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Power Aging

Who says you can't get better with age? All you need is a little foresight, the right attitude and the will to do the work.

How do you see yourself at age 65? If you're like the average American, you will probably have retired from your job – and your fitness routine. Imagine it: A spare tire has settled around your midsection, so your knees hurt more than they used to, and even a 45-minute walk can wear you out. Opening a jar is like unscrewing a manhole cover. Your balance is poor so you have to be careful navigating over something as simple as a quarter-inch-high throw rug. And forget about touching your toes – on a good day, you might reach your shins.

That's most definitely not how George Amundson sees himself. While other men his age are settling into sedentary lives, Amundson, 64, is training for the Ironman Triathlon World Championships. "I have a decent chance in the 65 to 70 age group," he says, matter-of-factly. He already knows he can complete the 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and 26.2-mile run, because last year, at the sprightly age of 63, he entered the competition as a lottery selection and finished the race in 16 hours, 12 minutes.

Amundson has been active his whole life, although he says he "kicked it up a notch" at age 40 when he began to run competitively. But his commitment to stay in shape really showed itself when he attended his 40th high school reunion a few years ago. "I saw a bunch of old people. Most were overweight and out of shape," he says. "By not staying active, they let themselves get old." Amundson, on the other hand, is often mistaken for the same age as his wife, who is 46. "I'm in as good or better shape than I was when I was in my 20s," he says.

While Amundson is certainly an exceptional case, his accomplishments highlight one significant point – getting older doesn't have to mean getting feeble. In fact, like a good bottle of red wine, your body can actually get better with age.

Yes, your physiology naturally changes as the decades tick by, but you don't have to sit back and watch your health and vitality quietly fade away. No matter what your current age or physical condition, with proper care and attention you can regain and maintain an exceptional level of fitness. Embrace the right combination of good nutrition and regular, intensive exercise – or any activity that gets your heart pumping and your muscles warm – and you may even feel and look healthier at 45 than you did at 25. The secret: Start wherever you are now, and don't ever stop.

Prescription for Long-Term Fitness
"Breaking into a sweat regularly is a crucial part of becoming and staying a healthy person," says Ralph Brovard, MD, a sports medicine specialist at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, Minn. "People forget exercise is medicine. Daily exercise is perhaps the most powerful tool you can prescribe for yourself; a variety of regular activity helps prevent cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, arthritis and just about every other affliction that strikes us as we age."

To wit: A study from Northwestern University followed 5,115 men and women, ages 18 to 30, for 15 years. Those who were highly fit (determined by a preset treadmill test) were half as likely to develop diabetes, hypertension, excess abdominal fat and high blood pressure. Moving up one decade, another study, conducted by Dutch researchers on 3,457 Massachusetts residents spanning 34 years, found that people overweight at age 40 (body mass index [BMI] of 25 and above) lived, on average, three years fewer than their more fit counterparts. Obese people (a BMI of 30 or above) have a life span shortened by six or seven years. Finally, a 2001 study from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas on men in their early 50s discovered that six months of modest exercise (about 4.5 hours a week) brought their cardiovascular capacity back to the levels it was at in their 20s. In effect, six months of training reversed 30 years of aging.

Does this inspire you to get moving? Here's a look at what happens to the body during the different phases of life, and more important, exercise strategies you can use to clear the hurdles.

The 30s: What, Me Worry?
OK, the bad news first. Your VO2 max, the amount of oxygen your body can deliver to your muscles, peaks at about age 25, as does your lung capacity and muscle mass. Similarly, your fast-twitch muscle fibers – the ones responsible for sprinting, jumping and making other quick movements – also begin to shrink in your mid-20s.

In your 30s, unless you conduct evasive maneuvers (read on for those), you can expect to experience something called somatopause a nice word for "middle-age spread." This syndrome results from a decrease in the body's production of human growth hormone (HGH) and is marked by a slowing of metabolism, an increase in body fat and a loss of lean muscle, among other things.

The good news: If you are willing to do some intense, threshold-level cardio exercise (the kind that gets you totally out of breath), you can get your body to release substantial amounts of HGH and reverse the trend. This sort of speed work can also help you conserve and rebuild fast-twitch muscle. Throw in some weightlifting and flexibility work, clean up your diet, and you might well end up in better shape than you were in college.

