'I'm 92 And Feel 50. Here's The Workout Routine I Swear By, And How To Get Started In Your 60s.'
Imagine being 92 and driving yourself to the gym four days a week, doing deep squats and climbing the stairs with ease. That’s exactly how life looks for Edna Giordano, a mum of five, grandmother of 21 and great-grandmother of four.
‘I don’t even think about being 91,’ she told Good Morning America last year. ‘I feel the same as I felt when I was fifty. I’ve always had a busy lifestyle because, let’s face it, with that many children, you have to be busy. So, I never really thought about it, that’s just the way I live. My body feels better when I’m moving.’
Even more inspiringly, Giordano only started going to the gym at 65, when she was forced to retire from her job at a local hospital due to her age. Fast-forward 27 years, and Giordano is still going to the gym every other day, with her daughter Dalyce Radtke regularly sharing videos from their training sessions on Instagram and TikTok.
In a Q&A with Radtke on TikTok, Giordano said: ‘My body tells me I’m not happy when I’m just sitting down. I spend a lot of time painting, working in the garden or taking my dog for a walk. If I sit down to watch the TV even for 10 minutes, I jump up to do something around the house and feel better.
'Going to the gym on a regular basis in the morning really helps me mentally. I obviously don’t want to go, but after I’ve done it, I feel so much better. When I come home, my mind is more active and my day goes on from there. I sleep really well, I don’t have any problems and my posture is really good for my age – I love dead hanging from a bar for that, it really stretches you out.’
She says staying active is the reason she doesn’t struggle with aches and pains. ‘I’m not in pain anywhere,’ she says. ‘My knees hurt when I do certain things but not enough that it prevents me from exercising. I have arthritis in my thumbs that makes it harder for me to open bottles and cans, but nothing stops me from being active.
‘I never took hormone replacement therapy, either. Nowadays, every time you go online, you see supplements and things to help you age better, but we never had those opportunities. Exercise is the one thing that helped me stay healthy. I just got my passport renewed for another ten years, because I plan on being here. You could live to 110. It makes me sad when people feel they have an expiry date. I feel the same as I did 30 years ago.’
Giordano's exercise routine
A weekly breakdown:
4 x 1-hour gym workouts, including a cardio warm-up on a treadmill and dynamic mobility exercises to prepare the muscles she's about to train, a main strength training workout, and static stretching to finish
NEAT exercise: daily gardening, daily walks (including dog walks), always taking the stairs
1.Strength training
Strength training is the main focus of Giordona's routine, with her doing four hour-long workouts at the gym per week, using workout splits to target different areas of her body - she'll do upper-body on one day, and lower-body on the next. Radtke has shared several clips of her mother doing squats, lunges, shoulder presses, bicep curls and lateral raises, plus one of her doing an ab series, including leg raises on a bench, side plank dips, bird dog and twists.
At the time of posting, Radtke wrote: ‘Here’s my inspiring 91-year-old mum tackling ab workout! We live apart, in different cities, in actually different countries – she’s in Canada. Whenever she’s with me, I enjoy pushing her limits with new exercises. It’s astonishing to witness her physical abilities. She manages, somewhat effortlessly, everything from reverse crunches to hip lifts and side planks. This clearly demonstrates that age is merely a number. Who would have guessed a 91-year-old could maintain such flexibility and strength.’
Back in 2023, her daughter shared another clip of her strength training routine on TikTok, writing: ‘My 91-year-old mum took me to her gym today. This is a glimpse of the hour-long routine she does three times a week.’
In the clip, Giordano starts with cardio on a cross-trainer and treadmill, then strength trains using an overhead press machine, the assisted pull-up machine, and dumbbell tricep extensions. She finishes with stretching including a frog stretch and child’s pose.
Studies show that age-related loss of muscle mass accelerates when you reach your seventh decade; the risk of falling and injuring yourself may increase, too (around one in three adults over 65 fall at least once a year, according to the NHS).
