GREEN BAY PRESS GAZETTE
Green Bay, WI
JULY 10, 2005
www.greenbaypressgazette.com
FITNESS AND AGING:
FOREVER YOUNG, FOREVER FIT
How you can win the battle to slow aging
By Pete Dougherty
Photo: Green Bay’s Terry Pliner, 67, competes in sprints and the pentathlon at Masters track and field meets. He doesn’t plan to stop anytime soon. Corey Wilson/Press-Gazette
Jack LaLanne is 90, works out 2 hours a day, seven days a week, can do 30 pull-ups in a row and, for his next birthday stunt, is considering donning air tanks to swim underwater for 26 miles from California’s Catalina Island to Los Angeles.
He talks as fast as a used-car salesman and must be one of the most physically and mentally fit 90-year-olds on the planet. Though good genes and luck have their role, there’s little doubt that LaLanne’s fanatical workout regimen and diet have helped make him the ultimate example of vigorous exercise forestalling the effects of aging.
“I don’t care if you’re 90 years old or 100 or 5 years old, you have to do something strenuous,” LaLanne said from his home in California. “Life is tough. Life is hard. Life is an athletic event. If you’re not in shape for it, you’re going to lose.”
Indeed, as scientific literature on exercise grows each year, physiologists, kinesiologists and neurobiologists are finding that exercise slows the aging process in ways and to degrees unknown even five years ago.
In both the young and old, even moderate regular exercise can substantially improve the function in most of the body’s organ systems, including the brain. Depending on the intensity of a training regimen, recreational athletes can compete at surprisingly high levels into their 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond.
Now, sports scientists are trying to determine what types of exercise best promote not only maximum performance for athletes at all levels, but best promote well being. Detailed answers aren’t available because studies often are contradictory or aren’t designed with that issue in mind.
In the meantime, there are a myriad of workout philosophies hawked in books and on Internet sites, many with merit, and some of which conflict but have some scientific evidence to support them.
Enough studies have been completed to draw a couple of generalities, not only for athletes of all ages looking to improve performance in specific sports, but also for people simply trying to be healthier and function better in day-to-day living.
Among them is the long-advised need to exercise three to four days a week, ranging from walking for the relatively sedentary, to highly challenging training for races or games. Exercise scientists also strongly advise making variety a staple of any workout regimen.
“I think people have to have a little more knowledge and play a little bit more, is the bottom line,” said Edward Coyle, a professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education at the University of Texas. His work includes studying six-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong.
“Get out there and try some varied things, like I’m learning in playing tennis. Get out there and have some fun where you mix it up and need to have some speed and have some endurance and try different things. Always challenge your body in a little different way.”
Variety in exercise means different things to different people.
It can be as simple as walking some days, casually riding a bicycle on others, and performing yard work on yet others.
For those who work out at a gym, whether to improve performance in sports or just to be healthier, there are almost limitless ways to vary workouts, both aerobically and by lifting weights.
Cross training, or rotating some combination of bicycle, stair stepping, running and swimming workouts, is a well-known way to variety. Another especially effective method is interval and speed training.
Interval training once was the province mainly of competitive organized sports — running sprints during practice for football, basketball or soccer, or the 1- to 5-minute runs at faster-than-race speeds that track and cross-country runners perform.
But studies have revisited high-intensity interval training over the last few years as a way to recreational and general fitness, and the results are intriguing.
Martin Gibala, a professor of kinesiology at McMaster University in Canada, coauthored a study published last month in which recreationally active college students doubled their endurance capacity on an exercise bike after only six sprint workouts over a two-week period. Each sprint session consisted of four to seven all-out sprints of 30 seconds, with a 4-minute recovery between each sprint.
“Certainly, interval-type training is not just for elite athletes,” Gibala said, “and interval-type training can lead to improvements in fitness and health in a shorter period of time. Or, if people are willing to trade off intensity of exercise for (long) duration, then you can see some comparable improvements in health and fitness in a shorter (workout).”
One important point: Anyone undertaking interval training of any kind should ease into it over several weeks. Anyone with health problems should get a doctor’s clearance.
Variety in the weight room can come in many forms. Trainers advocate changing routines regularly because the body adapts quickly to a regimen, perhaps within six weeks.
Among the bigger changes are rotating exercises into and out of a routine; changing the weight and number of repetitions of a given exercise; or changing the number of sets performed on a given day, or the time of rest between sets. LaLanne, for instance, changes the weight and repetition schemes for his workouts every month.