Making time for focused fitness pursuits while dealing with the demands of a new family and career can be tough, though. The typical day of a 30-something is brutal: Get up at the break of dawn; wolf down a bagel to be out the door by 7:30 a.m.; work, work, work, and get home just in time to tuck the kids into bed before collapsing on the couch. This is the kind of schedule that can quickly put the clamps on a once-active lifestyle.

"The biggest exercise challenge for people in their 30s is lack of time," confirms A. Lynn Millar, PhD, a physical therapy professor at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Mich. "Your body can easily handle the level of activity you had during college, but most people simply can't find the hours in the day."

You've probably heard all the usual "find-the-time" advice: Get up early and exercise; schedule a workout into your daily plan just as you would a dentist appointment; find a workout buddy. All of those are effective, but another strategy that sometimes gets overlooked is to find something you really love. You'll be surprised at how much easier it is to find time for an activity you actually enjoy, and how powerfully this can springboard into other areas of fitness.

That's what happened to Tom Koenig, 39. A self-described gym rat for most of his 20s, Koenig got bored with fitness when he hit his 30s – so much that he gradually worked out less and less. That all changed, though, when he bought a mountain bike on a whim and was immediately hooked on flying through the trails outside his home in Denver. Later he switched tire sizes and joined one of Colorado's top cycling teams, Wheatridge Cycling.

Even though he works full time as an engineer and is newly married, his fitness never falters because his bike always keeps him moving. "When I plan my day, there is no question of whether or not I'm going to exercise," he says. "It's just a question of when."

Oughta Know: After 30, inactive people lose 10 percent of their VO2 max with each decade. But if you're working out at least five hours a week, you're slowing that loss by as much as half. Why does this matter? Because a poor VO2 max means you won't be able to go as hard or as long as you used to. You can minimize the loss by pushing your heart rate into the 90 percent zone at least once a week with interval training (like one minute really hard, one minute easy on the treadmill and repeating the cycle 10 times).

Weightlifting significantly slows the loss of muscle mass, as well as the loss of bone mass, which can decline as much as 4 percent a decade in your 30s and 40s, and then accelerates to a whopping 10 percent for each decade thereafter. Barring some focused work on your part, you can expect to see your one-repetition max decline as much as 1.5 percent annually.


Gotta Do: The upside is that it doesn't take a huge amount of time to maintain a decent fitness level: 90 minutes of aerobic activity and 60 minutes of weight training weekly will do it.

Millar recommends following a variation of the American College of Sports Medicine's prescription for exercise: 30 to 60 minutes of cardiovascular exercise, three to five days a week, with your heart rate at 70 to 90 percent of maximum. (Note that while max-heart-rate calculation methods [such as 220 minus your age] can offer gross estimates, getting an accurate figure generally requires a physical test of some kind. A V02-max test is considered the gold standard; for alternate methods, consult a trainer.)

Phil Campbell, MS, MA, an expert on the applications of exercise-induced human growth hormone (HGH) and author of Ready, Set, Go! Synergy Fitness for Time-Crunched Adults (Pristine Publishers, 2003), strongly suggests employing sprint sessions in order to catalyze your body's release of HGH, which he describes as "the most powerful fat-cutting, muscle-building, anti-aging substance known to science." His prescription: 20-minute sessions that incorporate eight all-out sprints of no longer than 30 seconds each, with recovery periods in between, performed at least two or three times a week. Each sprint should take you to your lactate threshold (the point where your muscles burn and you're breathless). It doesn't matter whether you run, bike, jump or swim to get there, says Campbell, and it's fine to build your sprint sessions into your longer cardio sessions, if you like.

In addition to cardio, aim for two to three days a week of strength training. Do three sets of eight to 10 exercises that hit all the major muscle groups (squats, lunges, hamstring curls, chest presses, lat pull-downs, biceps curls, triceps dips, back extensions and crunches is a good basic routine). "You can modify the requirements to fit your schedule," notes Millar. "Two 20-minute bouts of moderate exercise instead of one 40-minute workout are fine."

