Strong and Vital No 4

How Do I Actively and Intensively Train People 90plus?

A Report from Sylvia Gattiker, Expert in Senior Training

Those who work in the prevention field believe they provide enough training for the older generation. Right, because muscles can be trained at any age and therefore the laws and methods of muscle training are appli cable - provided you master them. Wrong, because there are aspects that need to be considered.

Training programmes and updating in this area are ridi culous if not inexistent. When I approached various insti tutions, the only answer I got was that this business was not lucrative enough, the demand was scarce and they were already offereing good training programmes. To put it provocatively, you do not earn any money with «healthy old people». Keeping the «sick elderly» alive for as long as possible is a way to make money for institu tions and pharmaceutical companies. Poor humanity, if people no longer count for anything. Our healthcare systems face new challenges, which make health promotion even more important, provided the concept is clear. Here are three changes that have taken place: • New living conditions and lifestyles have led to a change in diseases: more chronic diseases (chronic inflammation and degenerative diseases) as opposed to infectious diseases. • A changed understanding of health: health cannot be achieved with medical care, instead nutrition and exer cise, especially muscle training have a key role. • Direct participation and shared responsibility of each individual are required: people should have a greater degree of self-determination over their health . To do so however, competence and a basic know ledge are needed, the awareness that the matter is serious and the will to really change something. To explain why I believe that knowledge is totally inad equate, I cite the experience of Charles Eugster (1919 2017): «Nothing but silence around me, I stand in my starting row, my eyes fixed on my star ting blocks and the 200 metre oval in front of me. Every muscle in me is tense and my heart is pounding. Then the magic words «On your marks». I position myself in the starting blocks and my adrenalin level rises. I am 95 years old (2014) and running in an indoor athletics stadium for the first time.

Next to me are the runners with spiked shoes and great outfits. I’m an amateur, running in a pair of old, comfortable snea kers, but I have the ambition to win!» These were the thoughts of Dr Charles Eugster before his dream run over 200 metres indoors. On that occa sion, he broke the old world record and set a new mark. I met Charles Eugster when he was 89. He wanted to take part in a fitness competition and called me. Howe ver, his physical condition was a disaster. Due to incor rect training and excessive ambition, he had a ruptured biceps tendon, balky and inflamed shoulder joints and a spine out of place. He trusted me, put himself in my hands and under my coaching. The result were nine wonderful, successful and instructive years for both of us. He improved phy sically, mentally and his ability to react. At the age of 97, we took up the long jump, which brought him another world championship title and the British record. I there fore had a person on which I could test and implement my concept, which is based on holistic and personalised muscle training. I found the basis for this in the Fiatarone study on the one hand and in the Japanese experience on the other. The Japanes Example Years ago, the company Proxomed successfully con ducted a study in Japan with 90-year-old residents in retirement homes. The result was that the state set up and subsidised training centres for the over-70s and thus actively did something to combat rising health and care costs. While western countries discuss the overcrow ding of nursing homes, a chronic shortage of staff and the outsourcing of our elderly people in need of care to Thailand, in Japan people who want to live in a public retirement home are obliged to do muscle training.

Sylvia Gattiker, Born 1956 MA Prevention and Health Manage ment, specialising in BGM (occupa tional health management) and health promotion in old age. Specialist thera pist for modern orthomolecular medi cine and medical wellness SFGU.

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STRONG and VITAL No. 4 - 2024