The UK’s care bill is growing and the pandemic has impacted the activity levels of older people which will result in reduced health down the line. It’s time for the sector to step up. David Minton reports…

I wrote my first article on active ageing in 2006 and concluded the research was there to build the case for doing more for the ageing population. Unfortunately, the fitness industry hasn’t changed that much since then, but health providers have, meaning we’re not keeping up.

The Kings Fund estimates the UK government spends around £22bn a year on adult social care, on behalf of around 850,000 people who are either living in care homes or being supported to live independently at home. Around 1.5 million people work in the care sector and it’s estimated unpaid caregivers save the state around £10bn a year.

Financially, the care sector is four times larger than the fitness industry and yet it’s generally ignored by the sector in spite of the fact that social prescribing, care homes and care packages are multi-billion pound opportunities for the fitness industry.

Reduce the care burden
There is an abundance of research showing the older you get the more likely you are to be inactive, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Declining muscle mass is part of ageing, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be stopped. Research presented at the cardiology conference, ESC Congress 2021, from a study of 33,576 patients with an average age of 62, showed it’s never too late to start exercising to reduce the risk of dying from heart disease.

In February 2021, the Department of Health and Social Care published the White Paper, Integration and Innovation: working together to improve health and social care for all. This outlined plans to focus on improving lifestyle in older people, to reduce the burden of ill health. The government has yet to announce the details of how these new funds will be allocated, but the potential savings are becoming obvious.

The UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has stated that if people lose weight, drink less alcohol and become more active it could save up to £3bn a year on the care budget.

If the fitness industry grew its membership base from the current 1 per cent to 15 per cent of members aged over 65, it would double the value and size of the industry. It would also become a major partner in local care provision. Are training providers ready to upskill the workforce to optimise this generational gold mine, at the point where health and activity merge?

Training staff
With more than 15 million people living with at least one long-term health condition, social prescribing presents a huge opportunity for the industry and Active IQ’s Level 3 Diploma in working with clients with long-term conditions – devised in partnership with Nuffield Health – brings the latest thinking and current best practice into this new qualification. It’s good to see PTs will have a more advanced set of skills and deeper understanding to support this growing client group.

New partnerships and qualifications will also help move the national conversation on following the pandemic. Some of the most important conversations the industry needs to be having are around how we can age better and how we can liberate the fitness industry from its ageism.

Octogenarian triathletes
Some sports, such as triathlon, are organised by age group categories in five-year age bands up to 80+ and divided by gender. Hiromu Inada from Chiba prefecture in Japan became the oldest finisher of the Ironman World Championship at the age of 85 and at 87 years of age, he won a Guinness World Record for being the oldest person to compete. Marie Dorothy Buder is the female oldest finisher aged 82.

Edwina Brockleby became the oldest British woman to complete an Ironman triathlon aged 74. She’s also the founder of Silverfit, a charity dedicated to the promotion of the healthy benefits of physical activity for older people.

Sport England distributes up to £10m of National Lottery money supporting projects encouraging inactive older people to move a little more each day. The aim of Ramblers Walking for Health, for example, is for everyone to have access to short, free and friendly healthy walks to help people become and stay more active. Oomph! – one of 20 funded projects – is a wellbeing business for older adults, providing training for care home staff in delivering exercise, activity classes and healthy movement.

Healthy movement
Analysts at Fitt Insider estimate ‘healthy movement’ is a trillion dollar business, around 10 times bigger than fitness and so prioritising healthy, balanced movement has become the focus of both the largest companies in the world and countless start ups.

Amazon has introduced Movement Health as a new feature on HALO, its wrist-worn health and activity tracker. This combines artificial intelligence, computer vision and machine learning to produce personalised programming of everyday movements we mostly take for granted and do without thinking.

Ageing is now the predominant cause of disease worldwide and yet it remains poorly understood. The Institute of Healthy Ageing at University College London is the centre of excellence for research on the biology of ageing and ageing-related diseases – one of the most important challenges in biomedical research today.

Harvard Health and the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research have worked with fitness suppliers, Keiser and Power Plate, to publish a considerable amount of research on older adult fitness, including fall prevention, increasing bone density, preventing and controlling osteoporosis and increasing strength and muscle mass, to name a few, so our knowledge is increasing.

The NHS encourages some type of physical activity every day and the more you do, the better. However, these guidelines – along with the retirement age of 66 in the UK – perpetuate the myth that 65 is old, when it’s not. Like me, the majority of my fellow Boomers are still working and staying active. In 10 years’ time, 27 per cent of the UK population will be aged 70 plus. It’s never too late to start exercising and for many, 70 will be the new 60 and 60 the new 50.