The Link Between Health and Fitness

I'm very pleased to see that Mark Rippetoe, of "Starting Strength" fame, is writing for PJmedia.com.  That means I don't have to soil my computer by going to the Huffington Post to read his articles.  You can read his first two articles for PJ Media here and here.

In the first article, he made a statement that really caught my eye. 

As we grow older, one of the primary regrets is that we can’t do the things we used to be able to do. Staying strong solves many of these problems. 

Staying strong also prolongs life, which is a good thing if you’re strong enough to enjoy it. A 2008 British Medical Journal meta-analysis showed that strength levels correlated better with longevity than any other parameter. Better than BMI, and better than cardiorespiratory fitness. 

Stronger people live longer. Which is very interesting considering the fact that we are so often told how important it is to walk/jog/bike, and that we are almost never told to do our deadlifts and squats.

games.crossfit.com: click to enlarge

A quick Google search resulted in the BMJ link to the study.  The researchers conclude...

This review shows the value of objective measures of physical capability as predictors of subsequent mortality in older community dwelling populations. 

Rippetoe's comment and the researchers' conclusion remind me a lot of something Greg Glassman (CrossFit CEO) said.

Health can now be concisely and precisely defined as increased work capacity across broad time, modal, and age domains. Work capacity is the ability to perform real physical work as measured by force x distance / time (which is average power). Fitness is this ability in as many domains as possible. 

... 

Fitness can be graphed in two-dimensions with duration of effort on the x-axis and power on the y-axis. At each duration, we average your power capacity across a variety of modal domains (skills and drills). This creates a power curve, the area under which is your work capacity across broad time and modal domains (aka fitness). 

We can now add a third dimension to this graph, the z-axis, which is age. By reassessing your two-dimensional fitness at various times throughout your life, we graph the form of a solid. The power curve takes on the shape of a plateau or blanket. This three-dimensional graph is a defining measure of health. Health, therefore, is nothing other than sustained fitness. 

Both those statements coincide with a study published in Science Daily that fitness increases longevity by warding off frailty.

Most participants (7183) reported fairly high relative fitness at the start of the study compared with 1019 who were frail. These relatively fit people generally stayed healthy and those who were frail at the start were most likely to die. As participants aged, their frailty level increased.

As Coach Glassman said, "What puts people in nursing homes?  It's loss of functional capacity."

A Brazilian study published in 2012 concluded that...

...aerobic fitness is strongly related to survival, but our study also shows that maintaining high levels of body flexibility, muscle strength, power-to-body weight ratio and co-ordination are not only good for performing daily activities but have a favorable influence on life expectancy.

Aerobic endurance, flexibility, strength, power, coordination... where have I seen those terms used to define fitness before?  Oh, that's right, they're part of CrossFit's definition of fitness!  CrossFit claims that one can determine ones fitness by measuring competence in the ten components of fitness...

1. Cardiovascular/respiratory endurance
2. Stamina
3. Strength
4. Flexibility
5. Power
6. Speed
7. Coordination
8. Agility
9. Balance
10. Accuracy

I've heard and read many criticisms of CrossFit's definition of fitness, which - stated most succinctly - is work capacity over broad time and modal domains.  Critics often claim it's too narrow and doesn't account for health.  I always ask the critic to provide a better definition.  All but one have failed to provide any definition at all, and the one that did provide a definition proceeded to contradict himself by criticizing CrossFit's definition of fitness as too narrow while simultaneously claiming all definitions of fitness are equally valid.

Try to square that circle.

Fortunately, a growing body of scientific evidence demonstrates that fitness can be measured objectively, which is necessary if we want to move beyond the realm of mere opinion, and that objectively measured fitness is closely related to health and longevity.

To me, this is yet another case of science confirming the obvious.  It seems intuitively obvious to me that - as a general rule - fit people live longer, healthier, more active lives than people who are not fit.  There are exceptions, of course - the athlete that ruins his body by over-training, the lifelong health nut who dies of lung cancer, etc. - but exceptions do not prove a rule wrong.

So, keep up your fitness program, or start one if you haven't already.  I recommend CrossFit, of course, but whatever you do, make sure it includes basic strength training - squats, deadlifts and presses.  In the mean time, here's a video of people in their 60s doing things one normally wouldn't associate with that age... to inspire, of course!