The process of aging and role of retired athletes

By Al Gondi

Just like anyone else, age catches up with our athletes. As athletes undergo the process of aging, there are various activities they should get involved in, particularly assisting the older members of the society to remain fit.

Age and the process of ageing is now a popular topic for discussion. It ranges from political life, the ability to perform when one is old and occupies an office, to the more ignored aspect of the ability and age of the young person to perform.

In entirety, one should critically analyse the work being done and the ability to cope with the task at hand. Does the work involve consistency? Is it manual or mental? Is it qualification-based or does it involve selection?

In sports career, most sports are competitive unless it is for pleasure or health reasons.

In tackling old age, however, we are faced with the challenge of identifying the point at which old age begins. It is therefore prudent to talk about ageing and not age at the moment.

Thirty to 40 years ago, aging was described uniformly in negative terms as a time for disengagement and becoming senile and was considered part and parcel of a long life.

Perception

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What is obvious now is that there is a lot of transformation in terms of perception. The idea that when one is getting old, there is an inevitable decline in physical ability, helplessness and dependency has long been discarded.

However much the change in opinion, it is evident that the number of baby boomers nearing 65 years is increasing. Concomitantly, there is a surge in publications and marketing strategies capitalising on healthy aging.

Exercise clubs and gyms are opening at an alarming rate specifically for people over the age of 50 and the younger ones who are stressed at either work or at home, or are just lonely.

The concept of healthy aging is now attractive and there are a lot of terminologies for it.

The most common one is successful or optimal aging, which has three essential components.These are absence of disease and disability, high cognitive and physical functioning, and active engagement with life.

Usual aging, on the other hand, describes the common mode of aging in which there are significant physiological loss with substantial loss of reserve capacity. There are a lot of people who feel uncomfortable with these definitions. A high percentage of people over 85 years have one or more chronic disease and most probably have functional deficits.

Majority

Is the majority of those over the age of 85 being labelled unsuccessful? Michael West Dictionary describes the opposite of success as failure. There is also evidence that older people view success differently from others.

In our midst, there is a minister who may be old but is not aging and, despite making few blunders in life like any human being, performs beyond optimum.

It is therefore clear that it is necessary to create a definition of successful aging that that is broader and fluid perspective.

The optimal aging might be a comprise term to take care of variant views. This term erases off the concept of compression of mobility, optimal aging surpasses good health and longevity.

It deals with capacity to function across many domains, for instance physical, functional, cognitive, emotional, social and even spiritual domain to satisfaction despite one’s medical condition. Next week, we will look at how older adults adapt to the challenges of aging.