Is lifting weights and eating well enough Photo / Getty Images
Lifting weights and eating well made no difference to Decca Aitkenhead’s ‘wobbly bits’, so she took action - signing up to a three-month BootCamp.
This began with a dilemma between dignity and vanity. Did I want to write about my wobbly thighs? Certainly not. Did I want to see if something could be done about them? Absolutely yes.
My dignity would like to pretend that I wanted my body to get stronger, but all I really cared about was looking better, which is embarrassing to admit. Obviously, health is more important than appearance. It isn’t, however, a very effective motivator in my case, and so at 53 I was struggling to keep plodding to the gym. I wasn’t overweight or unfit, but nothing I did made any difference to the wobble. I dutifully lifted weights four or five times a week, ate mostly what we’re meant to and was fed up with my legs for ignoring all this hard work.
The first nutritionists and trainers I approached to ask if it was possible to tone my limbs were not encouraging. “At your age,” the consensus went, “probably not.” So when the team at Roar Fitness promised they could do it, I signed up on the spot to their three-month transformation programme.
Co-founded by the former Olympic speed skater Sarah Lindsay and the personal trainer Rich Phillipps, Roar specialises in body transformations, delivered through a programme of punishing personal training and diet. A whole wall of its City of London reception is lined with photographs, thrilling and terrifying in equal measure, that are before-and-after shots of clients unrecognisably transformed in unfeasibly little time. Roar’s staff look like Love Island contestants, but they do not achieve these results through anything resembling fun. The first consultation with my nutrition coach, Luke, made it clear that I had joined not so much a bootcamp as a cult.
Luke weighed me, then produced a pair of callipers and methodically pinched every millimetre of fat, from my cheek all the way down to the back of my knee. The food diary I’d submitted in advance did not impress him. All the vegetables I felt so smug about eating were not, he explained, going to build muscle tone. Nor, at my age, would muscle definition be visible beneath even the lightest layer of fat. To get lean, I would have to eat a 500-calorie breakfast, 500-calorie lunch and 200-calorie supper, consisting chiefly of protein - 150g a day - and chosen only from Roar’s own recipe book for clients.
Carbs figured little, whereas beef, chicken, turkey, prawns, bacon and eggs featured heavily. Vegetarian and vegan substitutes were offered, but in conditions of deprivation who would choose tofu when steak was an option? Apart from water and coffee - alcohol was strictly forbidden - nothing else was to pass my lips for three months.
Roar’s recipes are so precise I had to buy new kitchen scales to weigh every ingredient. I wore a Fitbit so Luke could track my daily step count — minimum 7,000. I could cheat, but Luke would soon know about it when he remeasured and weighed me again every three weeks.
This wholesale surrender of agency felt surprisingly soothing. If the transformation was now their problem, not mine, all I had to do was exactly as I was told. In practical terms, however, this wasn’t easy. Teetotalism was poorly received at birthday parties and friends raised eyebrows when I visited bearing pre-prepared meals in Tupperware. When I relayed their suggestion to Roar that I could take the odd day off, it was met with amused incredulity.
If Luke was strict, he was good cop compared with my personal trainer, Matt, a former GB athlete assigned to work with me for three hours a week. Roar’s modus operandi is progression weight training: repeating the same three-day workout for three weeks at a time, increasing either the weight or number of reps every session. It only ever got harder, and Matt had no time for faint-hearted protest. “Some people say I can. Some people say I can’t. They’re both right. Decca, do you want to fail?”
A typical session would consist of three sets of 10 rack deadlifts; three sets of 8 barbell bench presses; three sets of 13 banded chin-ups; three sets of 8 lever squats; three sets of 12 incline bench presses; three sets of reverse sled drags across the gym; three sets of 11 seated bicep curls. Monotonous by design, brisk and unforgiving, Matt’s sessions often felt more like ballet classes: he hovered, correcting my form, sometimes by barely a millimetre, while counting aloud like a human metronome: “ONE, two, three, four. ONE, two, three, four.”
In the early weeks, the precision felt a bit pedantic and the focus on tiny muscles such as rear delts (on the back of the shoulders) - to whose existence I’d been until now oblivious - felt unnecessary. Why waste time growing muscles no one can see? Matt explained that, without building up these supportive muscles, my arms and legs would be unable to lift anything heavier than their long-established limits. Like building a house, we needed first to lay stable foundations. In order to maximise the benefit of every single rep, perfect form and timing were critical.
And then, about six weeks in, a peculiar difference became perceptible. As if everything internal had been fine-tuned, my body seemed to knit together, creating an unfamiliar sense of power when bounding up the stairs - or just walking. Although I had lost only a little more than 2kg, clothes began falling off me. Weights that would have previously defeated me became magically achievable.
Beyond the halfway point, I no longer thought about the food I wasn’t allowed to eat. Eating simply to fuel training was by then second nature - particularly now the training felt so rewarding. The heaviest I’d ever deadlifted before was 65kg; now I was hitting 75kg. My euphoria at doing push-ups feels absurd to report, but having never managed a single one previously, it felt momentous. Equal to my own delight - possibly even greater - was Matt’s. His emotional commitment to our progress was more motivating than any willpower I’ve ever summoned in myself.
At the end of three months I had lost 5kg, the fat at the back of my thighs had shrunk by 14mm and none of my clothes fitted. Needing a whole new wardrobe is a common problem for Roar’s clients and it forced the confronting question: was this sustainable?
The motivating power of vanity had by now vanished. My arms and legs were leaner and clothes hung better, but no one noticed. Toned limbs escape all attention at my age, besides which, no amount of deadlifting can prevent what happens as you shrink: my muscles had toned but my skin had sagged. But while the wrinkles didn’t care how much I could deadlift, it turned out that I did.
Friends had warned me that bootcamps often backfire. Released from supervision, it’s too easy to get demob-happy and let good intentions slide. If so, there is a lot to be said for joining a cult instead. The intensity of Matt and Luke’s commitment rewired my brain, making hamstring curls genuinely more appealing than cake. Given that I have always been lazy and greedy by nature, this was nothing short of miraculous. The novel sensation of an internally toned body was so electrifying, for the first time I found myself wanting to get fitter for fitness’s sake.
Three months later I still eat more than 100g of protein a day, observe most of Luke’s dietary principles and train just as hard, if inevitably a little less expertly. With the wobble gone and hitherto inert muscles now wide awake, Matt really has demolished the old house and laid foundations for a better one. To walk off site at this point would feel mad.
Written by: Decca Aitkenhead
© The Times of London
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