Over 65 exercise and supplements

I thought the research I blog'd on November 5 was excellent in that in gave some very useful guidance on both exercise and supplementation. In addition one of the research objectives was to check for safety and the exercise and supplementation plan came out as safe. So far so good.

However, like just about all heath and fitness research, there is always problem I think of as the 3 S's:

• Selective: The participants had to be selected, be reasonably healthy and able to walk OK. The people involved seemed to be in pretty decent condition. The women had BMI (Body Mass Index) in the range 22.2 up to 28.6. The men were a little weightier with BMI's ranging from 23.2 to 29.9. Most of the participants were in the category over-weight (BMI of 25.0 - 29.9) with some in the normal weight category (BMI of 18.5 to 24.9). For a group of people in the age range 65 to 85 this was very good - no one was severely overweight. 
• Short: The time span for the research was 6 months. It has to be short to fit into research budgets. What would happen for say 5 years. Impossible to say and for people of this age a longer time span would see aging effects getting in the way of the basic questions concerning exercise and supplements.
• Sparse: One always has sparse information about the surroundings of the research reported on. We know the participants lived within 30 kilometers of Hamilton, Ontario and that they could get to the gyms under their own power. I was intrigued that the functional tests improved so much over the 6 months yet in the description of the exercises one gained the impression that only the 12 muscle strength exercises were carried out twice a week. I'm willing to bet that many of the participants practised the functional tests repeatedly out of sight of the researchers. 

Is there one last idea you can take out of this research ? 

I'd say it is re-calibrating the 1 Rep maximum every month. By doing this, increasing the % of 1 Rep maximum and gradually increasing the number of sets, the participants had a perfect increase in challenge across the 6 months. This and the two simple, cheap, safe supplements are the ideas to take away from this research and incorporate into one's own exercise plans.