Case Study: Aging
Dr. Bosak
EXSC 510: Advanced Exercise Physiology
Raekwon J. Parker
Liberty University
EXSC 510 1
So, at age 25, Nash Foundation was the world Decathlon champion and 30 years later, at
the age of 55, he presented to me with a concern for suppression of power, strength, speed,
cardiorespiratory endurance and muscle-mass. Mr Fountain was 150 lbs in 1977 at the time he
was the world Decathlon champion and 30 years later, still at 150 lbs. There are record numbers
of athletes older than age 50 who compete in competitive athletic events. These ‘masters
athletes’ represent sort of a unique subset of older adults; with selective physiological attributes
that can be described as, ‘successfully successful’ (meaning they can avoid various
manifestations of aging while still maintaining a fairly healthy prolonged life). This makes Mr
Fountain a member of the master class and he complains that he gets, ‘a decline in athletic
performances that he/she achieved at earlier ages’ (Powers and Howley, 2018).
Nash Fountain also expressed his concern that he does not have as much muscle-mass as
he used to.Strength does decrease on the order of 10 per cent between 20 and 50 years of age, but
then declines much faster after that. The fastest rate of decline in strength occurs after the age of
60 (Powers Howley, 2018). As is the case with strength, the decline in muscle mass related to
aging is, in part, related to less activity of older people, but the decrease in muscle mass
producing the very large loss in strength between ages 60 and 80 is actually due to the loss of
muscle mass in the first place, a disorder called sarcopenia (Powers Howley, 2018). Age-related
sarcopenia also results from a decrease in fiber diameter (size) as well as a decrease in the
number of muscle fibers present in the muscle (Powers Howley, 2018). Although changes in the
nervous system do occur with aging, much of the loss in strength with aging is due to a decline in
muscle mass (Powers Howley, 2018). Sarcopenia appears to be due, in part, to decreased use
(inactivity), free radical-mediated damage (oxidative stress) to muscle-fibers, inflammation and
anabolic hormone decreases (testosterone) (Powers Howley, 2018). The rate of loss of muscles
EXSC 510 2
with age varies from person to person, but both men and women appear to lose muscle at a rate
of 1-2 percent per year after age 50 (Powers Howley, 2018). Therefore, men and women can
lose 40-60 percent of their total muscle mass from age 50 to 80 (Powers Howley, 2018).
Consistent with concern expressed by Mr Fountain, however, there are some positives related to
muscle mass and aging. Although aging does result in a loss of muscle mass and strength in all
people, a lifetime programme of strength training can mostly maintain a high level of strength
across the life-span (Powers Howley, 2018). Exercise programmes for the older adult increase
cardiorespiratory fitness and strength and help to maintain the integrity of the bone (Powers
Howley, 2018).
Mr Fountain was presented with many reasons why muscle mass and strength decrease
with his age.Moving to bone health in the aging process we know that bone is dynamic tissue
that, adapted by the activity of osteoblasts, increases size and strength secondary to increases in
demand (Powers, 2018). When unchallenged by the body via inactivity (Powers, 2018) or unload
(aka lack of gravity) (Hoshizaki, 2018), it will be resorbed by osteoclasts, eliminating the tissue
secondary to its bone reintegration back into respective bloodstream often jeopardizing strength,
size and density (Powers, 2018). Nash should be entering an age splat that carries risk for
osteoporosis, the loss of bone mass, more common in women over the age of 50 years old. He
must continue to perform the proper amount of impact training to help offset any further bone
mass density decreases.
