The centenarian decathlon came about through the idea, not of forecasting one's physical future, but by backcasting or reverse engineering it.
What ten "events" would you like to be able to complete as you age?
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Welcome back to Get-Fit Guy, Coach Kevin Don here, destroyer of fitness fallacies! This week I received an interesting email from a listener that I thought could make a good episode, so let's get into it.
Mary writes:
“Love the podcast and your own take on it! I’m always learning something new.
“I recently read a book that introduced an idea to me called the ‘centenarian decathlon’— not a literal decathlon for the extremely old, but the ten ‘events’ you personally would like to do as you get old. For example, you might include getting up from the ground by yourself if you fall or avoiding such a fall through improved reflexes when you stumble.
“Then you have to train for those events are much as you would for a marathon, a through-hike, or powerlifting competition, only you need to train over the course of decades instead of weeks or months.
“The author includes some of his individual hobbies, like archery, in his own centenarian decathlon, and other special interests, like being able to carry a grandchild or dash through an airport to make a connection, might be important individual lifestyle goals for different people.
“What do you think would be worthwhile ‘events’ to train for and how would you train for them or help someone else train for them while still middle-aged?”
Mary, thanks for this great email. I feel that it embodies everything I have been discussing around fitness. That is, the idea that fitness is an absence of disease or injury and that functional fitness, rather than the latest buzzword, should actually be the expression of a defined physical function.
The centenarian decathlon came about through the idea, not of forecasting one's physical future, but by backcasting or reverse engineering it. In my own coaching practice, I hear a lot of catastrophic forecasting. The idea that running is bad for your knees, that eventually muscle will turn to fat, or that at a certain age, you can’t perform many physical tasks. People have been made to fear aging and are willing to accept this degradation rather than resisting. Well, I’m here to tell you that “resistance is not futile!” Bonus points if you caught the Star Trek reference there.
In her email, Mary asked me what I thought worthwhile events would be to train for and how to train for them. Well, I’ll answer the first part of that in a moment, but as for the second part, get ready for a very unsatisfactory answer: I don't know.
I don't know because in order to train for an outcome, we have to know what the current ability is to express that outcome. If the goal is to run a marathon, one person may currently be doing no running at all and have no sporting history, whilst another may have been a varsity athlete 40 years ago and spent the last four decades playing multiple sports. How each of these avatars would train would be totally different, so I can't answer questions like that. Anyone that says they can is lying.
But for the first part: What do I think would be worthwhile events? I can definitely make a good stab at answering that.
Again, if you have been listening to my Get-Fit Guy episodes, I have already introduced the idea that there are ten physical skills: strength, speed, power, stamina, endurance, coordination, accuracy, agility, balance, and flexibility.
So, if you are asking me the best ten events or outcomes to train for, then my answer would be to do something that falls into each one of those categories. This way, we can ensure we aren't biasing any one thing and that we truly have a broad and general ability to perform different tasks that life may throw at us. We call these ADLs or Activities of Daily Living.
ADLs include but are not limited to: bathing and showering, dressing, functional motility (getting in and out of bed, in and out of a chair, moving from one place to another), self-feeding, and so on.
So, having a look at each of the categories, what are some things we could train towards that would help us to better express each physical skill?
Strength: As mentioned many times on this show, strength is crazy important for the aging phenotype because the main side effect of getting older is sarcopenia or loss of muscle mass. So here, some form of strength expression in each of the motor patterns would be really admirable: squat, lunge, push, pull, bend, and core.
Speed: Speed is actually an expression on the strength continuum. It’s right at the top of the hierarchy in terms of how far it is from base level. That is, it is the last piece of the strength puzzle because it depends on the ability to engage all the motor units at once in an explosive event. So, this means that training strength will be critical to developing speed. We’ll measure speed outcomes by looking at things like your “all out” effort when rowing or biking for 30 seconds, or a 100-meter sprint.
Power: Also known as strength speed, it won’t come as a surprise that it depends on both strength and speed. I’ll let you in on a little-known secret here and one of my favorite self-coined expressions: “You can’t express what you don’t possess.” If we head into functional fitness facilities up and down the country, we will see clients being asked to perform movements like the power clean. If you don’t have any strength or speed, you will find it difficult to perform a power-based movement. However, once some prerequisite strength and speed have been developed, then weightlifting movements like the power clean and the snatch, either with a barbell or with implements like a sandbag, kettlebell, or dumbbells, are great expressions of power
Stamina: Defined as the ability of a muscle or group of muscles to keep doing work at a high percentage of maximal effort. Here we would be looking at something which is high effort and aerobically unsustainable, like a 400-meter run, a 500-meter row, or something around the 90-second to 2-minute mark, after which we see a dramatic drop off in performance.
Endurance: This would be the ability to keep going in a sustainable, aerobic environment. Something where our bodies are creating energy faster than we are using it up, like a long hike. What would be a good goal? Maybe a planned future trek to Machu Picchu or a Great Lakes swim, a desert ultra marathon at the top end, a 10km run or a short triathlon, or even a walk to the closest coffee shop rather than driving.
Coordination: The ability to use our hands and eyes together to achieve tasks, to know where we are in space with a view to interaction between ourselves and an object. I think that anything here which makes us use both sides of our body is important. I play martial arts, so I can say for sure that judo, karate, and boxing are useful and if that sounds a bit rough, tai chi is also a great option. As are activities where we have to interact with objects, especially moving ones… so think about things like badminton, table tennis, or juggling!
Accuracy: The ability to perform skills with precision, usually being able to direct ourselves or an object towards a small target area. Just like in the author’s example from the email, I would say archery is awesome for this, but also things such as golf or even those games where one of several buttons on a board lights up and you have to touch the right one. Fun.
Agility: Being able to quickly change direction and speed, especially in response to an external stimulus. Think about a goalkeeper in soccer moving across the goal face to intercept the ball, or a tennis player changing direction across the baseline or rushing the net. Boxers and football players also do directional speed change work by doing things like ladder runs. I’d even say things like ballroom or Latin dancing involve agility because of the directional footwork changes.
Balance: The ability to keep your line of balance over the middle of your base of support or center of mass. Playing judo, this is the key concept—you win by off-balancing your opponent, which allows you to execute a throw or a sweep. Therefore, I would say that is a great way to learn and improve balance—and before you “@” me, we have a 75-year-old man over here with no marital arts experience who just took the sport up! Other things that can improve balance could be slacklining, dancing, riding a bike, or learning to ride a horse!
Flexibility: The ability of a joint or series of joints to move through an unrestricted and full range of motion. A super important skill, especially as we age. I already notice my flexibility decreasing although I’m still practicing a flexibility-inclusive sport. So if we aren’t doing anything for range of motion, the degradation of performance will be much larger. Here, we could look at trying to perform yoga poses, the splits, to gain a full range of motion in a squat, and so on.
What exercises would you include in your centenarian decathlon? I’d be super interested to hear your ideas!
If you have any question about training as you age or just want to say hi, head over to the Get-Fit Guy Facebook page or send me an email at getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com