Joan Mac Donald is a Canadian fitness influencer. Distinguishing features: he is 73 years old and, above all, 1 million and 600 thousand followers on the @trainwithjoan channel. They call her the grandmother of fitness, without too many words. But she doesn’t mind: physical activity is making her life better. He suffered from high blood pressure, arthritis, ankle edema. And she weighed 90 pounds. When the doctor has them prescribed new drugs, his survival instincts rebelled.
So he decided to revolutionize his routine starting to attend a gymnastics class with his daughter Michelle. She never stopped. So much so that when she opened her Instagram profile she even became an “inspirational” model for other grandmothers. Because she gives advice and gives directions while she gets photographed in tops and leggings, and a white mane on her head.
“I thought my life was over. I was staying at home and I was alone. When I started training something started to change. I ate better and paid attention to my thoughts. Today I feel like a completely new person »she loves to tell in interviews. In short, she also became a champion of “age diversity”. It is never too late to start over, in fact.
Joan is a case in point, but she is in good company.
Who are the fitness influencers
More and more “over” fitness influencers who, after passing the “door”, they decide to follow the values of a healthy and sporty life and to open a social profile to share them with other women. Because “squats”, “deadlifts” and “hip thrust” are not just synonymous with sculpted abs (and “b-sides” like that, super assured, by Jennifer Lopez), but they are above all a matter of health, discipline and sanity.
Targeted workouts for forty-year-olds
The connection between body and mind is real, after all. Research confirms this: those who play sports are less exposed to depression and anxiety attacks, demonstrates better mental efficiency and has higher self-esteem. The only difference is that at forty, fifty, you need some targeted measures. Because the body is no longer the same and there is a risk of stressing it.
The Brazilian Sayonara Motta and the American Jill Cooper, both 53, are among the best-known fitness influencers in our country. They are exposed in the first person on social networks explaining the passage of time and the new precautions to be adopted. Cooper, in particular, who lives in Rome, has renamed her account @Vintagebodyblogger (170,000 followers), an elegant definition that explains the concept well.
For years, first from her website, then with DVDs and also on TV, she has “motivated” thousands of women of all ages to take care of their bodies by jumping at home, for example, on her trampoline. Now she is the first testimonial of his body which – he emphasizes – treats like a “vintage car”.
«Now I am only interested in spreading the message that with a healthy ad hoc training program you can live well. My followers are 45-50 years old struggling with menopause and therefore with slowed metabolism, joint problems, insomnia.
They are women in another stage of life and they need to follow different indications which are the same ones that I apply. I feel like a motivator in this sense. On Facebook, in the meantime, I launched the “five minutes” program and it works: many people write to me to tell me that they have started playing sports again ».
The diet for running
Michela Montagner, 47, works instead in the theater in Milan (to Elfo Puccini, ed), and with his @Run_veg (over 26 thousand followers) he combines the passion for macrobiotic cuisine with running. She became a runner for love and she hasn’t stopped so much that she has run nine marathons in the last few years.
He runs three times a week and teaches how to take care of your body with an adequate vegan diet.
“More than losing weight, I teach my peers to reduce inflammation with the right dishes, it is the theme that is most close to my heart” he observes. So from her Instagram account she offers, for example, “9 tips +1 on how to deflate the belly” and keeps a diary of her first “six months without dye” where she exhibits gray roots and tips. And she shows the pre-contest food.
Fitness influencer with 98 thousand followers
Behind the @MissAnne_Fit profile is the hugely popular 46-year-old of Croatian origin Annamarija Dumbrek (98,000 followers). She lives in Rimini, she has been a fitness influencer and a personal trainer for fifteen years. “I release one or two exercise videos a week. My mantra is “feel good” rather than “look good” »he underlines.
“I am a mother of two children and I encourage other mothers to do physical activity. It is difficult for all of them to organize themselves, but it is never too late, I always repeat. The important thing is to love each other, the rest always comes ».
Pelvic floor exercises
Of the same opinion too Valentina Barbieri, almost forty years old, fitness influencer with over 12 thousand followers, former Adidas runners captain. With the brand he conducts a series of workhsops on “women, running and pelvic floor” after studying posturology.
“There is little talk of it, perhaps because it is a theme centered on an intimate sphere. Instead you have to be aware of it, the more we know the body, the more with the signals it sends us we are able to repair it” points out. Valentina, a former ballet dancer, studied in Chicago and Vancouver, she also teaches bootybarre and is one of the teachers of the yome_digital platform.
«I try to convey the fact that well-being is not prison, but freedom. Those who feel guilty for having eaten a pizza or missing a workout are not centered. It takes balance in life. If we don’t have it, everything else follows suit and makes us exhausted. I want to make women understand that we do fitness to feel good, not to get sick of guilt ».
Cycling against cancer
Finally, it has over 18,000 followers the @Sportvitale account created by the Venetian Alessandra Fior, 42 years old. A career in healthcare, Fior is a triathlon expert and has just been named godmother of the “IronMan 70.3” event to be held in Jesolo on 25 September (1.9 kilometers of open water swimming, 90 kilometers of cycling and 21.1 kilometers of running). In 2009 he became passionate about “trail running” on dirt paths of hills and mountains and he practices swimming and cycling.
In 2016 he participates in a super sprint in Vittorio Veneto and a sprint in Lignano e gets to win the two titles of regional category champion. In 2017 she moves on to the Olympic triathlons and to the Ironman vehicles reaching twelve races. A record. Shortly before the pandemic, at the end of 2019, she suddenly discovers that she has breast cancer. Surgery and chemotherapy follow.
“It was a painful time, but sport and social media helped me. Telling my story on Instagram every day, I found myself motivating other women in the same situation as me. ” Last spring he set up the only women’s team in the Giro-E of Italy supported by Rcs Sport. And he raced as an Airc testimonial. In 2023 he will repeat the experience. “Giving up is not in my DNA,” she reveals proudly.
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