Frailty

I can recall a debate raging on the forum of a strength training site some years ago: which would be better for an elderly person, aerobic or strength training?  The aerobic work is critical for the heart and its ability to send blood and oxygen everywhere its needed, said one side.  The other maintained that strength, the capacity to exert force against external resistance, is critical for mobility and completing the everyday tasks of life.  Each side had to convince the other they weren’t speaking in extreme terms.  No, ‘we’re not talking about six minute miles in a 10-K,’  - or for that matter, squatting 400.  It was a question of sustained heightened metabolic activity versus sets and reps.  

It was around this time that I was at a YMCA to swim some laps.  In a nearby lane was a man well into his 70’s who was having a rough go of it.  Face down in the water, he couldn’t pull either arm out of the water to effect a stroke, and he certainly couldn’t extend them fully overhead.  He pulled himself along - barely - with painful looking half strokes.  The result was not a heightened metabolic output.  

The strength guys win that one, I thought.  Having limbs that can make it through their full range of motion is vital, and doing so against some degree of resistance is even better.  You can do all the things life might require of you, including aerobic work.  

My neighbor’s parents are visiting, which is why this memory came up.  They’re well into their 70’s, and unfortunately Grandma has become very frail.  The trip from the car to the front door is a major event, as as she slowly slides her feet in tiny steps.  She’s always been very thin, which didn’t matter too much when her trace amounts of muscle had some spring to them.  Recently, though, tissue has been lost, or its capacity to function has utterly deteriorated.  She can barely move her own limbs, let alone other things with them.  

My reaction is more impatience than sympathy.  The daughter this woman is visiting is a doctor who can no doubt list the dangers of sarcopenia: falls, fractures, osteoporosis, decreased activity, diabetes, and losses of function and independence. This doctor also drives past our garage everyday and sees either my wife, daughter, or me lifting weights, yet remains at a loss for a solution.  Of course, strength training is completely out of this family’s frame of reference.  We must seem as strange as a family trapeze act in the circus.  Then again, they’re the ones with a problem they can’t solve.  This brand of frailty, which could very possibly be an unnecessary weakness and decline when nothing else is actually killing this poor woman, strikes me as a frailty of the mind first and foremost.

This type of judgment goes through everybody’s mind, but polite people keep it to themselves.  I could also be wrong; a serious health condition might have brought this about - so in that case, this is not her fault.  To some degree, that is.  In a health crisis (or otherwise) how can an increasingly impaired person not be desperate to rage, rage against the dying of the light?  

As a strength athlete at the age of 56, I can attest that strength levels on various lifts rise and fall like the levels on a stereo equalizer display.  My benches, as described, were stalled by shoulder pain until a coaching cue fixed my form.  That piriformis trouble I mentioned might actually be a problem in my high hamstring.  I’ve had to switch to box squats and rack pulls for squats and deads, respectively.  They’re not ideal, but they’re decent alternatives.  

The point is that you still have to train.  You still have to struggle physically - and in some cases mentally, coming up with new bases for improvement.  From all the podcasts I listen to as I lift, I’ve gathered that I have to expand my horizons to new training modalities, which means new exercises and different rep schemes.  I can’t go though life with diminishing strokes or steps, sticking with only one author’s view of the world after it’s run its course.  

Injuries, age, and training immunity happen.  Luckily, the first benefit of getting out in the garage and under the bar is overcoming mental frailty.