Tuesday 24 July 2018

There Is Hope For Me Yet,

if this gentleman is anything to go by,


 I do a few exercises 6 days out of 7, in the mornings before breakfast, but I have a long way to go before catching up with the physic of 81 year old Toshisuke Kanazawa, a former bodybuilder he retired when he was thirty,

 but took up the sport again when he was 50 years old, in the 20 years in between he had taken to smoking, drinking and eating anything he wanted, so it was going to be an uphill struggle to retrain to his former glory, to stand a chance of losing his flabby gut and becoming “Japan’s best bodybuilder” at such an advanced age, Toshisuke had to give up smoking at drinking and adopt a diet based on unpolished rice, “natto” fermented soybeans, miso soup with eggs and protein supplements, but no meat or fish because they were too difficult to digest,

His weightlifting regimen had to be adjusted to his age as well, in his youth, he would spend up to six hours training in the gym every day, and his body would recover within two days after a particularly intensive workout, but that was not the case anymore, He cut the daily gym time to three hours, and started giving his body one week to recover after exercising every muscle group,

 and it worked, in 2016, at 80-years-old. Toshisuke Kanazawa placed sixth in the world in a contest for bodybuilders over 65, and won a special gold medal as the oldest competitor, as well as the admiration of the crowd, He wants to continue bodybuilding until he is at least 85, and squarely face his physical decline, sport keeps this octogenarian healthy, as he claims to not have suffered so much as a cold since he started bodybuilding again at age 50, He has also managed to stay injury-free and says that knee or other joint pains are very rare occurrences for him, “I want to be a super old man in the bodybuilder community while squarely facing my physical decline,” Kanazawa recently told Asahi, “If I have a goal, I can continue moving forward, I have to work much harder.” so if you needed some motivation to get back in the gym, it doesn’t get much better than this, note to self, I must work out longer and harder!


No comments: