Bruno Balke
Published: 1963
Total Pages: 6
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Research statistics has established the fact that physical work capacity declines as a consequence of aging. The question has been raised, however, if this decline is the inevitable result of senescence or merely due to changes in living habits. Great numbers of people have been observed not to comply with the statistics. One is inclined to explain such exceptions from the rule on the basis of extraordinary biological characteristics, but the real reason might be a more adequate balance of essential factors in daily life such as work, rest, tension, play, nutrition, physical activity, and others. As maximum performance capacity is only developed and maintained through hard training, the preservation of an acceptable level of work capacity requires frequent exposures to sufficiently high functional demands. Within this concept, two situations under experimental scrutiny are of interest: first, physiological parameters, indicative for physical performance capacity, were intraindividually measured over the years whereby changes of work capacity became apparent as consequence of trainiog, environment, inactivity, disease and retraining. The latter restored the functional adaptability at age 56 nearly to that observed at age 20-30. (Author).