But there’s now strong evidence to show that strength training can offset these effects as the older you are, the more adaptable your neural motor units – the cells in your brain and spinal cord that send commands from your brain to your muscles – will be to the stimulus of strength training; as they become more efficient, you’ll be more able to tolerate submaximal loads (they’re heavy, but don’t require all-out effort) for a longer time.
Dr Sims, a female physiologist, recommends hypertrophy training – with sets of 10 to 12 reps. ‘If you’ve been training accordingly, you’ll have developed significant strength in your fifties, so now it’s time to build up your lean muscle mass,’ says Dr Sims. As for the weight you should be lifting, Radtke says Giordano sticks to 'light weights', so choose something that feels comfortable, but not easy.
2. Walking
Walking is the second focus of Giordano’s workout routine, with her sharing that, as well as walking as much as possible in daily life, she warms up for every strength training workout at the gym with a walk on a treadmill, to maintain her cardiovascular fitness. Her daughter also shared a clip of Giordano completing a power walk in their local park, then performing leg swings, deep squats, shuttle runs and a short jog, before a strength training session of step-ups, push-ups, mountain climbers, tricep dips and hanging ab crunches.
Radtke wrote in the caption: ‘My mum’s routine is a testament to the exercises we should all embrace for a life of independence and vitality.’
There are endless benefits to walking for ageing: studies show it decreases the risk or severity of various health outcomes such as cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes mellitus, cognitive impairment and dementia, while also improving mental well-being, sleep, and longevity.
3. Mobility and flexibility training
The third key element of Giordano’s routine is stretching for mobility and flexibility (two different things, FYI - mobility is your body's ability to move through its full range of motion, while flexibility is the ability to stretch). Her daughter shared a video of Giordano’s full mobility routine, including a supine hamstring stretch, figure four glute stretch, modified pigeon stretch, supine lower back stretch, bridge walks, roll-ups, butterfly groin stretch, and sit-to-stands.
She starts every strength training workout with dynamic mobility exercises to prime the muscles she's about to work (like leg swings and deep squats before a lower-body strength session, as seen in the video of Giordano's park workout above), and finishes with static stretches targeting the same muscles. Studies show that static stretches are more beneficial when performed in a cooldown (as opposed to a warmup) as they can benefit muscle recovery by reducing stiffness and decreasing DOMS, while other research shows that static stretching after a workout downregulates your nervous system and activates the parasympathetic response, making you feel calmer after training.
In the caption, Radtke writes: ‘My mum’s incredibly youthful mobility didn’t happen overnight. It’s a testament to consistency, beginning with small steps – perhaps just a bit more each day. No frills, no fancy gym, no special equipment.’
4. NEAT exercise
Speaking on Good Morning America, Radtke added that NEAT exercise (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis – the type of movement you don’t realise you’re doing every day) is also important for Giordano. She says she always takes the stairs, stays active throughout the day, and looks for opportunities to bolster her mobility. For example, Giordano is responsible for gardening at her apartment building and spends a few hours doing this every week.
Radke says: ‘That’s my message, that you don’t need to be in a gym to be fit. You don’t have to do all the extreme workouts. Just stick with the basics.’
In fact, the time you spend intentionally exercising each day (for example, in the gym) only has around a 10% impact on your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) whereas NEAT can make up to 50% of it, and studies have linked higher NEAT levels to a reduced risk of cardiovascular diseases like heart disease and stroke, as it helps maintain healthy blood pressure - something which increases with age as your arteries get stiffer.
Giordano's diet and nutrition
On the diet front, Giordano says: ‘I do most of my own cooking which is like chicken and vegetables and salads and things like that. I also take supplements: iron, a multivitamin, and AG1 which I take every morning. I also know that I really need the protein, so I try and focus on that – fish is my primary source of protein.
‘I’m not really a foodie, I don’t have a great appetite, but I know that food is medicine. I’ve had no major illnesses, other than Covid a couple of times but I recovered from that easily enough. That said, I do have guilty pleasures; I love Cinnabon’s ice cream, and chocolate. But I balance this out with healthy foods.’
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