Joan MacDonald, the 74-year-old behind Train With Joan, is always up for trying new things—“whether it's good for me or not,” she says with a conspiratorial wink over Zoom. Still, documenting her fitness journey on Instagram was decidedly out of her comfort zone: MacDonald was in her 70s, had no idea how to use social media, and had barely set foot in a gym. “[When I was younger] married women didn’t belong to gyms, they just didn’t, until later on,” she says. Today, Macdonald has enviable biceps and nearly a million followers.
MacDonald's feed is filled with the stuff that makes Instagram so irresistible and sometimes gets the platform criticized as surface-level eye candy—coordinating athleisure sets, white sand beaches, glamorous bikini shots in portrait mode. But coming from a septuagenarian who is clearly living her best life, MacDonald’s platform is so much deeper than that: It’s a challenge to our ideas of who older women are allowed to be. “Older women have a lot to offer,” she says. “There are a lot of older women out here older than I am that are really strong, amazing people. Older women have a voice and we need to be listened to. People think, Oh Grandma, what does she know? But you’d be amazed at what Grandma can do.”
McDonald’s fitness journey began like many people’s: with a visit to the doctor. “They said they were going to increase my medications because my blood pressure was not being controlled properly, but I didn't like to be on medication,” she says. Her daughter Michelle, a health coach, issued her a challenge: follow along on her upcoming fitness retreat, and she’d help MacDonald get her health in check. With her doctor's blessing, she started to learn the basics, reading up on nutrition and fitness. “I had to learn how to use apps,” she says. “I had to learn how to use a computer properly and and iPad and the iPhone,” and eventually Instagram, which Michelle thought would be a great way for her mom to stay connected to a healthy community.
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