This week, Big Retired Life is spotlighting bodybuilding, exploring how you can take your resistance training to the next level. We spoke with Bill Nighan—the unexpected bodybuilder who clinched victory in his first-ever Masters bodybuilding competition at 61. Bill’s remarkable journey from avid cyclist to novice bodybuilding champion is inspiring. His success shows it’s never too late.
Bill’s philosophy:
Bill has always been health conscious, intrigued with diet, exercise, and human performance since his high school days as a swimmer. More recently, he has become fascinated by the concept of healthspan—striving to maintain or even improve upon youthful health parameters for as long as possible. When we spoke, he had a copy of Dr. Attia’s Outlive on his dining room table. He understands that exercise is excellent for your overall health, both mind and body, with weightlifting playing a key part.
Yet, Bill’s foray into bodybuilding wasn’t exactly planned. After a biking accident sidelined his usual cycling routine, he found himself increasing his days per week of weightlifting as a temporary replacement. Already recognizing the myriad benefits of weight training, including improved mobility, reduced joint pain, and preventing or even reversing age-related muscle and bone loss, Bill met a trainer and bodybuilder who encouraged him to try competitive bodybuilding. Bill thought, “Why not?” Bodybuilding overlaps with traditional strength training, but with an emphasis on improving the shapes and sizes of various muscle groups, with competition including posing routines reviewed by a panel of judges relative to other competitors.
Bill’s system:
Now, you might expect someone with Bill’s physique to be hitting the gym for hours on end each day, but you’d be mistaken: Bill has a day job in healthcare, and his system is surprisingly simple and time efficient—about 10-12 hours a week in total between weight room and cycling, usually six days a week, with about 1.5 hours of training per day during the week and 1.5 to 3 hours each day on weekends. His regime includes four weight training sessions a week, focusing on both upper and lower body workouts, and now that he has recovered from his crash, he has returned to three days of focused cycling sessions, with some easy short spins as time permits.
He learned that bodybuilding is not just about lifting heavy weights—it’s about mastering the eccentric movement of each exercise and maximizing time under tension for optimal muscle growth or “hypertrophy” in addition to strength. Bill always admired the “golden era” bodybuilders, like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Frank Zane (who didn’t?), and Zane’s advice to “make light weights feel heavy” resonates not only from a bodybuilding perspective but Bill’s healthspan mindset as well, to avoid or prevent or recover from injury. Bill likes to emphasize controlled, deliberate movements to get the most out of his workouts, sometimes using eight or 10-count negatives on a given repetition. He also incorporates physiotherapist Jeff Cavaliere’s “maximal effective rep” techniques, pushing his muscles to the brink of exhaustion with 3-4 sets of a given exercise, aimed at achieving failure by the 12th repetition on the first set, but only taking 15-second rest between sets, which makes each set more effective with even fewer repetitions.
Bill’s show preparation:
But winning a bodybuilding competition isn’t just about pumping iron—it also includes meticulous preparation and attention to detail, especially diet. Bill dedicated ten weeks to focused preparation in addition to training, adjusting his diet to increase protein intake but with a calorie deficit to simultaneously shed excess fat to achieve the desired stage-ready physique. This was a crash course, as experienced bodybuilders might take 26 weeks to target a specific contest.
Following the research in protein metabolism pioneered by Professor Emeritus Don Layman at the University of Illinois, Bill strategically distributed his protein consumption, maximizing the leucine protein synthesis trigger by consuming larger protein portions (30-40 grams) in the morning and evening. Balancing muscle gain with weight loss, Bill recognized the importance of gradual cuts to avoid metabolic rate slowdown, facilitating sustained progress towards his competition goals.
In addition to physical conditioning, competition preparation involves mastering posing techniques and choreography. Even though Bill had never competed before and considered himself a beginner at best, he wasn’t nervous even with a pretty big crowd and made sure to enjoy the experience. His hard work paid off. Not only did he walk away with the Masters 60+ medal, but he also edged out a 19-year-old competitor to the podium for 3rd in a “true novice” division. BAM!
Bill’s journey serves as a powerful reminder that age is no barrier to trying new things and achieving remarkable success. We hope his triumph inspires you to elevate your strength training regime or motivates you to set your own bold 10-week challenge. Seize the opportunity to push yourself beyond your comfort zone. As Bill would say, “why not?”
Examples of Bill’s gym workouts:
Here are some examples of typical sets of exercises for chest/back, arms/shoulders, and legs. Time efficiency is important for Bill, as he usually does these at lunch hour during the workday at the gym near his office. For the focus muscle groups of the day, Bill might have a circuit of four to six exercises and 3-4 sets of each, using a weight where the 12th rep may be close to failure.
Chest – alternate front + back in the circuit:
- Front (pectoral focus)
- Pec flys (machine or with dumbbells)
- Decline bench – bench press on a decline – barbell or with dumbbells, or machine with one arm focus
- Pushup variations, such as wide hand placement with a 10-count at the bottom
- Back (lats, traps focus)
- Sets of pullup variations, pistol grip or wide grip.
- Seated row and seated shrugs on cable or machine, or bent over row with barbell or dumbbells.
- Straight arm pull-downs with a cable machine or resistance band.
Arms + shoulders – alternate in the circuit:
- Curls (biceps focus)
- Hammer curls with dumbbells, standing, supinating outwards
- Concentration curls – seated, elbow against leg
- Shoulder (deltoid focus)
- full range of motion lateral raises with dumbbells, from side to overhead, slow and controlled with ten count negatives
- “Around the worlds” – lateral raise with dumbbells up to horizontal, then reach forward, then reverse the process, slow and controlled.
- Triceps
- Pushups – all kinds of variations for pecs and triceps.
Leg days (sprint cycling focus) – generally four sets of five, or pyramid (starting with ten reps “light” progressing up to three reps “heavy” and back down):
- Single leg/”Bulgarian” squat, with barbell or dumbbells, one leg forward, rear leg on roller or bench (variation – 4 count negatives)
- “Trap” or hex bar deadlift (variation – “light” at ½ body weight, but with a pause at the bottom and explosive jump upwards)
- Leg press – 45-degree leg press, pyramid (10x500lbs up to 3x1000lbs and back down).·
- Single leg step-ups, barbells, or dumbbells.
Throughout the “Active You” section of this blog, we will introduce you to ideas on staying active and learning new things.
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