On the first day of my eight-week weight-training programme at London's Roar gym I can feel my inner 17-year-old tugging at my sleeve and whispering, ‘You don't belong here.
Let's bunk off for a fag.'
But I do belong here. I'm here to work, without being too dramatic, as if my life depended on it. At 53, I've started to consider seriously what the ageing process might entail. There is unequivocal scientific evidence showing that strength/resistance/weight training, call it what you will, protects us as we get older.
England's chief medical officer recommends that we exercise using our major muscle groups at least twice a week. This protects us not just from having to buy new jeans but also from stroke, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and some types of cancer.
It's linked to better mental health, delay in the onset of dementia, improved quality of life and wellbeing. It also reduces the risk of falls.
The American College of Sports Medicine advises weight training for all people over 50.
Yet we don't seem to have registered how crucial it is. In 2019, a report by the UK's chief medical officers said, ‘Recommendations made in 2011 on muscle strength have not achieved the recognition we believe they merit. We underline the importance of regular strength and balance activities.'
If you're reading this thinking you're too old, stop.
A study reported in the journal Science Daily, of 26 people aged from 91 to 96, found strength training produced ‘significant increases in the physical capacity of frail elderly people… raised their functional capacity, lowered the risk of falls and improved muscle power'.
Ernestine Shepherd is the world's oldest female bodybuilder and only began lifting weights at 56. Now 86, she's still going strong, teaching aerobics and looking astonishing. So the question isn't, is it too late, but rather, what the hell's stopping you?
The American College of Sports Medicine advises weight training for over 50s.
However, Kate Spicer reveals that many of us don't understand the benefit
At Roar, I meet its founder, former Olympic speed skater Sarah Lindsay, 42. She's beautiful, energetic and sparkling with confidence.
‘I've got a bit of a bad back,' I say, to which she brightly tells me that most people have some kind of bad back.
By now we are in the gym and she is showing me an exercise involving a large metal beast loaded up with weights that is pushed along the floor like a sledge. She glides down its track saying, ‘I've got bulging discs. Weights make the rest of the body strong enough to support it.'
With a swish of her ponytail, she reduces the weight by 50kg for me to give it a go.
Easy! Oof, no it's not! It's like pushing a brick wall. She adjusts my position and removes even more weight. Whoopee, off we go, albeit at a quarter of a mile an hour. Olive Oyl has arrived.
A rounded training programme will work all the major muscles in the abdominals, arms, shoulders, https://hotunik.com/ back, chest and legs.
Given my bad back, a period with a trainer feels sensible so when Lindsay goes to Dubai to open more gyms, I see her colleague Alex Smith.