In Your 40s: Pay Attention to Your Body
During your 40s, there are still no limits to what you can do, as long as you do it intelligently. The basic needs in this decade aren't unlike those in any other – sweat, lift and stretch. But as your muscles become tighter and more prone to injury and (if you are a woman) the threat of osteoporosis enters the picture, a balanced routine of weight-bearing aerobic exercise, stretching and resistance training becomes even more important.

If you're just making a new commitment to being healthy, a fitness to-do list that incorporates strength, balance, flexibility and endurance may seem like a lot to cover, but don't be intimidated. Start with something, and your desire to expand your fitness repertoire will very likely increase.

Prior to turning 40, the only exercise Janet Mills got was pushing the accelerator pedal during carpools as a stay-at-home mom. Then her husband, Tony, took up running and, in order to spend more time with him, she tagged along. "I ran a quarter of a mile and thought I was going to die," says Janet, now 47. "I'd never done anything physical."

Gradually, though, both her mileage and enjoyment increased, and she set a goal for herself: a half-marathon. She completed it at age 41, has since finished four full marathons and now feels "the best I ever have, both mentally and physically. My 16-year-old daughter asked me the other day, 'How come you don't get any older?'"

Mills eventually turned her sights to the More Marathon, the first marathon exclusively for women over 40, which was held in New York City this past March. Mills gathered together 20 women, ages 40 to 62, most of whom had never run a step in their lives, to train for the half-marathon event.

Oughta Know: Mills's training strategy – begin slowly, and gradually increase the amount of work – is a smart one for anyone beginning a fitness routine.

"Take time to get your body adapted to the workload," advises Millar. "You want to taste some success. If you feel beaten up after every workout session, you'll end up quitting."

While it's fine to concentrate on one sport in your 40s, cross-training is key to minimizing future aches and pains and avoiding overuse injuries, such as swimmer's shoulder or tennis elbow. Avoid regimens – including sports-specific ones – that overemphasize one muscle group over another.

"I compare muscle balance to a wheel," says sports-medicine physician Brovard, who, at age 51, swims on a master's team, competes in cross-country skiing races and cycles regularly. "The different spokes are analogous to muscle groups: any spoke that is too tight or weak causes the whole wheel to wobble."

If you're a sport-specific athlete, Brovard recommends cross-training at least once a week to give your oft-used muscles a break.

"Surprise your muscles regularly," he advises. Otherwise you risk hitting a plateau; you'll stop seeing improvement, and your muscles will become complacent.

Gotta Do: Weight training becomes even more important in your 40s. Osteoporosis, a disease that makes you vulnerable to fragile and broken bones, becomes a real threat in the next decade and beyond. According to the National Osteoporosis Foundation, an estimated 10 million people (8 million women and 2 million men) already have the disease and 44 million Americans – or nearly 55 percent of people age 50 and older – are at risk for it.

There are three easy ways to keep yourself from joining that club: 1) Weight train at least twice a week to build up the muscles around the bone; 2) consume a diet rich in calcium – at least 1,000 mg a day for both women and men, 1,200 mg for ages 50 and older; and 3) get adequate vitamin D (a good excuse to spend a little time in the sun). But don't think some extra milk or a sunbath will make up for lost workouts. "You need to stress your body with exercise for the calcium you ingest to be incorporated into your bones," says Brovard.

Also consider working on another key for both athletic performance and daily life: proprioception, or balance. Incorporate a fitness ball or wobble pad into your routine, or work at standing on one foot with your eyes closed – anything that challenges your sense of equilibrium.

Power, which is the combination of reaction time and strength, is perhaps more important to develop than raw strength at this stage. Why? You tend to lose 20 percent of your power per decade compared to about 10 percent of your strength. "If you don't practice moving your limbs fast, they won't react when you need them to catch yourself when you fall," says Jessie Jones, PhD, director of the Center for Successful Aging at California State University, Fullerton.

Here are some easy ways to build power: After doing one set of weight exercises, lighten the load and then perform a set faster than usual. For those with healthy knees and backs, you can do a light plyometric routine: exercises like jumping rope, skipping and hopping on one foot are effective at building power in your lower half.

