will Shock You!
JUTHARAT PINYODOONYACHETMost of the regulars (like Horstmann Hodes, pictured) in Barbell Club are women 60 and older.
Fighting Fragility
TWO YEARS AGO, Joni Day, 61, went in for a DEXA scan—a bone density test that can diagnose osteoporosis. (It runs in her family.) She didn’t think much of it. “I was a runner, did a lot of walking, yoga, and had just been introduced to kettlebells, so I wasn’t worried about osteoporosis,” she says. Then her results revealed she had it.
Her doctor suggested a five-year medication plan. But her friend and fitness instructor Kathryn Londoff had another idea: barbells. Londoff now runs a Barbell Club class at Integrity Movement Lab in New Hampshire. Twice a week, they squat, deadlift, bench, and press. “We’re building strength for our old-lady bodies,” Londoff says.
At first, Day wasn’t sure, but she was open to it, despite barely being able to lift a five-pound weight overhead. “I thought, If I do this work, maybe I don’t need medication.” Three weeks into Barbell Club, she was hooked. A year later, she lifts four or five times a week, her personal record on the deadlift is 185 pounds, and she has no signs of osteoporosis.
“Strength training makes me feel like I don’t have to just get old and lose my balance, or live in fear.”
For decades, women like Day were taught that fitness was about staying small through cardio and light weights. Women with osteoporosis were also long advised to stick to gentle exercise (walking or water aerobics, maybe). But strength? Not the target. Ann Nassoura, 65, another member of Londoff’s group who was also diagnosed with osteoporosis, says her daughter used to call her “the F word”—fragile. It was a driving force for her journey: “That’s not what I want to be.”
Despite practicing yoga for 40 years, Peggo Horstmann Hodes, 70, a member of Londoff’s crew, had noticed strength losses around 50 and recently suffered from stress-related back spasms that would render her immobile for days, leaving her muscles weak. After two years of strength training with the club, she’s lifting more weight than ever. “Strength training makes me feel like I don’t have to just get old and lose my balance, or live in fear.”
JUTHARAT PINYODOONYACHETAnn Nassoura (left) and Peggo Horstmann Hodes share a mid-workout smile.
Post Comment