NBC Southern California – A 64-year-old great-grandmother from Los Angeles beat out several of her younger competitors in a fitness competition earlier this month in Atlanta, Georgia.
Ruby Carter-Pikes and her six-pack abs placed second in the Women’s Figure category, placed in the Fit Moms catergories, and was named Women’s Super Masters Champion, according to a video posted to FitSciences Championships’ Facebook page.
“It’s like showing people age is only a number and you don’t have to get cut up or do anything crazy, just be healthy and take care of your body,” Carter-Pikes said.
Judging for the Figure category focused heavily on shoulder, latssimus dorsi and quadriceps, according to the event’s website.
“Abdominal development is very important as well. Definition with a limited amount of striated muscles,” the rules read, in part.
Carter-Pikes is the oldest of twelve siblings and the first granddaughter of 45 grandchildren, she writes on the fitness site BodyProud.org.
“I have to look in the mirror sometimes and say, ‘Damn girl, you’re 64!’ But I feel the same. I can do everything I ever did,” she told NBC4.
In her online profile, Carter-Pikes, who grew up in rural Mississippi, writes that her journey to fitness started when she saw her family members’ poor health result in early death and lost limbs:
“It wasn’t until I was an adult and had four children that I really start to realize and recognize the devastation of my family’s poor eating habits and the effects it had on the health my love ones including my grandmother, mother, aunts, sisters, uncles, brothers, etc.,” she wrote.
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