Finally, devote at least 15 minutes to proper stretching after your workouts or between sessions when possible. Better yet, take a yoga class a few times per week. Although the amount of flexibility you lose with age isn't easily quantifiable, experts know that when it declines, connective tissue in your body deteriorates, and as a result, your knee, hip and shoulder joints take the brunt of the impact that was formerly dispersed to nearby muscles.

Jones suggests daily stretching of the hip muscles and hamstrings, which shorten the most over the years, as well as your shoulders, lower back and neck to counteract the inevitable computer-hunch that only worsens with age.

"There's no reason why you can't perform as well at 45 as you did at 30," says Brovard. So aim high, but keep an ear tuned to your body. You want to stay active long into the future, right?

50s and Beyond: Don't Slow Down
It's never too late to get going. Really. For proof, flash back to triathlete Amundson, who, like Mills, also began running at age 40 and who has since completed nine marathons, a handful of half-marathons and a couple rim-to-rim hikes of the Grand Canyon. At age 59, he began to bike competitively and overcame his fear of swimming so that he could compete in triathlons. In addition to his regular training, he has also stayed active with general calisthenics and now, at 64, is arguably the fittest he has ever been.

Oughta Know: Unfortunately, if you are like most 50-plus people, you may believe you're too old to begin working out. "Only about one in four people over the age of 50 exercise," says Colin Milner, CEO of the International Council of Active Aging. However, if you commit right now to get in about five hours of exercise a week – not much, considering the average American watches 20 hours of television weekly – you'll see the results almost immediately.

"The human body is extremely resilient," says aging expert Jessie Jones. "It will respond to the demands you place on it, no matter what your age."

Gotta Do: Milner asserts that you can regain your strength in as little as 14 weeks of resistance work on strength-training machines, and the aforementioned University of Texas study on men in their early 50s found that cardiovascular health can be improved significantly in just six months. Exercisers over age 50, though, should pay attention to a few specifics. First up is arthritis, a disease that afflicts 43 million Americans and is particularly problematic for folks over 50. Although exercise can help keep arthritis at bay, if you sustained a serious sports-related injury when you were younger, you may be feeling the effects of arthritis sooner (see "Fighting Inflammation," page 44). So, to prevent arthritis from hampering your workout efforts, be sure to follow a good warm-up routine before diving into any activity, advises Millar, who also wrote Action Plan for Arthritis (Human Kinetics, 2003).

Then there's core strength, which you can improve in the weight room through abdominal and back exercises. Better core strength and a continued focus on improving balance can help you reduce your chance of taking a fall.

"Every year, one out of three people over the age of 65 fall and sustain some kind of fracture," says Milner. According to the National Osteoporosis Foundation, 24 percent of people over the age of 50 who have fractured their hip from a fall die in the year following their injury.

Women especially should hit the weights during this time: In the five to seven years after menopause (which, for the average American woman, kicks in around age 51), they can lose up to 20 percent of their bone mass.

"One-half of postmenopausal women have osteopenia, the beginning of osteoporosis," says Milner. Males fare much better, losing only 0.4 percent of bone mass per year.

As you look to the future, realize that if you're still active in the second half of your life, you can keep it up for many years to come. "Most Americans have about 10 years at the end of their lives where they need help doing daily tasks," says Brovard. "A person who has been active can compress that span to about three years."

Your fifth decade of life isn't a bad time to go on an exercise kick. In fact, for many people, the freedom they experience later in life – from having their kids out of the house and being more secure in their careers – delivers a powerful impetus and opportunity to make fitness a priority.

That said, if you have been exercising regularly since your 20s, go ahead and pat yourself on the back. A 1999 study from San Diego State University followed a group of 45-year-old men who had been active for most of their lives (for 25 to 33 years) and concluded that exercise "has a favorable effect on aging of the cardiovascular system, resulting in minimal loss of oxygen uptake, no rise in resting blood pressure and no change in body composition."

Translation: They were nearly as fit at 70 as they were at 45. And when you picture yourself in the future, isn't that what you'd like to see?

Dimity McDowell is a freelance writer based in Santa Fe, N.M.