Is physical frailty inevitable as we grow older?

November 13, 2011

Re: Is physical frailty inevitable as we grow

older?

One the problems with this discussion, in my opinion, is comparing fit

individuals of any given age with unfit individuals of the same age or

younger.

It is important in this discussion to compare an individual as they age.

For example, I have continued to work out for the past 27 years. At 70

(soon to be 71 ) I am significantly more fit than the vast majority of my

peers and more fit than most 10 -15 years my junior. However despite my

efforts I am not as fit as I was 5 years ago and definitely not as fit as I

was 15 years ago.

Casler writes:

This is an excellent point and even with the most concerted of efforts, we

will all find that age related changes to our health and fitness will occur.

Ralph Giarnella wrote:

Injuries and intercurrent illness, most of which were in part a result of

working out, have hampered my activities and slowed me down.

Casler writes:

Another great point, and I would suggest that " effective training and

conditioning " as we age is an exercise in pain and injury management. I

would further suggest that MUCH greater care must be taken to sufficiently

rehabbing any injuries, and NOT performing anything that will create new

ones. A single injury can take months if not years to rehab as we age, and

during rehab the negative effects of aging will increase due to the

inability to maintain higher levels of intensity to your training.

Ralph Giarnella wrote:

I have found over the past 5 years that it takes me longer to recover from

an intense workout and I have found that as a result it is harder to workout

as intensely as I was accustomed.

Casler writes:

All training/conditioning is on a stimulus/adaptation cycle. Even with

great care taken to eat and supplement as best you can, and to provide

sufficient sleep and rest, the length of the recovery/adaptation cycle will

increase.

I may disagree just slightly as to being able to train as " intensely " and I

feel that is due to my definition of intensity. I feel that " true

intensity " is the amount of effort you create relative to your " current "

ability. So, if you are capable of a certain load/power and you employ

such, then you are training at your highest intensity. If you are capable

of a certain elapsed time (for a run/swim/row/cycle) and you continue to

challenge that recent standard, you have trained at a relative high

intensity.

That said, I feel that employing a HIGH INTENSITY of a sort is valuable to

maintaining a higher level of fitness and health as we age. Too many, allow

aging to provide license to reduce intensity, and as a result the do not

benefit from higher intensities, and the stimuli created by them. However,

the intensity and injury tightrope is a tough one, and must be walked very

carefully. So I would say that relative to my " current ability " I still

train with a similar intensity to years gone by. To do this, you must

maintain a system of " current " PR's (personal records) of each and every

exercise and activity. Then each time you train, you have the goal of the

recent and previously best session. Now it is not necessarily the goal to

" break " the PR, but it is the goal to approach, match, or break it. As well

it would be a goal to not let it reduce. When I was 50, I seldom had a

training session where I did not break most of the PR's. Now at 63, I find

that more difficult. Yet this morning I will attempt to approach, match, or

break my current stair running/climbing PR, and about every 4 or 5 efforts,

I actually DO set a higher standard.

Ralph Giarnella wrote:

Some conditions, such as slowing of our reflexes, atherosclerosis, joint

deterioration, decreased maximum heart rate may be out of our control and

will inevitably decrease our ability to recover and workout intensely.

We can slow down the aging process by proper lifestyle which includes

exercise, but we can't stop it. Jack Lalanne, who at 95 was still very fit,

was only a shadow of himself when compared to what his physique was 40 years

ago.

Casler writes:

While many of us are unreceptive to it, we must train " age appropriate " .

Just like we train children differently than prime athletes, we need to

train seniors differently too.

The slowing of reflexes is due to sarcopenia and reduced motor qualities.

It has been said that sarcopenia disproportionately affects TYPE II motor

units which would slow response times a bit.

Atherosclerosis and joint deterioration are often either sped up or

primarily caused by inflammations, that also seem to increase as we age.

There are reasons for this and they could make an excellent discussion in

themselves.

If you are over 50, most likely you know that things simply HURT much more,

and pain inhibition is a large part of decreased performances.

Ralph Giarnella wrote:

As Edwin pointed out, our joints wear out and sometimes it is the very

exercise that we love to do the most that is the cause of our injuries. I

have given up resistance training and rowing because of bad knees and

shoulders. I have trouble walking up and down stair and raising my arms due

to deterioration of my joints. Fortunately I can ride my bicycle without my

knees or shoulders bothering me.

Casler writes:

JOINTS. . . .I am not sure they actually " wear out " as much as they are

trained,(conditioned) or not trained (de-conditioned) in a healthy way.

I have often posted to the fact that we pay very close attention to training

the muscles yet virtually ignore how these exercises affect the joints. The

forces placed on joints through a ROM of an exercise are often ignored

simply because we are focused on training the muscle. If we examine the

contact area forces, and all the various forces to the ligaments and

cartilages during the ROM of every exercise, we might train our joints (and

our muscles) rather differently.

