News :
Sports Active: Age Concern
REDNOVA NEWS, July 3 2005 -- Doctors
often counsel patients with serious illnesses not to search the internet
for more information about their condition. It is advice that might
equally be applied to ageing, because you are not going to find much
reassurance.
This was the mistake I made when, on turning 30 in May,
it occurred to me to find out what was in store for my body during the
next few decades. I started scrolling through online scientific journals
with titles such as The Journal of Ageing and Physical Activity, and
a snapshot of bleak, unremitting decline quickly developed. A study
of highly trained distance runners, aged from 21 to 63 years, found
that their maximum heart-rates declined by four beats per decade, their
VO2 Max (the amount of oxygen consumed by the body during peak exertion)
diminished by 1.5 per cent per decade, and their running speed slowed
by 0.26 metres per second per decade.
Another study, of 114 competitive cyclists aged between
15 and 73, found that, from the age of 15 to 29, power output increased
by 7.2 watts per year. From the age of 30 until 73, in contrast, power
output decreased by 2.4 watts annually, although this doesn't seem to
have hampered the 33-year old Lance Armstrong, who is attempting a seventh
Tour de France victory this month.
Heart rates decreased across the whole age-range every
year by 0.66 beats per minute. Sedentary people have an even harder
time after 30: their maximum heart-rates slip by one beat per year,
their VO2 Max declines by 10 per cent per decade.
I could feel my heart faltering and my breath shortening
as I read on. A recent survey for the Spaces for Sports initiative sponsored
by Barclays Bank revealed that British fiftysomethings spent the least
time " on average about one hour a week " on physical activity
of any age group. As a result, one third were unhappy with their fitness
levels. The rot, apparently, sets in during your thirties.
So, I asked myself, is this it? Is it all downhill from
now on? No, not necessarily, according to Dr Mike Stroud, the author
of Survival of the Fittest and the man who accompanied Sir Ranulph Fiennes
on each of his seven marathons during their week-long challenge in 2003.
Stroud turned 50 this year, and celebrated by running the
London Marathon on his birthday. Did he worry that he had bitten off
more than he could chew when he set off on the first of the seven consecutive
marathons with Fiennes?
'I was aware that we might be more prone to injuries, but
much of the decline can be offset by staying active,' he said. 'When
I started doing endurance sports, I didn't realise how far one could
push one's body. The first time I came across an extraordinary feat
of old-age athleticism was in the 1994 Marathon des Sables, a six- day,
150-mile run across the Sahara desert: one of the competitors was a
70-year-old merchant banker.
'The next year I joined an American team for the 1995 Eco-
Challenge in Utah. Another team member was a 72-year old grandmother,
Helen Klein, who could do a 100-mile run non-stop. She had learnt to
ride a horse and rock-climb in her seventies. By comparison, seven marathons
in seven days isn't that amazing.'
Inspiring stuff. But received medical wisdom states that
the human body is past its best by the time you blow out the candles
on your 30th birthday cake. Many scientists believe the culprit is the
heart, which gradually loses the receptors that tell it to beat harder
and faster. However, a report published in New Scientist magazine tells
a different story.
In the 1960s, doctors Darren McGuire and Benjamin Levine
of the University of Texas made a detailed record of the physical fitness
of five healthy men in their twenties. They returned to the same men
in the late 1990s, when they were in their early fifties " the
first time a scientific comparison of the effect of age on non-athletes
had been made.
The results showed that their heart rates had indeed slowed,
but that this was offset by an increased volume of blood pumped by the
heart. The conclusion, therefore, was that aerobic capacity and fitness
declined not because of the heart's failings but because the muscles
become less able to use the oxygen-carrying blood. They don't know why,
yet.
This is bad news for couch potatoes: although aerobic capacity
can be improved, it becomes ever harder to build new muscle as you age.
But what actually happens to your body, decade by decade? Your twenties
are when you are firing on all cylinders, fuelled by adrenalin, energy
and perhaps a vodka-Red Bull mix, with no adverse consequences. But
your body has already begun to deteriorate. Flexibility and agility
peak in the mid-teens; witness teenaged Wimbledon winners such as Boris
Becker and Maria Sharapova.
After that, the collagen that surrounds your joints begins
to harden. If you become a couch potato in your thirties, you will lose
strength at the rate of 1.5 per cent per year. Your aerobic capacity
is already diminishing by up to 1 per cent per year. There is no respite
in your forties: reactions are dulled. You will carry several pounds
of extra weight while fast-twitch muscle fibres, for explosive power,
shrink from your calves and forearms. In your fifties, your eyesight
weakens and muscle wastage increases, although slow-twitch muscle fibres
for endurance events are little affected.
When you reach your sixties, fitness becomes an increasingly
important factor in your general health and well-being. Your reaction
times are 20 per cent slower than at their peak. In your seventies,
you will use up to 50 per cent of your aerobic capacity just to do everyday
tasks, such as getting the shopping in.
Stroud, of course, is far from defeatist: 'It's important
to understand where we come from and to interpret what we're capable
of from that point of view. In prehistoric times, older people had to
keep up and be able to gather food. Therefore, to slump in a heap after
university is not natural. It goes against evolution.'
He argues that, while you may not find many middle-aged
sprinters, the body is tuned for slow-burn efforts during its whole
lifespan: the distance runner Haile Gebrselassie was winning races in
his thirties. 'The reason I have done these [endurance] events,' explains
Dr Stroud, 'is because I understand how far one can push one's body.
We have an evolutionary capability for it. People who are doing extreme
endurance events are voluntarily accessing this survival capacity. You
just have to ask your body hard enough.'
There is even an organisation, World Masters Athletics,
who host championships for the more mature athlete: no women younger
than 35 or men under 40, please. They reckon that a runner takes about
three minutes longer at the age of 50 than their personal best for a
10- kilometre race.
'Evidence suggests that if you stay active, the rate of
physical decline is halved,' claims Stroud. It's a comforting thought.
And there is no shortage of advice on how to stay in shape after 30.
Recovery times are longer, so reduce training intensity and focus on
fewer goals. Joe Friel, the author of Going Long, a training manual
for long-distance triathletes, believes most thirtysomethings are capable
of peaking physically three times a year.
Watch your diet: your body needs 120 fewer calories daily
aged 40 than at 30. 'Our origins meant we ate a wide variety of food,
including fat and carbohydrate,' says Stroud. 'Our bodies expect us
to eat a lot " and burn it off.'
You might not be as strong as you were in your twenties
but you can compensate by working on technique and efficiency "
Steven Redgrave kept up with his Olympic rowing crew as much through
experience as brute strength. Studies suggest that weight-training can
curb some of the symptoms of arthritis, as can a diet rich in Omega-3
oils.
Stroud's recommendation is to set difficult targets: 'We're
naturally designed to be active, but unless I've got a project I find
it hard to get up and train.'
'You're just as trainable in middle age as you were in
youth,' he asserts. 'It doesn't take much effort to get the bloke confined
to the office and the house on to the hills. Yes, ageing is a real process.
But the body's trainability is fantastic.'
(source : www.rednova.com)
