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Stronger than ever in her 60s, personal trainer Jacqueline Hooton is on a mission to make fitness more accessible
Gran-of-three Jacqueline Hooton is on a mission to challenge perceptions about age and exercise. And she is, as she rightly says, walking the talk. Just last year she set her personal best of deadlifting 112.5kg (more than 17 stone), despite living with osteoarthritis and having had a series of shoulder surgeries.
Now, the 62-year-old has written Strong – a book filled with exercises and advice for anyone wishing to kickstart their fitness journey. Jacqueline, who is a personal trainer with more than 500,000 followers on her Her Garden Gym Instagram account, insists age shouldn’t be a barrier to exercising.
“I want everybody to enjoy older age and feel vibrant in their 50s, 60s and beyond. We don’t want fitness to feel exclusive, to feel you’ve got to have a perfect body. It’s unrealistic,” she says. “A lot of the representation we see of fitness is younger people exercising and then that sends a message ‘Oh maybe I’m too old to do this’. We need to see people who are exercising from a seated position, who may have mobility problems, or people wearing shorts in their 70s. Representation matters. When we see it, we can be it.”
Jacqueline, who is a mother of five, says like most people, her school days put her off fitness, where PE was “a torture”. “It’s something I have heard from many clients that it didn’t give them a love of being active. It was always about who were the best people for the team.”
Although a keen cyclist and walker, after she had her first child Tobias in 1989, aged 26, she felt a huge sense of responsibility. “It was that realisation that ‘Gosh, his survival depends on me. The only way I can do that is if I am fit and healthy.’” She turned to Jane Fonda’s Workout video to get motivated and give her day structure.
After she had her second child, Poppy, in 1994, pushing a buggy up hills made her realise what a fantastic activity it was for cardiovascular health. It was a lesson she remembered when she became a personal trainer in her 30s. “Finding out how to carve out time for yourself is actually quite challenging. If you think ‘I’ve got to set aside an hour to go to the gym’, that can feel overwhelming. It helped my clients to seamlessly integrate being physically active into the day.”
By the time she had her third child, Gabriel, in 1997 at the age of 34, Jacqueline had bought a pair of dumbbells, which she still uses. “A good set of light dumbbells will last and are great for rehabilitation exercises,” she says. By 2001, and with four children – Saffron was born in 1999 – and inspired by Madonna, Jacqueline joined the Fitness First gym with a goal of getting muscles. “Madonna got an awful lot of flak for her physique at the time,” she says. “But that was when I started personal training properly, to formalise my knowledge.”
In 2003, just before her 40th birthday, she had her fifth baby, Jasper. She felt fit and well and “not at all daunted by being called elderly multigravida”, a medical term used for a pregnant woman who is over 35. She was proof that being an “older” mum should not stop you doing anything. So much so she then went on to run marathons back to back in 2007 and 2008. “I think you feel invincible when you have run a marathon. It takes a lot of training, it makes you dig deep and makes you feel like you can do anything.”
Strong: The Definitive Guide to Active Ageing by Jacqueline Hooton is published by HarperCollins priced £16.99
Which is exactly what happened as at 48, Jacqueline took up bodybuilding to test herself and strip fat. “I’ve always been pretty lean and I’d never understood what it was like to try and do weight loss. It makes you appreciate how challenging that can be, physically and mentally.” At 52 as the menopause hit, she stopped competing. “I’d dropped down to fairly low body fat and at probably the worst possible time to be doing it. I wouldn’t recommend bodybuilding and competing whilst going through the menopause.”
Since then Jacqueline, who lives on the south coast, has carried on with her personal training – and lifting that incredible weight – despite having three separate surgeries for frozen shoulders, osteoarthritis injections in her knees and suffering a fractured wrist on holiday last year. “This taught me the importance of continuing to exercise. We modify and adapt because we can very quickly enter the spiral of physical decline.”
She also looks after her diet. “I try to be balanced. I have at least two portions of oily fish a week, usually mackerel, and have fresh food wherever possible, reducing the amount of processed foods. I make sure there are plenty of vegetables, fruit, wholegrains, pulses, nuts and seeds. But I’m not obsessive about it. I will have biscuits and eat chocolate. I don’t drink alcohol – I may have half a glass of wine a year. I’m a cheap date!”
She says getting out for a walk or cycle has huge benefits too with the importance of green spaces and fresh air to “build mental resilience”. So with her children grown up – now ranging from 35 to 22 years old – and three grandchildren, what’s next for Jacqueline?
“Now my absolute motivation is health. It’s a real distraction when we talk about looking younger because what does it matter what you look like if you feel awful, if you can’t get up the stairs or in and out of the bath? For me it’s about those endorphins and energy. It’s a privilege to get older.”
Strong: The Definitive Guide to Active Ageing by Jacqueline Hooton is published by HarperCollins priced £16.99
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