Exercise the years away — how older athletes are winding back the clock
OLDER athletes can be much younger, physically, than their age suggests, according to a new study of participants in the Senior Olympics. It found that the athletes’ fitness age is typically 20 years or more younger than their chronological age.
Fitness age is a concept developed by researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, who took note of epidemiological data showing people with above-average cardiovascular fitness generally had longer life spans than people with lower aerobic fitness. At any age, fit people were relatively younger than were people who were out of shape.
But since the researchers decided their insight was not useful unless people could easily determine their fitness age, they used a mobile exercise laboratory to test the fitness and health of more than 5,000 Norwegian adults.
They used this data to create a sophisticated algorithm that could rapidly calculate someone’s aerobic capacity and relative fitness age based on sex, resting heart rate, waist size and exercise routine.
They then set up an online calculator at worldfitnesslevel.org that people could use to determine their fitness age.
Pamela Peeke, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Maryland and board member of the foundation that runs the National Senior Games — the Senior Olympics — and a competitive triathlete, took note of the Norwegian study.
Biologically, it seems, she is a spring chicken. When she plugged her personal data into the online fitness calculator, it told her that her fitness age is 36. Chronologically, she is 61.
She wondered whether other older athletes would be similarly youthful, and had a plan to find out.
Contacting the scientist behind the fitness age calculator, Ulrik Wisloff, she suggested that together they study a particular group of older people — the participants in this year’s Senior Olympics.
The Senior Olympics are a biennial competition for athletes older than 50, and consist of track and field, swimming and pickleball, among other sports. To compete, athletes must qualify regionally.
Nearly 10,000 men and women aged from 50 to 100 qualified for this year’s Games, which began last week in and around Minneapolis-St Paul.
Senior Olympians are not professional athletes but most train frequently, Peeke knew. They tend to be more physically active than other people of the same chronological age.
To see just how their lifestyle affects their biological age, she and Wisloff asked all the qualifiers to complete the online calculator. They set up a site so their data could be isolated.
Many of the participants complied, producing more than 4,200 responses.
The results were impressive. While the athletes’ average chronological age was 68, their average fitness age was 43, a remarkable 25 years less.
"I had expected a big difference, since these people have trained for years (but) I was surprised that it was this big," Wisloff says.
The effect was similar for male and female athletes, he points out. Virtually every athlete had a lower fitness age than their chronological age. Peeke and Wisloff have not yet determined whether certain Senior Olympians, particularly those in endurance events such as distance running and swimming, have a younger fitness age in general than those in less vigorous sports. But they plan to parse the data extensively to answer that question and to look for other patterns among the Senior Olympians. They expect to publish their findings soon.
The takeaway message of the data should be inspiring, says Peeke, who was to compete in the triathlon at the Senior Olympics.
"A majority of the athletes at the Senior Games didn’t begin serious training until quite late in life, including me," she says. "We may have been athletes in high school or college. But then, for most of us, jobs and families and other commitments got in the way, at least for a while."
Few Senior Olympians returned to or began exercising and training regularly until middle age or older, she says."So you can start anytime. It’s never too late."
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