With earpods lodged in his ears, nonchalant Marlon Lugadiru calmly paces around the gym, switching between a smith row machine and a T-bar row machine.
He rocks his gym gear like a fashionable lad in his 20s only that he is not. He had his firstborn 17 years ago. His second is 13, third (12) and the last born 10.
The midnight blue above-knee pair of gym shorts neatly clings to Marlon’s well-formed quad and hamstrings. His gym vest offers a hint of his Greek God physique, exposing pound after pound of well-chiseled muscle groups.
“Man, I just turned 50. I am so excited,” he whispers when we embrace with the manly shoulder-knock hug.
It’s been a week since the IT specialist acquired his new quinquagenarian status but hardly will he let anyone who bothers to start a conversation with him walk away without proclaiming his new age.
“Marlon I guess we will never hear the end of this,” I interject jokingly when he offers the same sentiments to a gym baddie. “Bro you have no idea how excited I am. Turning 50 and being in such a physique is a privilege. Very few of my agemates are in such a shape. Do you know how many times I have walked into places and people mistake me for a 30 or 35-year-old? Countless times. It’s always beautiful when you get such comments, it makes you realise this thing (weight lifting) is working,” he answers.
The father of four sums up his fitness journey: Discipline and consistency.
“With that you become a cut above the rest,” he says.
Self-confidence struggle
Marlon’s excitement and confidence that never goes unnoticed sprouted from a very dark place in his life.
Growing up, Marlon struggled to fit in.
“I was very shy and reclusive because of the rejection I faced growing up. I didn’t live with my parents for about nine years and then after that, I kept living with different people. This affected my self-confidence. For many years I struggled to fit in the social spaces I found myself. I am still not very outgoing,” accounts Marlon.
But his mental health was not the only casualty of his difficult upbringing. His body physique also bore the impact.
“As I have grown I have realised how you feel on the inside also affects how you look on the outside. With all that rejection, as my mind and emotions were reacting to it, so was my body. I didn’t like how I looked and when such things aren’t corrected, it becomes a very long lonely road because when you are in the company of people you are not sure what to say. You try pleasing people only to end up making decisions that aren’t good for your health mentally and physically,” he explains.
Running 70km a week
To find solace, Marlon found himself drawn to a running group.
“I found out that with running there was no class. I never encountered classicism, we were all runners, and nobody was bothered about what someone else did for a living. The only thing that differentiated us was time. The conversations were about how fast we ran and the terrain,” he says.
Marlon became addicted to running, participating in over 30 marathons. At the time, he had joined telecom giant Safaricom where he worked for 14 years.
“Safaricom built my motivation for running. At the organisation the work pressure is so intense such that it forces people to seek ways to release it. The pressure drives people into many things. There were those who went into drinking, those who went deep into religion and us who went into sports,” he says.
He would cover over 70 kilometres a week and even more if there was a marathon around the corner.
“I was doing marathons all the time. In a week I would probably do 10 kilometres every day and then on the weekend 15-25 kilometres twice. I ran every day, in a week my average run was 70 kilometres,” he adds.
Marlon Lugadiru, 50, performs a pull-up exercise at the Workhouse gym in Nairobi on July 18, 2024.
Photo credit: Sinda Matiko | Nation Media Group
Lifting heavy at 50
With the running, Marlon found peace and his confidence began to build because not many could match his road work. But that came with a hefty price.
“I lost so much weight that at my lowest weight I weighed 65 kilogrammes. It never really bothered me because I enjoyed running and hadn’t discovered any other physical activity that I liked,” he says.
But that changed when a friend introduced him to the gym.
“One of my friends said we don’t have to be running outside every day, we could make use of the gym and run on treadmills.”
This became the turning point as one trainer spotted him and introduced him to weightlifting.
“One of the trainers approached me and said, ‘Bro you have a very nice body structure, how about you try to start lifting weights? Because you love running, come run for an hour then do weight lifting and see how it goes, because you are too slender but if you were to build muscle, with this body structure, you will look great,’” Marlon, who now weighs 87kg, recalls.
Those remarks were so gratifying that Marlon couldn’t resist.
“After three months of lifting I started getting a few good comments because I had become bulky and so I got into it a little bit more and the more I lifted weights, the more lovely comments came and that kept feeding into my confidence as I would walk into places and stand out. The more I did it the more men felt intimidated by me and the more lovely comments I got from women.”
That was in 2000. Since then Marlon has been lifting loads, garnishing his weight lifting with swimming which acts as his cardio. On the treadmill, Marlon nowadays only does a 10-minute walk as a warm-up exercise.
Even at 50, Marlon still lifts heavy and hopes to keep on lifting heavier, something that is unusual for many people his age.
“As you age you can’t lift as heavy. At my peak, I did a deadlift at 230 kilogrammes and would do 6-8 reps. For bench press, my heaviest was 160 kilogrammes, about four reps and with squats my heaviest has been 160 kilogrammes as well, 4-6 reps.
This week, Marlon has been lifting average weights. In this session, he did a front squat of 50 kilogrammes and a Romanian deadlift of not more than 60 kilogrammes.
“I haven’t stopped lifting heavy loads, I do when I want to. Last month I did a deadlift of 180 kilogrammes. But the point is, I am at the stage where I want to shred. Last month I was lifting heavy and few reps for power and strength. Now I am lifting less weights but more reps to build lean muscle,” he chuckles.
