Picture yourself at 92 years old, driving yourself to the gym four times a week and doing deep squats and climbing stairs with no problems. Edna Giordano is a mother of five and has 21 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. This is her life.
Last year, she told Good Morning America that she doesn’t think about being 91. She feels the same way she did when she was fifty. She has always led a busy life because she had to stay active with so many kids. She never really thought about it because that’s just how she lives. She feels better when she keeps moving.
Giordano only started going to the gym when she was 65, after she had to quit her job at the hospital because she was too old. This makes her story even more impressive. She still goes to the gym every other day, 27 years later. Her daughter Dalyce Radtke posts videos of their training sessions on Instagram and TikTok all the time.
Giordano told Radtke on TikTok that her body tells her it’s unhappy when she just sits down. She spends a lot of time painting, gardening, or walking her dog. She gets up to do something around the house after watching TV for even 10 minutes, and that makes her feel better.Going to the gym every morning is good for her mind. She doesn’t want to go, but she feels better when she does. Her mind is more active when she gets home, and her day goes on from there. She sleeps well and doesn’t have any problems. Her posture is very good for someone her age. She likes to hang from a bar because it makes her body longer. She thinks that staying active is what keeps her from having aches and pains.
She says she doesn’t hurt anywhere. She has knee pain when she does some things, but it’s not bad enough to keep her from working out. She has arthritis in her thumbs that makes it harder to open bottles and cans, but she can still be active.
She also never took hormone replacement therapy. These days, you can find supplements and products that promise to help you age better every time you go online. Back then, these options weren’t available. The only thing that kept her healthy was exercise. She just renewed her passport for ten more years because she plans to stay here. You might live to be 110 years old. People who think they have an expiration date make her sad. She feels the same way she did 30 years ago.
The Daily Fitness Routines That Make Giordano Feel Decades Younger
Giordona’s main focus is strength training, and she goes to the gym four times a week for an hour. She does upper-body exercises one day and lower-body exercises the next day to work different parts of her body. Radtke has put up a lot of videos of her mother doing shoulder presses, bicep curls, and lateral raises, as well as squats and lunges. In one video, she does an ab workout that includes leg raises on a bench, side plank dips, bird dog exercises, and twists.
Radtke wrote that her 91-year-old mother was doing an ab workout when she posted the video. She said that they live in different cities and countries because her mother lives in Canada. She said that she likes to give her new exercises to do when they are together. Radtke said that her mother’s physical abilities are amazing because she can do everything from reverse crunches to hip lifts and side planks with relative ease. She said that this shows that age is just a number and asked who would expect a 91-year-old to be so strong and flexible.
Her daughter put up another video of her strength training on TikTok in 2023. She said that her 91-year-old mother took her to the gym and showed her a short version of the hour-long workout she does three times a week.
The video shows Giordano doing cardio on a cross-trainer and treadmill first, then moving on to strength training with an overhead press machine, an assisted pull-up machine, and dumbbell tricep extensions. She finishes with some stretching, which includes the frog stretch and child’s pose.
Studies show that people lose muscle mass faster when they turn seventy. According to the NHS, one in three adults over 65 falls at least once a year, which may also make them more likely to fall and hurt themselves.
Smart strength training that keeps muscles safe after age 60
Studies show that people lose muscle mass faster when they are in their seventies. The NHS says that about one in three adults over 60 falls at least once a year, which could also make them more likely to fall and get hurt.
But there is now a lot of proof that strength training can help with these problems. The older you get, the more your neural motor units can handle strength training. These cells in your brain and spinal cord send messages from your brain to your muscles. You will be able to handle submaximal loads for longer periods of time as they get better at it. These loads are heavy, but you don’t have to work as hard as you can to lift them.
Dr. Sims, a female physiologist, says that hypertrophy training should be done in sets of 10 to 12 reps. She says that if you’ve been working out correctly, you’ve gotten a lot stronger in your fifties, so now is the time to add more lean muscle mass. Radtke says that Giordano lifts light weights when it comes to how much weight you should lift. Pick something that feels good but not too easy.
Why Walking Became His Best Tool for Living Longer
Giordano’s workout plan includes walking as the second most important thing. She walks as much as she can in her daily life, and before every strength training workout at the gym, she walks on the treadmill to keep her heart healthy. Her daughter also posted a video of Giordano doing a power walk in their neighborhood park, followed by leg swings, deep squats, shuttle runs, and a short jog. Then, before a strength training session that included step-ups, push-ups, mountain climbers, tricep dips, and hanging ab crunches, she did a power walk.
In the caption, Radtke said that her mom’s routine is proof of the exercises we should all do to stay healthy and independent.
Walking has countless benefits for older people. Studies show that it lowers the risk or severity of a number of health problems, including cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes mellitus, cognitive impairment, and dementia. It also improves mental health, sleep, and longevity.
Gentle moves that keep joints young and flexible and mobile
Giordano’s third important activity is stretching to improve his range of motion and flexibility. These are two different things. Mobility means that your body can move in all of its normal ways. If you are flexible, your muscles can stretch. Her daughter put up a video of Giordano’s full mobility routine. It has a figure four glute stretch and a hamstring stretch while lying down. She also does a modified pigeon stretch and a stretch for her lower back while lying down. There are bridge walks, roll-ups, a butterfly groin stretch, and sit-to-stands in the routine.
She starts every strength training session with exercises that improve her range of motion. These exercises get her muscles ready for what she’s about to do. She does leg swings and deep squats, for instance, before working out her lower body. You can see this in the video of her working out in the park. After she works out, she does static stretches that work the same muscles. Studies show that static stretches are better for cooling down than warming up. They help muscles heal by making them less stiff and sore. Other research shows that doing static stretches after a workout helps your nervous system relax. It turns on the parasympathetic response, which makes you feel more relaxed after working out.Radtke says in the caption that her mother didn’t move around quickly when she was young. It shows what you can do with consistency if you start with small steps. You just do a little bit more each day. There aren’t any special tricks to it. You don’t need a fancy gym or special gear.
How NEAT (non-exercise activity) keeps his energy up
Talking on Good Morning America Radtke said that Giordano also needs to do NEAT exercises. NEAT stands for Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, which is the movement you do every day without even thinking about it. She said that Giordano always takes the stairs and stays active all day by looking for ways to keep moving. For example, Giordano spends a few hours a week taking care of the gardens at her apartment building.
Radke says that her message is clear: you don’t need to pay for a gym membership to stay in shape. You don’t have to work out hard all the time. Just keep moving and focus on the basics.
The time you spend working out at the gym on purpose every day is only about 10% of your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE). At the same time, NEAT can make up to 50% of it. Studies have found that having higher NEAT levels is linked to a lower risk of heart disease and stroke, among other cardiovascular diseases. This is because it helps keep your blood pressure at a healthy level, which is more important as you get older because your arteries naturally get stiffer over time.
Giordano says that a clean, balanced diet is what keeps him healthy for life.
Giordano says that she cooks most of her own meals, which include chicken, vegetables, salads, and other similar foods. She also takes iron, a multivitamin, and AG1 every morning. She knows she needs protein, so she tries to focus on that by eating fish as her main source.
She doesn’t really like food and doesn’t eat much, but she knows that food is medicine. She has only had Covid a few times, and she got over it pretty easily. That said, she does have some guilty pleasures, like ice cream and chocolate from Cinnabon. But she eats healthy foods to make up for it.
