Why Agility Matters As You Age

By Dr.Beth Templin

Agility is defined as being able to move your body quickly and easily. Other ways to describe it are quick, swift and nimble. As you age, it's common to feel less agile than you did when you were younger

This is not because it is impossible to maintain agility with age, but rather you have not challenged your body the same way you did when you were younger. As a result, you have lost some of your speed and coordination, and now are feeling clumsy, sluggish and stiff. 

While agility drills are often thought of when thinking of training for elite athletes, they can also have a very positive impact on aging adults. Maintaining your agility may not seem like something that should be at the top of your priority list as you age, but there are several benefits to being agile as you age. The number one  is injury prevention. 

Falls and fall-related injuries are more common as you age. Falls often result from a trip or slip, and the inability of your body to catch yourself and stay on your feet. This is due to decreased strength, decreased speed, decreased flexibility in your joints and decreased awareness of your body in space. All of these areas can be improved with a focus on agility training. 

With improved agility, comes better balance, along with increased balance recovery. Agility training helps you to improved your ability to catch yourself by working on specific areas like: body awareness, muscle memory and reaction time. 

Body Awareness is your ability to detect where your body is in relation to the ground and in relation to itself. As we age the feedback we get from our bodies on its position is less and slower. This is what contributes to decreased coordination and accuracy with moving.
 
Muscle Memory is the ability to perform a movement without actually  thinking about it. It's almost like being on autopilot. Your body has learned how to execute a certain movement through repetition. Just like anything else in life, if you stop doing the move, you lose the ability to carry it out effectively. 
 
Reaction Time, or how long it takes your body to react to and send a signal from your brain down to your muscles, is a key part of agility training. Reaction time in older adults is slower than younger adults. This can carry over to simple tasks like pulling your hand away from something hot, and more complex activities like driving. The good news is, body awareness, muscle memory and reaction time can all get better with practice.
 
Another bonus of agility training is improved mental function. As you are working on increasing the speed at which you move your body, you are also increasing the speed of your brain. This helps to maintain good  focus and attention. It also helps to stave off issues like memory loss.

Agility exercise require you to rapidly move in different directions, at different speeds in a quick time frame. You should be able to transition quickly and smoothly from one direction to the next without feeling unsteady or unsure. Some examples of agility training are: Figure Eights, Ladder Drills, and Cone Drills.

This month we chose a great exercise to slowly introduce some agility training. There are several different levels to move through, so you should be able to find the right challenge for you. Click here to join Dr. Kim in this activity!

​? Dr. Beth

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