Better Late than Never

For the great majority of people, fitness cannot be achieved without exercise. Although exercise is beneficial to every one of all ages, it is particularly vital to those who are fifty and over. The young body has a natural resistance to the consequences of poor fitness. But for seniors that resistance is not nearly so resilient. Breaking a hip at thirty can have life-changing consequences, breaking it at 60 can have death-threatening consequences.

Studies have shown the decline in muscle mass for adults over 50 is about 1.5% a year. The severe loss of muscle mass is called sarcopenia and it is a strong predicator for osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is an analogous condition of a severe loss of bone mass. The declines in muscle mass correlates with the loss of bone mass. The logic is self-evident: if you can prevent the loss of muscle mass, then you can prevent the loss of bone mass.

The good news for seniors is that exercise can yield positive results regardless of the age of the individual. Study after study show that age is no barrier to developing fitness. One study found that even 90 year-olds recorded significant gains in strength in a six month training program. Exercise retards aging for any age, but starting early can help avoid conditions that limit exercise options later in life. Aerobic exercise can lower the risk of heart disease, but once the heart disease has developed; there are real limits to reversing its effects. High resistance exercise training (HRET) can lower the risk of osteoporosis, but once osteoporosis has set in, resistance exercise can be severely limited. The lesson here is that exercise is beneficial at any age, but the earlier an individual adopts a fitness program, the greater chance he or she can realize the maximum benefits of exercise.

Exercise versus training

Many people exercise, but few people train, especially seniors. Exercise becomes training when a progressive element is included in the program. There is an adage: if you are not trying to move forward, then you are moving backwards. The natural progression of life makes us weaker. The best way to avoid weakness is to become stronger. The program advanced in this book is exercise training to make us stronger. Progressive training presents challenges, but there are ways to overcome these challenges.  

It is hardly a secret that exercise is good for us, but what kind of exercise do we really need?  We exercise to increase our physical fitness, and by physical fitness, we mean our capacity to work and to play. Looking at the twelve components of fitness, most exercise programs are devoted to increasing some form of strength. The three forms of strength are power, stamina and endurance.

Before we continue much further, we need to take a brief look at some physical fitness terminology.  The word “exercise” can have two different meanings depending on whether it is being used as a verb or a noun. When we run, we exercise and the name of that exercise is running. Exercise as a verb is some activity that develops physical fitness. The noun “exercise” refers to some specific activity for a physical fitness purpose. It is also a generic term for general physical activity, which is also close to its definition as a verb, “We all know we need to exercise.” 

If we begin exercising to become more physically fit, then we are training. We design a program of exercises for our training. Then, we do a series of workouts using these exercises. Hopefully, our training program will realize our goal of becoming more physically fit. Training requires a progressive intensity of exercise. So if we walk an hour every day, we are exercising, but we are not training because there are no goals and no progressive exercise. Now if we strive to walk further or faster each time, then the walk is both training and exercise.

Benefits of Endurance Training

By endurance training, we are talking about aerobic exercise that develops the body’s ability to respire and process oxygen. We measure aerobic fitness by VO2 max which is the maximum amount of oxygen an individual can utilize. The VO2 technical definition is the maximum amount of oxygen in milliliters, one can use in one minute per kilogram of body weight.

The most obvious benefit of endurance training is that we improve our VO2 max, but what does that mean in practical terms? It means we can climb multiple flights of stairs without being exhausted or we can run to an airport gate to make a flight. 

Endurance training develops the heart muscle, making it more elastic and stronger so that it pumps more blood with each beat. By pumping more blood with each beat, the heart rate drops. The average heart rate is in the 70s for more people. Athletes, especially those in endurance sports, have a rate in the 50’s. Along with lower heart rates, blood pressure usually declines with aerobic training. 

Endurance training also develops the mitochondria in both the heart muscle as well as skeletal muscle. Mitochondria are rod-like entities in the cell that convert oxygen and food into energy. This is the energy to sustain the cell as well as provide muscular energy. They also appear to play a major role in the aging process. Mitochondrial degradation has been hypothesized as a major factor in aging.