What is an Older Adult?

There are some things in life that happen to all of us and one of those is that every day everyone grows older! For a lot of people the realisation that they are getting older materialises in the reduction of physical performance or capability – this can range from overly sore muscles the day after running for the bus or the first time you wonder if you’ll be able to climb all the steps to the 8th floor when the elevator is broken.

Ageing is something that we all experience and therefore should be easy to define based on our chronological clock, however, there are many factors that contribute to how each of us age. Some of these factors include frequent sickness and accidents, having one of more chronic diseases and having chronically smoked or abused alcohol or drugs.

There is also a difference between the rates at which men and women age, with men ageing at a steady rate whereas women age at a slower rate between 45 to 60 years of age than they do between 70 and 80 years of age.

Therefore the phrase ‘age is just is number’ is correct and your chronological age does is not an accurate description of your health and longevity. This is further confused in the area of research where there is no agreed standardised definition of age whereby some professionals describe a 55 year old as old, whereas some would call the same person as middle-aged.

At Fit For Life we generally use the classification whereby the term old adult refers to people who are older than middle-aged or 65yrs of age. And older is classified as someone who is between the ages of 65-74yrs is described as ‘young old’ (please see full table of Age Categories below). The ‘young old’ category is a relatively new cohort that has arisen due to the growing number of older adults that have continued to live as young or middle-aged adults by virtue of their active lifestyle.

This ability to change the path of people’s ‘ageing profile’ is probably the main reason that Fit For Life was founded as the transformations that we have seen by older adults availing of our services has and continues to be inspirational.

From our experience over the last twenty years we have numerous 1st hand experiences of ‘Old -Old’ and ‘Oldest -old’ adults out performing those much younger than themselves and this is due to the definite benefits of physical activity as we age.

For our team an ‘older adult’ is ultimately someone that we can empower to make a real difference to their quality of life regardless of their current health and wellbeing, as quality of life is the difference between active living and just being alive.

Why Use Our Services?

As we age our muscle size, strength, and the speed that they work all decrease and our heart and lungs become less efficient than they once were which is all true. However, all of these things also occur with Physical Inactivity. The good news is that with properly designed treatment plans and specific, progressive and continuous exercise/physical activity programmes almost all of these changes can be reversed!

Fit For Life have spent 20 years developing treatment plans that target all these areas to ensure that whatever stage of your older years we know how to help you!