Without writing an encyclopedia I might suggest you examine the loads to

various joints during your training and look at the ROM to force load on the

specific joint contact area and the connective tissues. I might add that

this may not seem so intuitive as it might first appear. Contrary to what we

have been taught, limited or specific ROM training instead of Full ROM

(FROM) training can often be joint sparing and just as effective. This is

especially true in the aging athlete trainee, who will experience a reduced

elasticity to most of the joint tissues.

Only recently I discovered a therapeutic action that virtually eliminated

some subpatellar knee pain I picked up from my failed effort to begin

running again on concrete in VIBRAM 5-fingers shoes. Pesky as that injury

was, it has been virtually eliminated.

I might also add that you need to be aware of training joint tissues like

cartilages. As we age, they thin and become porous. ONLY, well selected

cyclic force applications can reduce this deterioration and possibly rehab

them if you have the problem. And this message is not just for Geezers like

me, but should be heeded by those who wish to forestall the problems.

Ralph Giarnella wrote:

We should not discount genetics. It plays a big role in how we well age.

It sucks to get old but it is better than the alternative.

Casler write:

Again, I am in lockstep with Ralph. You are limited to your genotype and

the latitude of maximum potential within that. I feel the challenge is to

during your lifetime explore that higher potential and then carry it forward

into your senior years. Ken O'Neil has written an exceptional piece on this

on his blog Trans-Evolutionary Fitness called " tight fittin genes " .

http://transevolutionaryfitness.wordpress.com/2011/08/09/18/

I also agree that it is a challenge to not be able to perform as you did

from 18 - 50, but I would again suggest that the satisfaction is in the

" effort " or the " doing " relative to your PRESENT potential and abilities.

Being the best you can be at any age, is what makes it fun. I feel most of

us here are the lucky ones who realize(d) this soon enough to make a

difference.

Regards,

Casler

TRI-VECTOR 3-D Training Systems

Century City, CA

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December 2, 2011

Some athletes see their professional sport the way people view jobs. It's

their job to train and compete. They have coaches that help them with nutrition

and training. There are team physicians to take care of them.

Once they leave the sport; some athletes see their jobs as over. Thus as the

job is over those athletes don't do all of the training and activity that they

used to do. They also don't have scheduled workouts, coaches, and team

physicians anymore.

Most people who exercise to be fit and strong, and are not athletes, do the

exercise because they like the physical benefits. These people aren't training

for sports and/or sports competitions. They are training for the fitness and

strength benefits.

Professional athletes and recreational exercisers are two different populations

of people.

Edwin Freeman, Jr.

San Francisco, USA

Re: Re: Is physical frailty inevitable as we grow

older?

For what it is worth, my observation, as an osteopath in the UK, is

that those people who play sport, or are active physically, in non

contact sports tend to continue to be active for longer. Those who

play rugby, football, etc, have a tendency to injure themselves in a

way which prevents continuation of their sport into the mid 40's. The

body simply cannot take the punishment and, they drift to the bar to

support and observe their team, thus loosing muscle mass and strength,

and putting on weight. The inevitable end result of this is mild

obesity, diabetes, coronary heart disease and a body that cannot cope

with anything but the most gentle of exercise regimens.

An interesting research topic, for anyone who has the time, might be

to see if ex-team sports players are as fit (obesity, diabetes, chd,

etc) as their non team sports counterparts. I suspect there will be a

difference. If this is the case, should we be encouraging combative

sports? ( For the record and from a personal stand point, I think all

sport is good and encourage all my patients to exercise in some way

but would blame a rugby tackle at school from preventing me from

continuing to be able to run thirty four years on from the injury. I

will not be doing triathlons into my seventies.)

Turning the mindset of middle aged patients of all sporting

persuasions, including the sporting athiest, is a very difficult one.

The " You can take a horse to water " saying comes to mind in these

cases. Injured, ex sports people play golf, some go to the gym but not

many in my experience. The perception that although they no longer

play competitive team games they are still fit and healthy, is

commonplace. The reality is somewhat different, thus frailty drifts in

like the mist in of an October morning.

Kendall Chew

Alsager, Cheshire.

England.

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December 2, 2011

Another issue is steroid use amongst athletes. When an athlete is competing

using steroids the athlete is probably training harder than a normal person can

train. A lot of athletes stop using steroids when they stop being professional

athletes in their sport. What happens is that the athlete can not continue to

sustain the same amount of training done when the athlete was using steroids and

competing in sport. So the body gets weaker and the training isn't as intense.

This has an adverse effect on the body and physical problems begin to occur.

Going beyond the physical problems, an athlete that has stopped using steroids

may be discouraged because the athlete can't perform at the high intensity

levels anymore and give up any kind of physical training altogether.