80 YEAR OLD BODYBUILDER, Captain Bill Travis
For many years I've kept my age secret, but now it's time to come out of the proverbial closet and admit that I'm 80 years old. The reason I never revealed my age is that many people think anyone approaching age 80 should be retired and either spending their time fishing or in a nursing home - not actively selling real estate, and being an 80 year old bodybuilder. Most people thought I was in my mid 60's, and that was fine with me.
Retirement, in my opinion, is being retired from a career job, and having the freedom to do what you love to do. I retired from my career as a Pan Am airline pilot years ago, and since then I've been doing what I love to do - running my own real estate brokerage business. 
This year I wrote my first book, Pan Am Captain, Aiming High, which will be self-published and available on Amazon and book stores by December 1, 2013. It's a motivational book showing examples of how I used the techniques of visualization and goal setting to overcome being a high school dropout working in the Detroit automobile factories to getting my education and enjoying a 35 year career as an international airline pilot.
It also includes stories of some of the more exciting events that took place during my flights, such as landing in London in 100 mph winds during the Great Storm of 1987, dealing with unruly passengers, and a near mid-air collision with a military jet at 35,000 feet over Ireland.
My next p
roject is to write a book on fitness and how to delay the aging process. I expect that book to be complete by July 2014. As part of that project, I'm training to be a competitive 80 year old bodybuilder and compete in my first competition in July 2014 at a NPC bodybuilding event in Mesa, AZ.
This will be tough to do because there is no age category for 80 year old bodybuilders. The highest age category is age 50 and above, so I have to compete with 50 year old men, 25-30 years younger than me. The photo at left shows what my body will need to look like in order to compete.
That means I must train harder - and smarter.
I'm doing that under the watchful eye of my professional bodybuilder trainer, Robert Farrow, at Golds Gym in Gilbert, AZ.
Later, I'll begin to post updates with a before photo and progress photos. I started out at 200 pounds on a 5'9" frame with 35% body fat. That's 70 pounds of body fat. I got down to 175 pounds at 17% body fat, and now I'm bulking up again, purposely, to around 200 pounds, and during the final 12-16 weeks before competition, I'll cut down to about 185 pounds with 5-6% body fat; then this 80 year old bodybuilder can compete with the 50 year olds.
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