Even seemingly minor changes can be meaningful, such as altering the order of the exercises, or the position of the hands or feet.
“There’s a real benefit in keeping things interesting and kind of shocking the body,” said Keith Stokes, a professor of Sport and Exercise at the University of Bath in England.
As the data builds up, it’s becoming more obvious that exercise, especially vigorous exercise, is a potent anti-aging force.
Athletes competing in Masters track and field meets have put up impressive records at all age levels. The Masters world record in the 100-meter dash for 60- to 64-year-olds is 11.7 seconds. By comparison, 11.11 seconds won the WIAA Division 1 state track title this year.
The data also show that for day-to-day living, exercise and strength training, even at modest levels, can help a person function better well into old age. It takes leg strength to perform the most mundane of tasks, so remaining fit enough to take care of yourself and get out into the world promotes a better quality of life.
“It sounds kind of crass,” said Frank Booth, a professor of biomedical sciences at the University of Missouri who studies exercise and aging, “but one of the things that’s often said is essentially by being physically active, that you’re going to delay some of the side effects of physical inactivity long enough that you’re going to die of something else. If you can maintain your fitness, the end of your life is better. We’re all going to die, but you don’t end up your last few years in a nursing home.”
As brain research and imaging has become more sophisticated in recent years, there’s also a fast-growing body of evidence that exercise helps maintain and improve mental functioning as well.
Less than a decade ago, scientists believed humans stopped producing new brain cells after birth. But in the last several years, researchers have shown the brain can generate new cells in key areas that regulate memory, learning and decision making, and that exercise is one of the most predictable ways to stimulate that growth.
Performance and brain-imaging tests show that exercise stimulates new circuitry in the brain, improves cognitive performance under stress, maintains a higher level of functioning as we age, and is an effective treatment for some mood disorders.
Studies also suggest that for the long term, exercising every other day is about as helpful for the brain as exercising every day. Just as with muscles, variety appears to be a key.
“What’s important is that (exercise) is sustained over months and years,” said Nicole Berchtold, a researcher at the University of California-Irvine Institute for Brain Aging and Dementia. “Even moderate exercise like walking several times a week is going to show these types of benefits.”
With their time-crunched lives, many Americans don’t exercise because they say they don’t have time.
But Robert Weiner, chairman of the media subcommittee for Masters Track and Field and former chief of staff for the House Aging Committee, points to the presidency. Five of the last six presidents were regular exercisers.
“What job do you have where you can’t find time to exercise regularly?” Weiner said.
Your guide to training on the Web
The Internet is filled with information on working out, some valuable, some not. Here’s a list of Web sites for more serious training.
www.pponline.co.uk
Peak Performance is a combination free and pay site out of England that is among the best on the Internet for various kinds of training for almost any sport or training. The free site provides a large library of articles from this site’s monthly newsletter on strength, speed and endurance training that are based on recent scientific research. There also is a forum to exchange information with other participants. The pay portion of the site provides access to the monthly newsletter that provides a layman’s synopsis of the most recent scientific research.
www.elitefts.com
Elite Fitness Systems has an excellent weight-lifting site geared at first blush for power lifters but with information relevant to anyone serious about training with weights for any sport. It is run by world-class power lifter Louie Simmons, who continues to set personal bests into his 50s and has been a consultant for professional sports trainers, including former Packers strength coach Kent Johnston. Simmons’ weight-training philosophy is based in part on studies conducted in the former Soviet Union in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s that became available to the West only after the fall of communism.
www.sportsci.org
The Sportscience site contains a wealth of workout information, including in-depth articles about training as well as forums, reviews of training equipment and links to other sports-science information.
www.t-nation.com
The “T” in T-Nation is short for testosterone, and as the name suggests, this is a macho site aimed at body builders and power lifters. But after cutting through some of the bluster, it provides good information for strength training for any sport. Archives include articles from weight- and speed-training experts from around the country. Also provides forums for exchanging information with other readers and experts.
www.crossfit.com
CrossFit is a site based on training programs for military and law enforcement. Offers a multitude of exercises and especially challenging daily workout regimens for hard-core trainers.
www.weightliftingdiscussion .com
A weight-lifting site for any level, including beginners. Contains a directory of exercises. Also provides links to other weight-training sites.
www.strengthcats.com
Another high-intensity lifting and training site with archived articles.
www.performbetter.com
Site that sells exercise products, but click on “Training Zone” to find links that describe and illustrate numerous exercises and drills.
www.mastersnews.com
The official site for U.S. Masters Track and Field.