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Myanmar’s former ‘Mr Burma’ still pumping iron at 91, although coronavirus has forced him to shut his gym
- Myanmar has a robust bodybuilding culture, and competitions held at malls often draw enthusiastic crowds
- With his career skyrocketing in the 1960s, Sein Maung starred in two films and became bodybuilding coach for Miss Burma beauty pageant contestants
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Flexing his oiled, bulging biceps and pecs, 91-year-old one-time bodybuilding champion Sein Maung admires himself in the mirror before starting to pump iron in his Myanmar gym.
The barrel-chested nonagenarian’s career has spanned some 70 years, both predating and outlasting the country’s half-century of junta rule.
But he describes the late 1950s as his heyday, when he bagged a medal at the 1958 Burmese “Mr Olympic” contest before being crowned “Mr Burma” a year later.
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“All of my brothers died in their 70s, but I’m still here,” he says proudly, putting his hearty longevity down to a disciplined lifestyle based around religion, diet and exercise.
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Buddhist prayers begin each workout before he greases up and starts gruelling sets of chest presses, dead lifts and bicep curls.
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