Physical Activity and Sport in Later Life

Critical Perspectives

Emmanuelle Tulle, Cassandra Phoenix, Emmanuelle Tulle, Cassandra Phoenix

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781349568826, 9781137429315
• eBook ISBN: 9781137429322
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Medical Theory, Practice & Reference
• Index: Social Sciences

This volume addresses key issues such as the cultural and discursive context in which physical activity is discussed; the process of becoming physically active; the role of care settings in enabling physical activity; pleasure; gender; and place and space.

1

Introduction: Rethinking Physical Activity and Sport in Later Life

Emmanuelle Tulle and Cassandra Phoenix

Introduction

Becoming and being old is not what it used to be! How we imagined people and ourselves would grow old has been undergoing significant transformations. Babies born today can expect to live very long lives – well into their 80s – at least in the affluent West. Those we refer to as babyboomers (a birth cohort spanning the end of World War II and the early 1960s) are already pioneering long living, and their parents haven’t done too badly either. This is quite a remarkable demographic transformation, one that has received plenty of policy, press and academic attention, not all of it very positive.

For the last 50 years, the social sciences have been mapping the wider context in which we are ageing and, of critical importance, the resources – cultural, symbolic and practical – we have been harnessing to make sense of this extraordinary phenomenon. What has been exposed in this scholarship is a tension, a fracture even, between how people actually live their lives and theories of ageing. On the one hand, we can point to long lives as opening up opportunities for imagining new ways of organising and punctuating lives and more generally individual futures. On the other hand, it has also been shown that we are still hampered by modes of thought which have their roots in deterministic, reductionist and ultimately negative conceptions of the ageing process. Sometimes this fracture can be seen in scholarly endeavours and is often indistinguishable from what separates particular disciplines. We contend that it is present in the area of sport and physical activity, particularly manifested in the divide between the life sciences and the social sciences.

This is not immediately visible however. Indeed, there seems to be consensus across various areas of social and academic life that physical activity is a good thing. Its physiological benefits have been well reported in the life sciences and its psychological benefits appear undeniable. The message has extended to the old with the emergence since the 1990s of evidence demonstrating how physical activity is a good way to prevent (or at any rate slow down) many of the conditions still associated with ageing and old age, for example, sarcopenia, cancers, cardio-vascular and respiratory diseases and a raft of late onset conditions such as Type 2 diabetes. Policy-makers at all levels of government have been convinced of the need to promote physical activity amongst older people. Moreover, particular responsibility has been devolved to care providers to design strategies for improving participation rates among this population group which continue to have lower levels of physical activity than the rest of the population. As has been demonstrated elsewhere, social and cultural change has transformed late life experiences, a process to which older people have actively contributed by engaging in consumption, new forms of leisure and by not accepting physical decline or marginalisation as a fact of life. However, when it comes to physical activity, older people have been more reticent to align to new norms of participation, as the statistics on physical activity participation demonstrate, and this contributes to the decline of their ageing body.

Reference is often made to Hippocrates, Galen and other Ancient Greeks recommending the incorporation of physical activity into one’s life regimen to give legitimacy to what elsewhere has been termed the turn to physical activity. There is plentiful evidence that, over time, physical activity recommendations have been inflected by class, gender, age and race norms of appropriate physicality. Although our forebears did not have access to all the labour saving technologies which contribute to increases in inactivity, their embodiment was heavily regulated and cannot be used as a model for how we think about contemporary approaches to physical exertion. And yet, the past is often held up, especially in the biomedical sciences, as the golden age of lifelong physical activity.

We are therefore concerned that the complexities and subtleties which affect whether and how we use our bodies as we become older have been overlooked. For instance, women, people from minority ethnic groups, people of lower socio-economic status and disabled older adults are particularly prone to inactivity, and this goes hand in hand with poor health and frailty. This scenario raises a number of questions. Specifically, how can we now convince different groups of older people that they should be more physically active, that it will be worth the effort, that it will lead to significant improvements in their health and mobility? How do we persuade them that it is a feasible prospect? What are the personal, physical and cultural barriers to people being receptive to the health messages permeating the constant encouragement of certain older adults to shift their disposition away from a preference to ‘take it easy’ toward an urge to be physically active on a regular basis? How do the various groups of older people who engage in physical activity experience it? What benefits are derived and do they reflect the benefits promoted in ‘official’ health messages? What can we learn from these experiences without setting impossible standards, which would doom to failure those who couldn’t possibly match them? More to the point, what does the almost frenetic noise around trying to find ways of coaxing the old out of their chairs and to a gym hall or the outdoors tell us about contemporary ageing? Does it represent a challenge to normative instructions on how to age appropriately? Pursuing questions such as these has the potential to move our understanding of later life sport and physical activity beyond its common framing as only a (prescribed) ‘solution’ to the ‘problems’ of old age.

