What Can We Learn from the 93-Year Old With the Heart of a 40-Year Old?

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The Washington Post recently published an interesting article on exercise and aging:  At 93, he's as fit as a 40-year-old. His body offers lessons on aging. The human body maintains the ability to adapt to exercise at any age, showing that it's never too late to start a fitness program.

This article confirms what has already been well-established about age and fitness:
1.  Starting a fitness routine is beneficial regardless of when we start. There is no upper age limit on the health benefits of exercise. Individuals who start moderate exercise at 90 still gain muscle mass and the benefits of improved fitness.
2.  Consistent moderate exercise is sufficient to build and maintain fitness. The extreme routines of elite athletes are not necessary.
3.  Brief bursts of intense exercise provide additional benefits when added to moderate / easy exercise of longer duration.
4. Any amount of regular exercise is better than none; adding more increases health benefits and then plateaus. Adding more above this level yields decreasing benefits. 

Let's stipulate two things about this article, and others focusing on super-senior athletes:
1. The subject is an elite athlete who happens to be a super-senior in age. It takes years of consistent effort to build up to the level of an elite athlete, at any age, and far more effort to maintain this level than is required to maintain health-positive fitness.

We're attracted to stories of ageless aging, as everyone wants to retain their youthful energy and capabilities into old age. But holding up elite athletes and super-seniors as the goal everyone should strive for is unrealistic. For most of us, having the heart of a healthy 70-year old is plenty good enough for the average 90-year old. 

2. There are many other factors in maintaining health as we age that the article doesn't address, factors I'll discuss later.

Here are some insightful excerpts from the article:   

"For lessons on how to age well, we could do worse than turn to Richard Morgan. At 93, the Irishman is a four-time world champion in indoor rowing, with the aerobic engine of a healthy 30- or 40-year-old and the body-fat percentage of a whippet. He’s also the subject of a new case study, published last month in the Journal of Applied Physiology, that looked at his training, diet and physiology.

Its results suggest that, in many ways, he's an exemplar of fit, healthy aging — a nonagenarian with the heart, muscles and lungs of someone less than half his age. But in other ways, he's ordinary: a onetime baker and battery maker with creaky knees who didn't take up regular exercise until he was in his 70s and who still trains mostly in his backyard shed.

If some people stay strong and fit deep into their golden years, the implication is that many of the rest of us might be able to as well, he said.

What made Morgan especially interesting to the researchers was that he hadn't begun sports or exercise training until he was 73. Retired and somewhat at loose ends then, he'd attended a rowing practice with one of his other grandsons, a competitive collegiate rower. The coach invited him to use one of the machines.

Morgan proved to be a nonagenarian powerhouse, his sinewy 165 pounds composed of about 80 percent muscle and barely 15 percent fat, a body composition that would be considered healthy for a man decades younger.

His heart rate also headed toward its peak very quickly, meaning his heart was able to rapidly supply his working muscles with oxygen and fuel. These "oxygen uptake kinetics," a key indicator of cardiovascular health, proved comparable to those of a typical, healthy 30- or 40-year-old, Daly said.

Perhaps most impressive, he developed this fitness with a simple, relatively abbreviated exercise routine, the researchers noted.

- Consistency: Every week, he rows about 30 kilometers (about 18.5 miles), averaging around 40 minutes a day.
- A mix of easy, moderate and intense training: About 70 percent of these workouts are easy, with Morgan hardly laboring. Another 20 percent are at a difficult but tolerable pace, and the final 10 at an all-out, barely sustainable intensity.
- Weight training: Two or three times a week, he also weight-trains, using adjustable dumbbells to complete about three sets of lunges and curls, repeating each move until his muscles are too tired to continue.
- A high-protein diet: He eats plenty of protein, his daily consumption regularly exceeding the usual dietary recommendation of about 60 grams of protein for someone of his weight.

Morgan's fitness and physical power at 93 suggest that "we don't have to lose" large amounts of muscle and aerobic capacity as we grow older, Jakeman said. Exercise could help us build and maintain a strong, capable body, whatever our age, he said.

Of course, Morgan probably had some genetic advantages, the scientists point out. Rowing prowess seems to run in the family.

And his race performances in recent years have been slower than they were 15, 10 or even five years ago. Exercise won't erase the effects of aging. But it may slow our bodies' losses, Morgan's example seems to tell us. It may flatten the decline."

Let's dive into the factors the article didn't mention.