For most of my adult life I practiced traditional Japanese martial arts. The Japanese philosophy was that it should be a lifelong endevour - always seaking to break down weaknesses and limitations and to improve. Concequently, you’d witness the aging process of people around you over the long term.
What I saw was some people performing like 20 year olds well into their 60’s - many still doing great at 80. But very many - equally hard training people - hitting a brick wall at around 40 years old and just not being able to fight it. I always swore I’d be one of the people that kept improving for life. I was obsessive about it and researched training to hold off the aging process at length.
However, at age 42 I went from feeling great - in the best shape of my life to a siezed up hip and a whole bunch of mobility problems overnight. I’d hit that brick wall. And I couldn’t fight it. I was diagnosed with hip OA but I never accepted the diagnosies (probably because of years of indoctirination into the Japanese obsession with failure to accept weakness and human frailty).
Anyway, 9 years further on - aged 51 and I’ve pretty much reversed all the mobility issues. Not really down to age as it turned out, but rather that by age 40 a life of bad habits and incorrect movement patterns has had long enough to hit critical mass and the body starts to tighten up in order to stabilise us. If we can avoid or reverse these imbalances I believe we can keep going at close to our young adult potential well into old age.
I think perhaps a key consideration when we get older ISN’T to train smart, lower our sights and so on - but rather to accept that the older we get the more the phrase ‘use it or loose it’ holds true. Early in adult life mother nature is working hard to build our bodies. We don’t have to work hard at getting strong and fit. But by the mid 20’s the decline is starting in pretty much all aspects of fitness - UNLESS we train train to prevent/reverse it.
A big problem is that unless we train ALL muscles in our body we are essentially creating an imbalance. The muscle we work get stronger; the muscles we don’t work atrophy fast. For training longevity I think it’s important to train ALL movements, muscles, energy systems and so on.
So, that sets a bit of background to the thinking behind my question.
Take a look at these videos of elderly gymnasts.
An 86 year old woman peforming a routine on parallel bars - including a planche.
A 63 year old man peforming an awesome iron cross on rings.
Yet both of these people are frail and unstable on their feet (by comparison to upper body) as you can see from the man’s vault later on in his video and the woman’s bench/beam routine below.
Why? Gymnasts need to have a huge amount of explosive power in their legs. They have to jump several feet in the air to do tumbles etc. Why are they holding onto upper body strength/balance etc but not lower body? What’s missing from their training?
Any thoughts anyone?