3 Myths Busted! Ageing and Running
A Bit Creaky
You know what it’s like, you get up in the morning and you’re all a bit creaky. Gone are the days when you jumped out of bed looking forward to your day (or at least climbed out tired but moving well). Now, your back is stiff and your joints hurt and you just know the next 15 minutes of moving about is going to be an effort. You quietly tell yourself “I’m getting old”.
As your day progresses, you start to look forward to your run this evening – a bit of fresh air and mental break from your hectic life. Just as you are losing yourself in this wonderful world of blissful freedom, a work colleague slaps a magazine on your desk. Right there facing you is an article all about how bad running is for you as you get old. Here are some of the things it talks about:
- As you age your bones become brittle, shrink and lose density. As running is a high impact exercise, you are in danger of fracturing or breaking those bones.
- For the same reasons that your bones may break, your joints are at a high risk. It goes on to state that as you get older your connective tissue changes and can no longer support your joints in the same way. Add to that, your cartilage is suffering significant wear and tear, mainly due to years of running. No cartilage and I’m afraid it’s bone on bone and that’s not good news for your mobility as you continue to age.
- Another impact of ageing is losing muscle mass. The magazine clearly points out in bold text in a highlighted box that you’ll lose between 30% and 40% of your muscle mass by the time you are 80 years old. This then makes you vulnerable to injury as you lose strength and power, both of which are needed to run well and reduce your injury risk.
Of course, this isn’t a running magazine and perhaps journalists no longer write like this – but it wasn’t long ago that they did. Whether they do or not isn’t that important as it is a reflection of why many people still believe we shouldn’t run or do other high impact exercises as we get past 60 (it used to be past 40!). But is there truth in it?
The Truth
Truth in the facts? Yes indeed. All of the three traits above are impacts of ageing. We do lose muscle mass. Our bones do get more brittle and shrink. We do suffer from wear and tear in our joints and connective tissue does change in elasticity and its ability to support joints…
IF YOU DO NOTHING ABOUT IT!!!
Now, this is critical. As a runner, YOU ARE ALREADY DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
The notion that the above aspects of ageing mean you should stop running is a load of rubbish and quite the opposite is true.
- Running helps restore bone density and general bone health.
- Running helps your connective tissue to retain some of its elasticity. Although cartilage regeneration is a complex topic and running may not have any direct impact on this, general joint health can be improved through the mobility and loading actions of running.
- Running helps to maintain muscle mass. In some masters athletes, even at 80 or 90 yrs old, their muscle mass has seen zero loss and in many cases is more than they had in earlier life depending on their history.
But, because you are a bit creaky in the morning and start to believe that age is impacting on your quality of life (your “healthspan”), you are more inclined to believe what you are reading. After all, you do ache now and you didn’t 10 years ago. Ageing is real and inevitable, but exercise is number one when it comes to taming ageing.
So perhaps I’m not busting the three myths above as such. Perhaps I’m just busting the one big whopper of a myth that you shouldn’t run as you get older.
To make the most of the positive benefits of running while you age, you are probably going to need to change how you train. This is an area I cover elsewhere on the site. But for now, unless there is a specific medical condition why you shouldn’t, keep on running and keep on challenging those impacts of ageing.
Oh, as a side note: there are plenty of things you can do so you don’t wake up creaky and riddled with stiffness. Embrace ageing and the wisdom it brings you, and learn to move and run well beyond what you think is possible.