Susan started training with me in January 2017. She started out at 29% fat and as she had a long history of training she had reasonable upper body muscle mass for her age (53). However, she'd never trained for hypertrophy - or taken any interest in appearance; her motivation had always been performance. Now that she was post menopause she was starting to think ahead and wanted to fend of age related muscle atrophy. She always maintained that she didn't care what she looked like, but I did!! I knew it was particularly important to look fit and athletic as you age; it's a positive feedback loop that actually helps you to believe in yourself and perform better. I got to work with a program to meet all the performance related goals that she'd specified, but also to achieve the aesthetic goals that I knew she'd love. I also persuaded her to cut fat levels a little lower than she'd ever tried before.
She did her first photo shoot on her 54th birthday; I was right - she loved how she looked and now she's continuing to train for aesthetics and performance with regular photo shoots as training goals/motivation.
The following pictures are from her first shoot. Fat levels are still a little higher than we'd have liked - the shoot was an impulse decision and we didn't really have as much time as I'd have liked for preparation.
Susan is continuing to improve her physique using the methods I taught her and I'm confident she'll continue to look and perform better with each passing year.
Regardless of age or gender - you WILL continue to build mass at any age if you work at it. From working with Susan I have my suspicions that it might actually be EASIER when you're post menopause. Certainly there is evidence/research to suggest that this could be the case.
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