Meet one of Australia’s oldest personal trainers

“You can’t underestimate older people,” says 78-year-old personal trainer John Cook. As he well knows!

By Mark Dapin

One of Australia’s oldest active personal trainers is 78-year-old John Cook, who trains private clients and runs 3 classes a week at Wagga Wagga PCYC.

“The youngest person I have in my class is 18 and the eldest is 85,” says John. “You would swear the 85-year-old was 40, the way she does the exercises.”

John himself is 180 centimetres tall, weighs 83-85 kilos and can still hold a plank position for more than four minutes.

“You can’t underestimate older people,” he says. “Unless they are absolutely frail – but you should grab them before then, when they’re in their 40s, and train them to keep their body strong.”

At many gyms older people “don’t feel right”, says Cook. “They’re normally being instructed by what they call ‘a 12-year-old’, who has no knowledge of what it’s like to be over 50.

“I know what they go through,” he says. “I’ve been there.”

From shearer to lifelong learner

John grew up in Greenacre, NSW, and began his working life as a shearer. For about 11 years, he travelled New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia, “fighting 60-kilo live sheep for 8 hours a day – and thinking nothing of it, really”, he says.

He went on to have a career in retail management and eventually moved to Wagga to run a service station. After he retired, he returned to TAFE, re-took his wool-classing certificate, and was selected to represent Wagga in the wool-classing championship at the Royal Easter Show in 2013.

He came third.

A father of 3 and grandfather of many more, John has trained in boxing, martial arts and yoga, and played tennis, squash and 10-pin bowls. When his eldest son took up cricket, John became a cricket coach and member of the NSW Cricket Board.

Qualifying as a PT at 74 years old

In retirement, he trained alone at a gym and developed an interest in appropriate exercise form for older people. In 2020, he went back to TAFE yet again, to study for the Certificate III Fitness course and qualify as a personal trainer. He was invited to teach at the PCYC, where he established all-ages classes that involve resistance training with light weights and heavy emphasis on correct form.

I ask John what aspect of exercise older people find the most difficult.

“Getting started,” he says. “The very first time is the hardest. Once they come and they find out that they can actually do it, then they accept it.”

The weights he uses range from only 500 grams to three kilos, but women who have never trained with weights are sometimes wary of lifting them.

“I ask, ‘Do you still go shopping?’” says John. “They go, ‘Yeah.’ I say, ‘Well, you take home more weight in your shopping than you’re going to be lifting here.’”

Exercise makes him stronger… and happier

John will not progress a class until everybody else has got the hang of a particular exercise. He begins and ends every session with stretching and encourages both women and men to train their pelvic floor muscles.

He says that many of his clients grow stronger and about 80 per cent lose weight, but their benefits of regular exercise go beyond the physical: “It increases the endorphins so they feel better about themselves… and happier.”

Which exercises should older people avoid?

“Burpees,” he says.

Yes, burpees are horrible and everyone in their right mind should avoid them. But why are they a problem for older people, specifically?

“Because one thing you can’t really control and keep is your agility,” says John. “You may not lose your reflexes but, no matter how strong you are, you will lose your agility.”

Burpees are barely worth the pain, anyway.

“They don’t do a lot,” John says. “They’re more aerobic than anything else.” And for older people, “anything that gets you up and down too many times isn’t good.

“I had one lady in her mid-60s who came along for the first time, and she sat down and cried when I asked everybody to get onto the floor. She said, ‘I can’t get down, and I can’t get up.’”

John helped her, but “in about 5 weeks, she was getting up by herself”, he says.

“I teach them 3 ways of getting up off the floor.” 

He’ll only run if he has to

Older exercisers tend to give up running, in part because of the toll it takes on their knees.

I ask John if he can still run.

“Yes…” He pauses. “If I have to.”

But these days, he prefers to walk.

“I do a minimum of 6 kilometres a day walking,” he says. “Walking is one of the best things you can do, because it helps tighten up your abs: it pulls everything into position. And if you do ‘interval walking’, you can walk at a slower pace for 500 metres then walk really briskly for 100 metres then go back to your slower walk. So you’re doing a little bit of extra aerobic-type heart work.”

Once a week, he teaches boxing to school kids. “That’s enough aerobic exercise for me,” he says.

He also stresses to his clients the importance of good nutrition – and, in particular, the need to continue eating substantial portions of protein.

Older people can be a little difficult to convince.

“As a person gets older – and especially if they get older and lonelier – they don’t eat as well as they used to,” he says. “Because they’re looking after themselves, and they’d much rather have baked beans on toast than cook a meal.”

However, John’s recommendation to eat pork crackling for its high protein content has unsurprisingly proven popular…

The end’s not nigh but it’s coming

About 60 people come to his classes, but John’s not sure how long he can continue training clients at this level.

“I’m 78,” he says, “and I’m trying to work out when I’ve got to give it up. Nobody wants me to. Every time I say, ‘I won’t be here next week,’ everyone asks, ‘What’s happening?’ I’ve got to explain to them that I might be going to Sydney, or I’ve got something else on.”

Australia’s oldest personal trainer is not about to retire. Just yet.

Feature image: Courtesy of John Cook