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MASTERS ATHLETICS SPRING 2013
runners with sedentary people of the same age. The sedentary
people had 47% less lung capacity. The elite runners were going
down in lung capacity and maximum heart beat levels – but
nowhere near as rapidly as their sedentary peers. But what about
‘real’ lives away from sport? Again those who continue to
participate in physical activities have been shown to have had less
days off sick from work during their working lives, less
cardiovascular diseases, less fat deposits in their bodies, and less
emotional/depression problems.
Baker (2010) argues that one of the main reasons that numbers
have grown in master’s sports is basically due to people who live
in the ‘western’ world now live longer, where populations having
increased dramatically. This raises a question: “Why do so many
youngsters drop out of sport after leaving school or after a few
years of membership in a local club?” Scanlon et al suggested that
there are two main reasons, one being - because they had to take
part during school PE or games lessons was one; another being
the reality of coming up against superior, committed, athletes,
more often in sports club activities than during school sports
lessons. Perhaps today in England we also need to add the reality
that has been occurring during the last twenty years or so of school
fields being reduced as they are used for a range of building
projects. After-school activities became massively reduced when
Mrs Thatcher, in her days as Minister of Education, attacked the
teaching profession, calling them part-timers. This led to a massive
two fingers response and reduction in many after school clubs,
training, etc. when the four o’clock school bells rang.
Another reason for less youngsters becoming involved in sport is
linked to the rising numbers of youngsters who are obese. But
which caused which? Jessica |Jones Neilson et al, (June 2013),
have just published a report on the rise in hospital admissions for
youngsters aged between 5 and 19 years old diagnosed as
suffering from obesity. Admissions were more common in girls
than in boys. In total four times as many youngsters are now being
admitted with this problem than was the case only ten years ago.
Apparently many of the parents did not regard their children as
being over-fat. And how many will be looking forward to taking up
master’s level athletics in a few years’ time? What can we do to
encourage young adults to return to or take up our sport? And if
they do, what can we do to keep them coming? Cassandra
Phoenix et al (2011) has suggested that one problem is that young
adults have a negative picture of growing older. They don’t want
to. They tend to assume they have little choice over their aging –
it happens, whatever! So do we need to make it more evident that
it doesn’t have to be the number of clock ticks that we need to
count – and show what we can do to control that clock a bit? If
youngsters see aging as: slowing down; decreased ability to be
physically involved in anything; retirement from being a world hero;
what have we got that we can sell to them? Skills, whether as an
athlete or coach, commitment, enjoyment?
A few weeks ago a local, pleasant, hardworking coach was
working with a group of youngsters on Sunday morning. He moved
on to showing them how to start in a sprint race. He got them to
stand with their feet together on the start line. Being young and
supple they all crouched down and then when he shouted “Go”
they stood up and set off down the track. Asked why he’d started
them like that compared with the normal position of sprinters for
the start, which we then showed him, he just shrugged and said
“Oh they never taught us any of that sort of stuff on our training
course.” He’d never been in athletics as a youngster. And that
leads us to the big question - Is there something we can all do to
increase the numbers of knowledgeable adults taking part in
athletics as competitors, coaches or managers?
1} What proportion of British club coaches are still active athletes?
2} What proportion of coaches never were involved in T&F athletics
once they had left school?
3} What can we do to encourage ex-sporty people to come back
and enjoy the many rewards of fitness, social enjoyment and
competing that we still enjoy?
4} What can we do to encourage ex-athletes who come back into
masters athletics NOT drop out again?
5) Is it time we carried out a thorough review of the training that
coaches receive, the reasons people attend such courses, how
many of our members drop out after a few years, and why?
6) How can we help to increase athletes’ involvement, health,
social welfare and quality knowledge in our sport? Not only people
of our ages who return to our sport, but also youngsters and young
adults, so that they never give up athletics?
If you’ve got any questions, comments or suggestions as to what
you think we need to do to take our sport forward please contact
us: tonycrok@aol.com or gdavies@cardiffmet.ac.uk
Brief Bibliography
Joseph Baker “Sport participation and positive development in older persons” European Revie
Andre Barreiros
of Aging & Physical Activity, 2010, No 7, pages 3-12
Peta Bee “Training and psychological patterns during the early development of
Portuguesnational team athletes”, High Ability Studies, Vol 24, No 1, June
2013, pages 49 – 61
“Exercise: Not just for burning fat” The Times, Feb 23, 2013, pages 8 – 9
Rylee Dionigi “Older athletes’ perceived benefits of competition”, The International Journal of
Sport and Society, 2011, Vol 2, No 2, pages 17-28
Erickson K “Aerobic exercise effects on cognitive and neural plasticity in older adults”
British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2009, Vol 43, pages 22 – 24
“Exercise training increases size of hippocampus and improves memory”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2011, Vol 108, No 7, pages
3017 – 3022
Vincent Gremeaux “Exercise and Longevity” Maturitus Vol 73, 2012, pages 312-317
Jessica Jones Nielsen “Rising obesity-related hospital admissions among children and young
people in England: national time trends study” PLOS ONE, ,2013, Vol 8,
Issue 6, pages 1-8
Cassandra Phoenix 24 “Narratives at work: what can stories of older athletes do?” Ageing and
Society, 2012, pages 1- 24
Fei Sun “Physical health in older people: a systematic review” BMC Public Health
2013 Vol 13, No 449 pages 1-17
M L Pollock Journal of Applied Philology, Vol 62, pages 725-731 “”Effects of age and
training on aerobic capacity and body compositions of master athletes”
Towfighi “Stroke declines as a disease-specific cause of death in the United States”
Stroke Vol 41, 2008, pages 499-503
Van Uffelen “Walking or vitamin B for cognition in older adults” The British Journal of Sports
Medicine, 2008, Vol 42 pages 344 – 351
Michelle Voss “Exercise, brain and cognition across the life span.” Journal of Applied
Physiology, Vol 111, April 2011, pages 1505–1513
Paul Williams “Prospective study of incident age-related degeneration in relation to vigorous
physical activity during a seven year follow-up.” Investigative Ophthalmology
and Visual Science, Jan 2009, Vol 50, pp 101-106
Research methods. Some brief notes, in case these help
There are several problems associated with the many findings
reported in the research literature. For example: looking at the
sheer size of the sample in the Swedish study, reported by Peta
Bee, and the fact that there are hundreds of different IQ tests.
Some I Q tests can be given to large groups of people. Others
have to be taken by one person at a time. Some have to be
administered by a trained psychologist, some by almost anyone.
It seems very, very unlikely that only one person tested 1.2
million boys. Did the ‘examiners’ all use the same tests; test the
boys at the same time of day; mark them in the same way? Were
the tests administered by school teachers? – There’s plenty of
evidence that some teachers, wanting their school children to get
good scores, in things like IQ and reading tests, give them several
practice sessions – on the test the examiner will be using.
Surprise – surprise, they do quite a lot better on the big day.
One major problem we regularly hit with researches, such as
questionnaires that are sent out to people or published on the
internet is that many recipients don’t reply. Why not? In most
cases we don’t know. Perhaps non-repliers don’t use computers;
or the letter never arrived. Perhaps the recipient was not
interested in the topic; or meant to answer but was very busy.
Perhaps they didn’t like the person who sent the questionnaire.
Perhaps they never bother to answer that sort of junk. What we
do know is that the people who answer and those who don’t are
different. But we don’t know how different. Are the ones who
reply representative of the population they are said to
represent? Again, usually we don’t know.
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