Over 65 and exercising? Try mixing it up

Exercising over 65 is not just about your heart. You also need to work on your strength, balance and coordination.

If you're over 65 and exercising regularly, give yourself a pat on the back.

Being active is one of the best ways to boost your odds of ageing well, by keeping you mentally healthy and free of disease and disability. And it helps even if you start late in life.

But many older exercisers do only one activity and risk missing out on some important health benefits.

That's a key finding of a recent study, published in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, which looks at the leisure time physical activity of more than 22,000 older Australians.

The study, which focused specifically on those over 65, shows around two thirds of older people are exercising, with most of them favouring aerobic activity – usually walking.

Just over 45 per cent reported walking, with more than half of these people reporting walking as their sole activity. Only 2.6 per cent of people in the study reported a combination of balance, strength and aerobic (heart and lung fitness) activities.

Walking for your health

Walking is great for conditioning our heart and lungs, but as we get older we need to protect more than just our cardiovascular system, says Associate Professor Dafna Merom, lead author of the study.

"I don't want to suggest walking is not good; it is excellent exercise," Merom says.

Walking regularly at a pace brisk enough that you can just hold a conversation cuts your risk of a range of chronic health conditions.

If you walk for:

• 30 minutes (you can even break these down into 10-minute sessions) five days a week, you reduce your risk of heart disease by as much as 40 per cent and your risk of type 2 diabetes.
• 60 minutes a day, you reduce your risk of heart disease by as much as 50 per cent and help protect against bowel cancer, plus breast cancer if you are a woman or prostate cancer if you are a man.

When walking is not enough

But walking "may not provide optimal protection for other age-related health conditions such as falls and injuries," says Merom, from the University of Western Sydney.

Falls are a significant cause of disability – and sometimes death – in older people.

To protect against falls, you need to challenge your sense of balance with activities such as dance and tai chi. Unfortunately, the study found in the previous 12 months only 2.1 per cent of older people danced and only 1.4 per cent did tai chi.

"We only have proof [of a protective effect against falls] for tai chi," Merom says. "We know, however, that dance has great potential and we are doing the study now. Walking has not yet been shown to have a proven benefit for preventing falls."

Interestingly, research has shown dance and tai chi may be better than traditional Western exercise or walking for maintaining cognitive function (the thought processes in our brains), Merom says.

Walking also provides little protection against the weakening of bones in post-menopausal women, she says. "Walking is a low impact exercise so it's not optimal for strengthening bones."

While older people's participation in more than one activity increased in the period covered by the study, between 2001 and 2009, it seems that as individuals get older, they become less likely to do (or keep doing) multiple activities.

"We don't know why, but it is important to find it out," Merom says.

She says there needs to be more research to figure out which single activities older people can do that will help to improve different aspects of fitness at the same time.

So what are older Australians doing?

Walking was the most popular activity, reported by 45.6 per cent of the elderly, followed by:

• bowls (9.4 per cent)
• aerobics/callisthenics (9.1 per cent)
• golf (7.7 per cent)
• swimming (6.4 per cent)
• gym workouts (5.2 per cent)
• cycling (3.2 per cent)
• tennis (2.9 per cent)
• dancing (2.1 per cent)
• fishing (2 per cent)
• tai chi (1.4 per cent)
• weight lifting (1.2 per cent)
• yoga (1.1 per cent)

For those who did two activities in the past 12 months, the most common combinations for men were walking with either

• golf (13 per cent)
• lawn bowls (8.1 per cent)
• swimming (6.8 per cent)
• cycling (5.4 per cent)

The most common combinations for women were walking with

• aerobics/callisthenics (7.3 per cent)
• swimming (5.5 per cent)
• lawn bowls (3.7 per cent)
• golf (2.7 per cent)

The bottom line

The bottom line for those over 65 is:

• If you're not doing any activity, try to take up at least one. Not being active is a large part of why our health deteriorates after 65.
• Walking is great exercise, but if it's your only activity, think about another more complex activity, such as dance or tai chi, that will help protect your balance, coordination, concentration and attention as well as being good for your heart. Engaging your brain at the same time as you exercise seems to be the key. For instance, "cyber cycling" – cycling on a stationary bike while looking at a display of a virtual environment has been shown to better improve cognitive (thinking) performance than simply cycling on a stationary bike.
• Activities such as yoga (or just stretching exercises) can build flexibility (to help with everyday activities like cleaning and getting dressed), and weight training can build muscle strength (necessary for most everyday activities, even getting in and out of a chair).
• If you haven't been active for a while, you might need to start with less than 30 minutes a day and build up from there. 

READ MORE: abc.net.au