Can Regular Sports Participation Slow the Aging Process? Data on Masters Athletes

Abstract

In brief: Even moderate sports participation is associated with enhanced functional capacity, according to data collected on 554 men and 202 women who underwent maximal exercise testing during the 1985 World Masters Games in Toronto. Their training was modest relative to elite competitors. Nevertheless, their peak power output during cycle ergometry and peak oxygen intake were above the norm for nonathletes of the same age, resembling the values of sedentary 25-year-olds. Such gains have major implications for maintaining independence in the later years of life. Thus encouraging older people to increase their physical activity would seem an important public health measure.

Endurance performance in masters athletes

“…VO 2max is estimated to decline approximately 10% per decade after the age of 25 years in healthy sedentary aging individuals [15]. An age-related reduction in VO 2max has also been well documented in both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of male and female endurance athletes undertaking high levels of endurance training into older age [11,32,40,42,48,53,56,57,71,72,78,106,108], suggesting that some decrease in VO 2max appears inevitable with aging, despite physical training into older age. However, the rates of decline in VO 2max have been reported to be reduced [54,55,78], similar [108], or greater [47,71] than age-matched sedentary individuals.…”

“…HR max has been shown to decrease in both males and females [47] at the same rate in both aging athletes and sedentary populations [54,56,57,71,72,108] at approximately one beat per year after the age of 10 years. Hawkins et al [47] examined longitudinal changes in VO 2max , HR max , and training volume in 86 male (53.9± 1.1 year) and 49 female (49.1±1.2 year) masters endurance runners over an 8.5-year period.…”

“…Similarly, the observed age-related decrease in HR max has been suggested to be the major contributor to the age-related reduction in VO 2max in both male and female endurance athletes [48,57,71,108]. Heath et al [48] examined 16 highly trained masters endurance athletes (59±6 year), 16 young trainingmatched athletes, and 18 untrained controls.…”

Protein Needs of Older Adults Engaged in Resistance Training: A Review

“…On the other hand, protein needs for mature adults in RT might be lower than for younger individuals because of the decrease in whole-body protein turnover and protein synthesis with aging (Morais et al, 1997;Nair, 1995) and because older individuals do not train with the same intensity or duration as younger people (Kavanagh & Shephard, 1990;Walter, Hart, Sutton, McIntosh, & Gauld, 1988). For those reasons, Sacheck and Roubenoff (1999) .…”

Revisiting the Health and Wellness Benefits of Lifetime Sports to Aging Individuals 25 Years Later

“…Another senior athlete of that time period is still competing at the age of 80. Data collected at the 1985 World Master's Games in Toronto [2] found that even those older athletes who only participated marginally enjoyed higher levels of overall health and well-being than their more sedentary counterparts. Master Athletes who train vigorously for athletic competitions resemble many younger athletes in terms of such D DAVID PUBLISHING factors as aerobic power, lower blood pressure, and lean body mass [3,4].…”