At 85 it is hard getting out of a chair let alone climbing... but training like a squaddie for three months changed my life
Star Sheila’s tough new role
SHEILA Hancock trained “like a squaddie” with an ex-RAF officer for three months to get in shape for a new film – at the age of 85.
She worked out with her trainer every other day in the park, as well as strength training in the gym, to prepare for a gruelling mountain climb in the title role in Edie.
In it she plays a widow in her 80s who decides to climb the 2,398ft Suilven mountain in the Scottish Highlands.
The veteran actress, widow of Inspector Morse star John Thaw who died in 2002, said: “I had three months before I started filming and I went to the gym and said, ‘Can I get fit enough? I’m this age, all my muscles have gone’.
“Getting up from a crouch when you get old becomes almost impossible. It is even difficult getting out of chairs, you usually push yourself with your arms. So all those muscles had to be redeveloped.
“But they said: ‘Yeah, you can do it in three months.’”
Sheila enlisted the help of an ex-military man who trained her every other day in Richmond Park, South West London, where marshy land helped her prepare for difficult conditions in the Highlands.
WHIMPERING
Sheila said: “On the first day he said, ‘Run up that slope’. And I got half way up and started whimpering, ‘Can I have a rest?’
“He said, ‘No! Keep going’. I was like a terrible squaddie. I got up to the top and he said, right, back down to the bottom, up you go again.
“Eventually he increased my stamina hugely. I was out to be an old lady who could not do it, and he just wouldn’t allow that.”
Now Sheila believes staying active when older is a question of mind over matter. She said: “People say, ‘I’m old now. I can’t get out of chairs without a bit of help and I can’t walk for miles’.
“In fact you can. I proved you can virtually rebuild your body in three months.”
But asked if she has continued her regime, she told Robert Elms on BBC Radio London: “No, I’m in decay again. “I’m trying to get back to the gym but I couldn’t do it with that intensity any more.”
I was out to be an old lady who couldn’t do it. He would not allow it SHEILA HANCOCK ON HER MILITARY WORKOUT