Over half of Australian adults aged between 18-64 do not exercise up to 150 minutes as health institution recommended weekly. And the older we get the less we exercise. But can going to gym making us healthier?
Thomas Mrazek who is 67 still going to gym weekly for the past six and a half years. He said that he loves waling and he still walk his dog every morning, so if you are about to hit sixties and you want to maintain your strength and flexibility, go to gym might help.
Green Apple Wellness Centre in Brisbane is very different from conventional gyms. It is designed specifically for those aged above 50.
Cora has checked into this gym 16 years ago while she divorced and lost her confidence but when she started, it was so wonderful for her.
She is nearly 84 but she still manage to start her gym at 5:30am every 5 morning a week when the gym opens.
“I’ve never been a real sports person even in my young days. I’ve just found here, I get everything that I need in that time I’m here plus the social aspect and everybody here is friendly and I just love coming,”Zanetti told SBS.
Professor Maria Fiatarone Singh is a geriatrician based at Sydney University and she believes that structured exercise programs a gym can offer is an effective strategy to fight the usual symptoms of frailty in old age.
“The older you are the more important it becomes to do some kind of exercises to stimulate your muscular skeletal system because that starts to decline at around age 30. By the time you hit 80 years of age, you've lost about 75% of your muscle power and about 40% or so of your muscle size. So, unfortunately, the kinds of activities that are most common that things like walking and things that you could do without most kinds of equipment do improve your aerobic capacity or cardiovascular function but that don't address this loss of muscle that we call sarcopenia,” said
She says that older people who are frail with chronic diseases are the exact kind of people who should be working out to improve their conditions.
It’s not really about whether you go to a gym or not, rather, it’s about whether or not you do specific exercises like strength training or weightlifting.
“And we know now that from lots of different studies that sarcopenia is a major contribution to frailty and disability and falls and institutionalisation and even early mortality so the purpose of doing a different kind of exercise which generally means some kind of weight lifting exercise or what we call progressive resistance training is really to combat sarcopenia and all the clinical syndromes and diseases that are associated with it” asserted Fiatarone Singh.
Victoria Gill who is the owner of the Green Apple Wellness Centre has been running this gym for the last 40 years. She said that doctors have referred type 2 diabetes people who show sign of aging to go to gym. She said that on daily basis there will be people who told her that their knees are getting better, their bone density has improve and they are more flexible. Those who experience mental health issue have also improve and their quality of life are much much better than when they started.
"Someone was telling me the other day that prior to coming to Green Apple she tried to commit suicide and she said I only realised how much I had improved when my son actually said to me mum I’ve never seen you so happy," said Gill.
Gym instructor Darrol Enchelmaier says it’s important that novices unfamiliar with gym equipment are not left on their own and need to supervise gym's member to use gym's equipment properly to avoid injuries or what members cannot do but to help them do things that they are capable of.
Victoria Gill this gym's owner also observes that cultural attitudes tend to limit a woman’s ability to participate in fitness programs and therefore recommended gym members to talk with their husbands rather than focus on things that they can do. Because if their husband does not allow, they cannot join fitness program as simple as that.
Panida Sammapuksakit is a lean 54-year-old having been working out three times a week for the past seven years.
She says coming to the gym doesn't necessarily change you over night, but she does wonder at times how her life might turn out if she hadn’t been working out regularly.
“If I am not coming to the gym like for six years seven years, I might be fat or I might be doing things and get tired easily,” said Sammapuksakit.
As a fit 71-year-old, Victoria Gill says she doesn’t see any limitation on herself, and that's what many older gym-goers are striving for.
“These days, they realised that they are becoming older and they’re living longer and they don't want to be sitting in a nursing home in a chair not able to do things. They want to be living independently, they want to be doing things. We’ve got people up to you know mid-nineties so it’s really not an age thing, it’s an attitude of mind and whether or not they think it’s going to be something that they can cope with,” said Gill.