We are mindful that much research within this framework is given legitimacy by the deployment of largely alarmist statements about population ageing and the anticipated ill-health burden it will impose on already stretched public finances. While we do not take issue with the fact of population ageing, we are concerned that this mantra can be used to promote knowledge and new forms of interventions that might raise inflated hopes about the potential of physical activity and sport to alleviate the bodily changes associated with physiological ageing. For example, there are older adults who appear to fulfil and in some cases even exceed physical activity recommendations: the very fit and participants in the Masters movement. It would be easy to see these people as models of ‘good ageing’ for others to emulate. However, as eloquently demonstrated by a number of contributors to this collection, while it is important to identify what lessons might be learned from these people’s experiences, care must be taken not to fall into the trap of positioning them as heroes of ageing. Likewise, we must remain aware of the ease with which physical activity can be seen as an anti-ageing practice. In other words, we should consider its impact on the extent to which we view old age as a legitimate part of living that has meaning and value in its own right. At stake here is the relegation of those whose bodies have lost almost all function to the margins of society, reinforcing the separation between a third age of activity and agelessness and a fourth age of frailty, dependency and confinement to medicalised institutions.

It is precisely these concerns that have prompted us to devise this collection and to invite social scientists committed to extending this field to contribute their insights. Through the pages that follow, we aspire to meet two broad objectives: first, to provide readers with expert conceptual analyses of how physical activity and sport in later life is socially, historically and culturally located and second, to bring these conceptual analyses to life through state of the art, critically informed, empirical research. Our contributors originate from a number of disciplines (including sociology, social gerontology, sport science, physical cultural studies, health geography, psychology) and share a range of principles. Specifically, some contributors prioritised the voices and experiences of older people and sought to understand how older people ascribe meaning and value to what they are (or are not) doing. This involves situating concerns with ageing and old age in a rich context – one that exceeds the traditional boundaries of physical activity and sport – to understand how our growing acceptance that older people should be physically active has arisen and developed. It also requires consideration of the potential opportunities and barriers that might impact upon the achievement of the aim to encourage older adults to be less sedentary alongside older adults’ own aspirations to ‘control’ their lives in ways that facilitate acceptable levels of satisfaction and dignity. Thus other contributors gave critical focus to the societal context in which physical activity is promoted.

We hope that this collection will make an important contribution to scholarship by encouraging readers to think critically about the role that physical activity and sport can play in how we age while initiating dialogues regarding creative solutions to what are increasingly perceived as ‘problems’: the low levels of physical activity amongst the old, and indeed the old themselves. Our 15 contributions to this edited collection address the question of physical activity in later life from different angles, disciplinary backgrounds and with different groups of older people. We have organised them by themes, which are outlined below. That said, it is worth noting that each contribution exceeds its central theme by dealing with a wealth of issues, providing rich illustrations and presenting rigorous interpretations. We invite readers to read all or most of these chapters to appreciate the subtleties of the arguments presented in each.

The first three contributions replace the question of physical activity within its discursive and cultural context. These chapters are scene-setters: they identify the key characteristics of neoliberal societies and how these affect how ageing is imagined. They take issue with the increasing tendency to exhort people to become physically activity as the norm of ‘ageing well’ and to demonise those who do not comply with these physical activity exhortations.

