Does Age and Gender make a difference to your fitness levels

Does Age and Gender Make a Difference to your fitness levels

Healthy Explorer.... Further to metabolic rate I am now going to review what factors may affect the results we achieve from participating in physical activity. I have heard from many that age maybe an issue, their gender and their struggle to exercise. These are all valid points but with a little understanding and knowledge they can all easily be overcome.

Gender....... Yes it is a proven fact that that women will naturally have lower fitness levels than men, this is due to naturally having a slightly higher body fat composition, lower Haemoglobin content (Red Blood cells carrying oxygen) and smaller size heart. This disadvantage can be reduced through training but there will always remain a  difference.

Age....... Older age has been associated with a 25% decrease in muscle capillarization and mitochondrial enzyme activity, meaning that every 10 years you age, the body’s ability to generate energy for exercise decreases by around 5% from the age of thirty. Also it does take the body longer to recover from exercise. Additional sources of inefficiency with age may include changes in cardiac function, skeletal muscle blood flow from a decrease in both capillary density and capillary-to-fibre ratio with age.

The Training effect........ Any age or gender is able to improve their cardiovascular function through training to some extent. Interestingly after around six months of regular exercise the body can reverse the effect of time.  For example studies have shown that exercise efficiency can be as good in an elderly person (67-77year olds) as younger people (20-30 year olds). This improved efficiency from training has also allowed improvements in their recovery rate. Also elderly people have been able to increase their muscle Oxidative capacity by 128%(Oxygen consumption correlates with muscles producing energy for movement)  and younger sedentary adults only increasing by 28%. This could suggest that it’s not the aging causing the decrease in aerobic but rather leading an inactive life could cause the decline aerobic capacity and metabolism in people.

One Last Thing.......  From exercise and metabolism we are aware that gender does make a difference, as for age we can be sure that our ability to exercise will decrease the slowing down of metabolism. But we must also remember that the body does not last forever, we just have to do our best to look after it.

A good article to read. http://content.onlinejacc.org/article.aspx?articleid=1137355