Could I Still Move Like That?
The other night I went to see my daughter perform in her school concert. She was amazing, of course.
Before the show started we were sitting inside the theatre waiting for everyone to take their seats when I noticed this young kid coming down one of the steep staircases. It was crowded, people were standing around talking and the stairs themselves were reasonably narrow. None of that seemed to matter. This kid came flying down them at what looked like about 100 kilometres an hour, weaving around people and moving with the sort of complete confidence that kids seem to have.
I found myself watching because there was absolutely no hesitation. No holding onto the railing or carefully checking where the next foot was going to land. Every step just seemed to happen. The body adjusted, balance shifted, another foot went down and off they went again. My first thought was how incredibly mobile and agile kids are. My next was whether I could still do it.
I’m 56. I sprint, I lift weights and I train regularly, so I would consider myself reasonable physically capable. But if you put me at the top of those stairs and told me to come down at the same speed, through the same crowd, I’m not convinced I would attack it with quite the same enthusiasm.
The more I thought about what I had just watched, though, the less I thought it was simply about mobility. Obviously the kid had enough range of motion to deal with every position they found themselves in, but there was a lot more happening than that. Every step involved controlling bodyweight on one leg, absorbing force, shifting the centre of mass, making small changes in direction depending on where people were standing and then producing enough force to move straight into the next step. And all of it was happening quickly, without any obvious conscious thought.
There was strength involved, along with balance, coordination, proprioception, eccentric control, reaction and confidence. Somehow the nervous system was constantly working out where the body was, where it needed to go and what had to happen next. What struck me even more was that none of this seemed particularly remarkable to the kid doing it.
Kids spend a huge amount of time moving in ways that adults gradually stop moving. They run because they feel like running, jump off things, climb over things, sit on the floor, get back up, change direction suddenly, stumble, catch themselves and keep going. Their bodies are constantly being asked to solve slightly different movement problems.
Our lives tend to become much more predictable as we get older. We sit in chairs rather than on the floor. We take the lift. We use the handrail. We walk around something rather than stepping over it and slow down before stepping off a kerb. None of those decisions matters very much in isolation and I’m certainly not suggesting that we should spend our days looking for unnecessarily dangerous ways of getting from A to B. But repeat that process for twenty or thirty years and I think it becomes reasonable to ask what happens to the physical abilities we rarely call upon anymore.
We tend to put a lot of the resulting change down to age, and some of it absolutely is. Muscle mass can decline. Power declines particularly quickly if we don’t train it. Reaction time can change. Tendons and other tissues may not tolerate sudden loading in quite the same way they once did and recovery can take longer.
What I’m less convinced about is how readily we separate those genuine effects of ageing from the consequences of simply not doing something anymore.
That was probably what interested me most about the kid on the stairs. If I couldn’t do what they were doing, how much of the difference would genuinely be because I’m 56, and how much would be because I haven’t practised some of those abilities for years?
I can’t remember the last time I had to move rapidly through a crowded staircase, suddenly regain my balance or jump sideways, land awkwardly and immediately reorganise myself. Sprint training gives me some exposure to fast movement and strength training gives me plenty of capacity, but even most of that is relatively controlled. I know where the bar is going. I know where my foot is going to land. I know where the track is. The environment isn't changing underneath me.
That got me thinking about the athletes I work with. We understandably put a lot of attention on things we can measure: how much you squat or deadlift, what you run for 100 metres, how many repetitions you complete or what pace you can hold. All of those things matter and I spend plenty of time measuring them with athletes, but they don't necessarily tell us everything about how physically capable someone is.
You can be strong in the gym and still be uncomfortable moving quickly in an unfamiliar position. You can be fast in a straight line but not particularly good at slowing yourself down or changing direction. You can have excellent cardiovascular fitness while gradually becoming less confident jumping, landing, balancing or accessing ranges of movement that were once completely normal.
The answer obviously isn’t to start sending Masters athletes down staircases at full speed. Nor is it to suddenly introduce movements the body hasn't seen for decades. Someone who hasn’t jumped for fifteen years probably shouldn't begin with depth jumps, just as someone who hasn't changed direction quickly since their twenties probably doesn't need maximal cutting drills in their first session. Trying to reclaim your youth by suddenly exposing yourself to loads you are completely unprepared for is unlikely to end particularly well.
But the physical qualities sitting underneath those movements can still be trained. Single-leg strength, landing and deceleration, foot and ankle function, balance, lateral movement, power, coordination and the ability to move comfortably through useful ranges are all things we can continue to work on. We can also occasionally give the body movement problems to solve rather than making absolutely everything we do predictable.
None of this is about trying to turn a 56-year-old into a ten-year-old. I have another forty-odd years of mileage in my body and considerably more awareness of what happens if I get something wrong. I'm probably never going to come down those stairs with quite the same carefree abandon.
But I do wonder how much better I could become at moving quickly, absorbing force, reacting, balancing and controlling my body in that sort of environment if I deliberately kept exposing myself to those qualities.
Maybe that is the more interesting question as we get older.
When we notice something we can no longer do as easily as we once could, how much has ageing actually taken from us?
And how much did we simply stop doing?
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