For years now, there’s a been a bit of folklore about the physical fitness of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, age 83. An early reference came in a 2013 New Yorker profile of Ginsburg titled “Heavyweight” that mentioned she shared a personal trainer with Justice Elena Kagan and regularly out-repped Kagan, 27 years her junior, in bicep curls.
Just how in-shape is Ginsburg? Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger tackled the muscle vs. myth quandary by working out with Ginsburg’s personal trainer Bryant Johnson and completing her regular 90-minute regimen of elliptical work, bench press, squats, and pushups. His account of the workout, complete with Supreme Court humor (“It was so many rows I asked Johnson, ‘What about Wade?'”) is entertaining and not nearly as silly as it might seem. Ginsburg’s wellbeing became nationwide news with the election of Donald Trump since any serious health setback of Ginsburg’s could give the president an opportunity to appoint a second justice, swinging control of the court to conservatives and threatening the rollback of landmark legal decisions like the 2015 same-sex marriage ruling. If Schreckinger’s experience is any indication, the Supreme Court’s oldest jurist is in tip-top shape: he said he finished the routine “panting and red in the face.”