Fitness and Age

How much is mental and how much is physical reality?

This is an interesting topic.  It turns out that it is, from our vantage point as endurance athletes, under-studied and not well understood.

You see, we are the first generation to a) have life expectancy well into our 80’s and b) carry our pursuit of endurance sports with us.  This is lightly treated and lightly trod ground.  We are a new cohort.

As I looked into the published science, opinion and general commentary on this topic of fitness and aging, I ran into a few interesting things.

First, there is this holdover bias of older humans being sick, miserable and depressed.  The baseline assumption is that older humans are basically waiting around to die.  Which was mostly true 50 years ago but not so much since the Baby Boomers got old.

Second, is that most of the quoted research is not using our cohort of endurance athletes.  Most of the studies, and the generalizations that they lead to, are horizontal across a non-athlete cohort.  We are writing new rules here, just be being who we are.  We are the undiscovered country.

One of my conclusions is don’t let anyone tell you how you’re supposed to age.  They don’t know.  Only you know and like everything else this process is specific to the individual.

Let’s take a step back and talk about the aging process.  What do we know?  What is it?

Aging is an accumulation of damage at the cellular level that our bodies lose the ability to fix.  Some of this accumulated damage is to our DNA.  This leads to a higher incidence of some bad stuff.  An increase of infections and immune disorders and a higher incidence of chronic diseases.  Like cancer.

One of the things we find is these higher incidences across the population tend to skew the health results for the whole age cohort negatively.

What else do we know?  We know that leading a healthy lifestyle as defined by not smoking, a good diet and regular exercise cuts the incidence of these chronic diseases, for all age groups, to put it in technical terms, “By a whole bunch”.

By being an athlete going into aging, you are already way ahead of the herd health-wise.  That’s the baseline.  Since you are going in fitter you are going to be mentally and physically healthier.

The baseline of where you are starting from makes a difference.  By the way, you can tell your couch potato friends that you get these same health benefits from exercise no matter how old you are when you start.

Boom.  Win.

But, being endurance athletes, we don’t care about that, right?  We care about our fitness and our performance.  What does this aging stuff mean to my ability to do these things I do?  Like marathons and ultras?

Well I have some good news and some bad news for you.  You can choose which is which.

Studies show that you lose your max aerobic capacity as you age.  Starting in your 40’s and accelerating once you get over 60.  Measured by your VO2 max.  Meaning how much oxygen you can convert and what the limit on your cardiac output is.  In layman’s terms you can’t get the performance as high as you used to.  Your top end falls off.

Some studies found that  aerobic capacity starts to decline in your 20’s by 3 to 6% per decade and after 70 it declines at 20% per decade.

You also lose muscle and strength.  Somewhere between 12 and 14% per decade past 50.

Studies also show that after age 40 men’s fitness levels decline at a faster rate than women’s regardless of physical activity.

Hmmm…

Like I said before, the good news is that at any age, those of us who exercise will have a higher capacity.  We are going to have a 15 to 25% higher aerobic capacity than our sedentary peers and that, wait for it, I quote directly here, is “equivalent to being 10-20 years younger”.

This means a much higher quality of life, especially as you age.  Sure, you’re losing strength, balance and aerobic capacity but it isn’t debilitating like it would be in a sedentary person. You are modulating those effects by being active and by being an athlete.

Boom!  Win!

Just by being active you are ahead of the game.  And by staying active you stay ahead of the game.

One very interesting thing I found is that the top-end VO2 max type capacity and performance decline, but your low-end aerobic capacity declines at a much slower rate.  We know this to be true experientially.  How many athletes do we know who moved into longer events as they aged and performed very well?  This is because you still have that gear. You can’t go as fast, but you can still go far and long.  Plus you have experience which comes in handy on these longer events.

Is aging and the associated loss of ability just mental?  It turns out it partly is.  Because as we get older it becomes harder to do the work to stay in shape it becomes mentally burdensome.  It’s no fun fighting a tactical retreat.  We also tend to give in to the overarching societal bias that we should be old and act old.  When everyone is telling you you’re old you start to be old.

And being old takes sooo much work!

You are losing the battle on so many fronts that it gets exhausting, both physically and mentally to keep up with it.  Let’s walk through it.

You are losing that high end VO2 Max ability to perform.  How do you fight that?  By working out at or near max more often.  Anyone who has spent Friday night at the track knocking out 1600’s knows how much of a pain in the keester that is.

But wait…

You’re also losing your muscle mass and strength.  How to fight that?  You have to hit the weight room and do regular strength work.

But wait…

You’re also losing the flexibility and stretchiness of your tendons and ligaments.  How to fight that?  Constant stretching and rehab.

But wait…

You’re also losing your ability to recover quickly.  How to fight that?  Work out less frequently.

But wait…

You’re also losing your balance, so throw in some yoga.

You can see why we might get discouraged.  All you used to do was throw your shoes on and head out the door with the dog 4-5 times a week.  Now it’s a full-time job even if we can avoid injuring ourselves.

In summary, based on a cursory drive by of the available information…

• You are healthier and winning at any age if you are leading a healthy lifestyle.
• You lose fitness, muscle mass, flexibility and balance as you age.
• The older you get the faster you lose it.
• You lose the top end performance more than the low-grind ability.
• You can mitigate all these effects if you are willing to work at it.
• Your mental attitude is important to keep you from throwing in the towel.
• Everyone is on their own journey and your mileage will vary.
• It’s a ‘use it or lose it’ situation so keep moving.

You can’t outrun the reaper, but you can put some distance on him and make him work to catch you.