Similar to the loss of muscular strength over time, age does negatively impact endurance
performance and VOmax (Powers & Howley, 2018). Like muscular strength, VOmax also drops
drastically in aged trained men and women (Powers & Howley, 2018). What Nash may find
interesting is that age-related decline in VO2max is less in men and women than is the case of
EXSC 510 3
age-related decline in muscular strength. While men do lose 30% and women lose 20% in
VO2max by the time they reach the age of 70 and beyond, the actual decline is very small: 1%
loss for men and women each year starting after age 40 (Powers and Howley, 2018). The really
important thing that Nash should know at this point is that while endurance training will increase
the VOmax of anyone of any age, endurance exercise will not prevent the decline in VO2max
with advancing age (Powers & Howley, 2018). Never has there been a greater need for Nash to
begin a proper exercise regimen designed to improve his endurance performance. Primarily this
involves increasing his cardiac output, exercise economy and lactate threshold. The maximal
heart rate can lose as much as 60 beats per minute from the age of 20 through 60 (Powers &
Howley, 2018). Exercise economy is defined as the steady-state oxygen consumption when
exercising at a submaximal exercise intensity (for Nash, this would be just above the lactate
threshold) (Powers & Howley, 2018). There are several published studies that show there are no
important changes in exercise economy with age, thereby demonstrating that changes in
economy are not important to explain why endurance performance declines with age (Powers &
Howley, 2018). Finally, the lactate threshold is not altered with age when expressed relative to
the VO2max (Powers & Howley, 2018). Therefore, it is clear that age-related changes in the
lactate threshold are not a key factor to explain the decline in endurance performance with age
(Powers & Howley, 2018). Nash has just demonstrated that the most important factor that
impacts endurance performance or cardiorespiratory endurance is the VO2max. The lactate
threshold and exercise economy fail to negatively affect endurance.
Nash has also described feeling as if he’s lost both power and speed, and anaerobic power
is a part of speed, as explained below. Power and speed both come from cardiorespiratory
endurance or endurance performance. A key factor for evaluating maximal anaerobic power will
EXSC 510 4
be whether or not the test that is used employs the same muscle groups used for the sport (ie,
specificity), but also whether energy pathways needed for the performance of the event are
utilized. In general, training that is aimed at improving anaerobic power involves enhancing
either the ATP-PC system, or anaerobic glycolysis, otherwise known as the lactate system
(Powers and Howley, 2018). For many activities, the demand for immediate production of ATP
sometimes requires energy from both aerobic and anaerobic sources (Powers and Howley, 2018).
Anaerobic training occurs when the individual is at a level above his/her VO2max. High-
intensity anaerobic training of two to 10 seconds lengths have at times been referred to as speed
or sprint training whereas the term, speed endurance training, is used to describe longer forms of
anaerobic training by coaches, ranging over 10 seconds (Powers and Howley, 2018).
Mr. Nash Fountain, today, 30 years after being the world Champion in Decathlon, comes
to me, and he can’t do simple things like run fast and jump high. He has a lot of concerns in
areas such as speed, strength, power, and cardiorespiratory endurance and muscle mass. I gave
him multiple answers to what has happened to him. His body is aging! and all the different
changes your body experiences due to aging, but if you keep a training program, I will tell you, it
will help to slow these changes. The kind of training program I will instruct Mr. Nash to take is a
resistance training program. Resistance training was chosen to be the program due to all that has
been brought to the table, speed, strength, conditioning, and muscle mass. Resistance training are
movements performed against or resistance with an external weight or force that causes muscles
to contract and exert force against the resistance placed on them (Powers, Howley, Fountain
Tilson, 2018). The roles that both the nervous system and muscular growth plays in the
development of strength coming out of a resistance training program (Powers Howley, 2018). In
training studies over the short term ( 8 to 20 weeks), the adaptations from the nervous system
EXSC 510 5
such as learning, coordination, and the recruitment of the main muscle that are supposed to be
working (prime movers) are the main cause of the gain in strength (Powers Howley, 2018). In a
longer-duration training program, a gain in muscle size is a big factor in the development of
strength (Powers Howley, 2018). There’s nothing you can do to stop the years from going by,
but you can reduce the issues you’ve brought to the table. Nash Fountain can’t stop the years
from going by, but he can reduce the issues he has brought to the table with the resistance
training program brought to the table.
EXSC 510 6
References
Powers, S.K. and Howley, E. T. (2018) Exercise Physiology: Theory and application to fitness
and performance (10th Ed.). McGraw Hill
Raekwon J. Parker
