Madonna's Muscles

Many of you have probably seen the recent photo of Madonna's muscular arms or at least heard all the negative media coverage about how she is taking fitness 'way overboard.' Granted, yes, the photo is not very flattering and it does look a little like she has a dangerously low percentage of fat, but she is fifty years old. She doesn't need the amount of fat a twenty year old who is still menstruating needs. Much of the reason females need 1o-15% body fat is so that estrogens can be produced and function normally in the body. Being a personal trainer, it is so hard to get women to want to build muscle in order to achieve maximum health benefits. They are so deathly afraid that they will look like Madonna, a man, a freak, etc. What has been overlooked, though, is that many hollywood actors have around the same percentage of fat as Madonna, you just can't see their bulging muscles because they don't train with heavy weights like she does. So the argument that she is getting negative media because she is unhealthy is void. She is getting negative feedback only because she is a muscular female. Take Angelena Joli for instance. She is very, very thin. The only difference between her and Madonna is that Angelina doesn't weight train and Madonna does, yet Angelina gets praise for her figure. Based on her fitness ethics, Madonna can be a very positive roll model for the older population who are not active and are falling apart due to that inactivity. The amount of people who have life threatening health risks is overwhelming. Less than 30% of the time do I ever get a client who has no health risks who is over 40. What's sad is that they didn't even know it could have been prevented with fitness. They thought it was all just part of getting older, which is not the case at all. The media could have put a positive spin on Madonna's muscles by highlighting the epidemic of diabetes and heart disease in the older population and giving information about how to prevent disease through fitness. Muscular, strong women should be markers for a healthy lifestyle, not disease and eating disorders.