“Hey — aren’t you imagined to be the cardio man?”
That’s the response as BODi Tremendous Coach Shaun T makes his bodybuilding debut. Stepping out on the IFBB Texas Professional stage in August 2023, he’s a far cry from the cardio and dance applications that launched him to the highest of the health world.
Nonetheless — it is a stage on which the INSANITY teacher belongs.
Shaun takes dwelling 5 first-place metals — together with Basic Males’s Over 35 and 45.
Shortly after, he releases DIG DEEPER, a strength-training program on BODi (the health platform as soon as often known as Beachbody).
From the surface trying in, it’s a wild transition: one of many world’s prime cardio instructors shifting gears in his 40s and diving into the taxing world of bodybuilding and physique competitions.
However the science suggests extra individuals ought to be following in Shaun’s footsteps. Since most individuals hit their peak with weight lifting of their 20s and 30s, incorporating resistance coaching in your 40s, 50s, and past is a good way to remain wholesome as you age.
From bettering mobility, to “growing the wholesome years of life,” power coaching could be a highly effective software for preserving our our bodies wholesome. This will get extra necessary as we age — as a result of if we don’t use it, we lose it.
Our muscle mass is without doubt one of the first issues to fall off within the growing old course of. Due to this, it’s all too simple to view any type of weightlifting as a shedding battle.
We don’t have the pure power we had after we have been 18 — and we in all probability by no means will once more — so what’s the purpose?
However “who desires to be 18 once more?” Shaun asks. “I don’t.”
With DIG DEEPER, the coach pushes previous the limiting perception that our greatest years are previous us. As a substitute, he reveals power coaching as the trail to a more healthy physique at any age.
“You lose 3-5% of your muscle mass every decade … blah, blah, blah,” Shaun laughs. “Okay, so that you’re simply going to simply accept that? I can nonetheless keep a hundred percent of what I can keep. So even when 97% is my new 100%, I can nonetheless hold at it. You possibly can too.”
Encouraging everybody to keep up their 100% — it doesn’t matter what that’s — has turn into the driving motivation behind DIG DEEPER. For long-time followers who’re making the leap from cardio to weightlifting alongside Shaun — and BODi customers trying to “use it quite than lose it,” this system stays a success half a 12 months after launch.
“Not everyone seems to be aspiring to have a six-pack,” he says. “They’re aspiring to be sturdy and hold sturdy.”
Shaun notes one particular person — a 65-year-old gentleman who was born with a degenerative disc illness — who was capable of get from 18% to 12% physique fats with DIG DEEPER.
“Everybody advised him he wouldn’t be capable of do it,” Shaun says, “however have a look at him now. I’m doing all the things in my energy to debunk this principle that all the things goes downhill as we become old — we simply must do one thing about it.”
Simply as it’s with INSANITY, Shaun T’s optimistic vitality pushes individuals to the max in DIG DEEPER. Whether or not you’re no stranger to Shaun T’s previous applications — otherwise you’re leaping in with the health legend for the primary time — this system brings a confirmed, results-driven plan for unlocking your new 100% utilizing power coaching.
However earlier than exhibiting others the way to DIG DEEPER, Shaun went via a change of his personal.
“I used to be educating a whole lot of courses and streaming on BODi,” he recollects, “after I began to have shoulder ache. I needed to create my exercises round it — and it obtained to the purpose I couldn’t even seize a glass out of the kitchen cupboard.”
In mild of this harm, Shaun wanted shoulder surgical procedure. Afterward, he started bodily remedy, the place he met Kristen Bennett (now a member of the DIG DEEPER solid) who would ceaselessly change his health journey.
“She was jacked,” he laughs. “I used to be like: ‘Are you able to be my coach?’ She introduced my shoulder again with bodily remedy and lifting weights. I simply felt so sturdy — and knew this was it. Weightlifting grew to become my factor.”
Shaun — a dancer, observe athlete, and well-known for a exercise that made him shredded with out weights — nonetheless retains cardio as an integral a part of his health routine. However the addition of weightlifting has helped him discover a new 100%, even in his forties.
And, at an age when most individuals begin leaving the game, Shaun is chasing professional bodybuilding desires.
“I like to compete,” he says. “This can be a sport the place I don’t must compete on the day of the occasion, ‘trigger I do all of the competing within the gymnasium. What’s spectacular is that this sport is much less about the way you examine to different individuals and extra in regards to the work you place in to arrange.”
The key to staying wholesome (at the same time as we age) and the key to excelling within the bodybuilding stage are the identical: it’s about persevering with to do the work.
“We used to have a good time and seek for the legendary fountain of youth,” Shaun says. “Muscle is that fountain.”
And at the same time as our muscle mass declines, all of us have a brand new 100% to aspire after.
If you wish to DIG DEEPER with Tremendous Coach Shaun T, click on right here to take a look at this system on BODi.
M&F and editorial workers weren’t concerned within the creation of this content material.