Growing old Disgracefully: Scotland’s Strongest Pensioners Celebrated for Zest for Life

‘Scotland’s Strongest Pensioners’ have been awarded for ‘growing old disgracefully’ through a resident-led April Fools’ campaign that saw them prank the nation.

Earlier this year, residents at Renaissance Care launched their ‘Scotland’s Strongest Pensioner Championships’ and had a blast taking photos during fake training exercises inspired by the World’s Strongest Man competition. The group were pictured working towards personal goals and bests in the famous Vehicle Pull, the Hercules Hold and a variety of deadlifting challenges.

The residents had been taking part in Summer and Winter Olympics initiatives across the group, which improved the health and wellbeing of residents and saw them get competitive across the sports. For April Fools’ Day, they felt the perfect joke would be to take that one step further to find Scotland’s Strongest Pensioner.

Now, the residents have been awarded with a ‘Growing Old Disgracefully’ title at the NAPA Awards – celebrating those who live life to the fullest and maintain a zest for life in their older age.

Care home resident Robert Roy (81) took part in the joke and was photographed at Renaissance Care’s Whitecraigs Care Home. Robert said: “We had a great laugh lifting the fake weights and pretending to pull the mini-van along for our April Fools’ Day joke.

“We are all really competitive and have been joking about who is the strongest, so we wanted to have a little fun. It’s fantastic to now have been awarded for our prank – we love to have a laugh in the home, it’s the secret to keeping young!”