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Exercise after age 70.

Article Excerpt
There are no official fitness guidelines for older women, but the basics are the same at every age.

The average 65-year-old can expect to reach her 85th birthday, and the average 75-year-old will live to age 87. How we'll celebrate those birthdays -- as the life of the party or immobilized on the sidelines -- has a lot to do with how we spend our time today. Although none of us can be certain that we'll be spared debilitating disorders that could rob us of our mobility, there's no doubt that regular exercise will help improve our ability to function at almost any age or level of fitness.

Why exercise is essential

During the 1970s, several studies of healthy older people indicated that strength, stamina, and flexibility drop significantly after age 55. For example, the Framingham Disability Study found that 62% of women ages 75 to 85 had difficulty kneeling or stooping; 66% couldn't lift more than 10 pounds; and 42% were unable to stand for more than 15 minutes.

These declines were once considered an inevitable consequence of aging. But a landmark study published in 1994 by Harvard and Tufts researchers showed that many functional losses could be reversed, even in the frailest and oldest women. In that study, 100 nursing-home residents, ages 72 to 98, performed resistance exercises three times a week for 10 weeks. At the end of that time, the exercise group could lift significantly more weight, climb more stairs, and walk faster and farther than their sedentary counterparts, who continued to lose strength and muscle mass. Concurrently, researchers with the MacArthur Study of Aging in America, a 10-year investigation of healthy aging, were finding that people in their 70s and 80s could become more physically fit, even...