Fitness and Age: Understanding Fitness Part E

While it is generally true that fitness level declines with age after about age thirty-five, it is not an absolute.  Getting older does not necessitate feeling older, losing strength and vitality, or limiting physical activities.  Most people know someone aged seventy or older who continues to participate in physically challenging activities like weight lifting, bicycling, snow skiing, hiking, or jogging.  

There are a variety of prevalent age-related fitness myths, and Dr. Kenneth Cooper exposes them in his book, Faith-Based Fitness.  Many people believe exercising after age forty is dangerous, but there is no support for this myth, as long as older continuing or beginning exercisers have regular medical checkups.  In fact, evidence shows that those who fail to exercise are at greater risk than those who exercise regularly.

            With any endurance exercise comes the warning not to exceed the maximum heart rate, which is calculated by the formula 220 - age.  The second age myth is that maximum heart rate automatically declines with age.  The main reason the maximum heart rate declines with age is a lack of aerobic conditioning.  A higher maximum heart rate can be maintained by anyone who does aerobic exercise.  With a higher maximum heart rate comes a greater working capacity. 

            Blood pressure does not have to increase significantly with age, although it usually does.  Many people do have a harder time controlling blood pressure, but it is generally true that blood pressure can be controlled and kept in the normal range by staying fit.  The same is true of body fat percentage.  People generally become less fit by choice, not by some unalterable force of nature.

            The average person loses between 30 - 40 percent of his muscle mass during his lifetime, but the reason is because most people become less active and less fit as they age.  It is commonly thought that increasing muscle mass after age sixty is impossible, but muscle can be added at any age with strength training.   Cooper teaches that strength training leads to significant increases in muscle size and strength and in functional mobility, even among nursing home residents up to ninety-six years old.   Likewise, people who engage in regular endurance exercise can maintain a high aerobic capacity from age forty to about age seventy.  It is only in the seventies and eighties that older athletes normally begin to experience declines in aerobic ability, but even at late ages, those who continue to train can remain remarkably fit.

            Another myth is that after age sixty-five, there is no reason to worry about cholesterol, smoking, or hardening of the arteries.  Cholesterol levels are important at any age, and no age is too old to benefit from reduced cholesterol intake and blood levels.  Research shows that quitting smoking has significant benefits regardless of age, and atherosclerosis (hardening or clogging of the arteries) can be reversed through dietary changes or prescription drugs.

            Having a heart attack is no reason to discontinue or avoid a fitness program, and for those who have suffered a heart attack, there is no better time to start one.  Not only is regular exercise an important part of cardiac rehabilitation, but exercising in a monitored rehabilitation program is safer than exercise among the general population.  Heart attack victims are at greater risk when they avoid exercise than when they engage in exercise.

            Myths may be more about laziness than age-related fears.  Research shows that people as old as one hundred can dramatically increase their strength, improve their balance, restore bone density, moderate diabetes, and diminish joint pain in just a few weeks of weight training.  The minute a person starts sweating, whether he is twenty or ninety, he elevates his heart rate, his arteries get more flexible, and his blood pressure is lowered, thereby lowering the risk of heart disease and stroke.  For hours after exercise, bodies are more sensitive to insulin, keeping sugar levels in check and reducing the risk of diabetes.

Herschel Walker is a great, modern example of the myths of age’s affect on fitness.  Walker won the 1982 Heisman Trophy (presented annually to the top college football player in America) and was a world class sprinter at the University of Georgia from 1980– 1982.  He played professional football from 1983-1997, and competed in the 1992 Winter Olympics as a bobsledder.  On January 30, 2010, at age forty-seven, Walker competed in his first professional Mixed Martial Arts fight.  Critics ridiculed him for entering the sport at such an advanced age, and concerns for his health were daily topics on national sports shows.  Despite all the negativity, Walker knocked out twenty-six year old Greg Nagy in a dominating performance.

            Because of his age, Walker had to endure a battery of tests to be sanctioned to fight.  Allen Fields, chief physician for the Florida Boxing Commission that also oversees MMA sanctioning, said that not only did Walker pass the most strenuous of all medical athletic tests, but he produced the highest cardiac stress test score of anyone ever tested by his facility.  Fields said that Walker was in “as fine a shape as Muhammad Ali or any of these people we’ve had the care of.  This guy is 47 going on 22, as far as his physical fitness goes.”  Like all world class athletes, Walker is an anomaly.  But unlike most world class athletes, Walker has maintained his fitness as he has aged.  Mike Tyson and Bo Jackson are contemporaries of Walker, and at this stage of their lives, they look like any other middle-aged, overweight man.  Everyone has the choice to age like Walker, or to age like Tyson and Jackson.