The collection proceeds with Tulle (Chapter 2) who locates discussions of physical activity in their wider discursive context. She develops a critical examination of the extension to be physically active to that of avoiding being sedentary. Thus sitting down has become a new public health emergency, and she sees this as a manifestation of the increasing tendency to control lives and our bodies, an extension of government. Pike (Chapter 3) engages in a critical analysis of how physical activity has been held up as the solution to biological decline and reconstructed as a ‘successful ageing’ strategy. Using a range of documentary sources, she shows how the responsibility for ageing well has shifted from the state to an individual level. Gilleard and Higgs (Chapter 4) show how physical activity has emerged as a constituent of consumer culture and is used as a way of enticing people to view a fit and active old age as a good old age. They reflect on the association between physical activity, fitness and health, which can lead those who do not fulfil physical activity requirements to be reconstructed as having failed. They also caution readers on the limits of physical activity as the solution to physical decline. By taking a strong critical stance, these 3 chapters provide the backdrop against which we can begin to imagine alternative approaches to physical activity and the opportunities and challenges that they themselves might pose.

The next theme deals with the process of becoming physically active. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 bring to light the complexities, vulnerabilities but also time-bound nature of physical activity and sporting careers. Barth and Perrin (Chapter 5) focus their investigation on patients with late onset diabetes (Type 2 Diabetes). These patients’ experiences are full of valuable lessons for how to enable the transition from physical activity as medical prescription to physical activity as a self-determined practice in later life. Thus they use the concept of career to make sense of the pathways and the different stages which might lead to an orientation to the body that is no longer strictly medicalised. Dionigi (Chapter 6) proposes a typology of engagement with Masters sports – continuers, rekindlers and late bloomers – to show that maintaining an exercise practise takes commitment, can be easily disrupted but if re-started can lead to renewed engagement and enjoyment. Palmer (Chapter 7) focuses on the role played by family in facilitating a physical activity career. What makes her work distinctive is that she highlights something which, recast in the discourse of decline, is not intuitive: the central role that grandparents play in the creation and reproduction of family cultures of physical activity.

The next theme which our collection addresses is the role that care settings (and the philosophies of care which are used to run them) can play in hindering or initiating alternative understandings of physical activity which can lead to richer lives during deep old age. Kluge’s contribution (Chapter 8) describes an innovative programme of leisure and physical activities in a residential care retirement community. The programme was co-created by residents, residential care staff and university partners with the aim of providing activities that responded to people’s needs, values, goals and preferences while fostering a sense of autonomy. Thus, the purpose of physical activity in this setting was not reduced to physical outcome measures alone (such as improvements in physical function), but rather to promote engagement in community life. Interestingly, Kluge then reflects on the consequences of selling the residential facility to another company which took the decision to discontinue this innovative programme. In Chapter 9, Kenyon describes how he uses Tai Chi to accompany people with dementia in the negotiation of what he terms ‘thicker’ narratives of care. Tai Chi is used to recover and retell people’s stories through movement rather than as part of a programme which prioritises adherence to strict performance objectives. Kenyon’s approach brings to the foreground the potential of physical engagement to enrich people’s lives by reconnecting them to their apparently lost selves while also evoking feelings of pleasure.

Pleasure is a theme that spans Chapters 10, 11 and 12. Phoenix and Orr (Chapter 10) stumbled on the theme of pleasure in their study of physically active older adults. They noted an absent discussion of pleasure in the literature that addresses late life physicality in relation to ageing well. Armed with an unplanned wealth of data on pleasure, which drew attention to different ways of enjoying movement, they were able to construct a typology of pleasure and reflect on the implications of this finding for practice. Meanwhile, Jette and Vertinsky (Chapter 11) highlight how their analysis of interviews with Chinese-Canadian women unveiled innovative and creative approaches to physical engagement that combined Traditional Chinese Medicine and Western approaches to health and medicine to devise ways of moving the body. Movement in this context was not in the calculated pursuit of health and the management of functional decline as dictated by external agencies, but in the pursuit of happiness and life balance. Nettleton (Chapter 12) also describes participants who want to be in charge of how they use their bodies: fell runners. She shows that older fell runners are compelled to continue engaging in an activity which is potentially dangerous because they have, over the years, become intoxicated with the pleasures of running, to the extent that running is not something that they ought to do but something that they viscerally need to do, for reasons other than health.

Sparkes as well as Pfister and Linneis address our penultimate theme, gender, in Chapter 13 and 14. They approach gender from apparently different directions, but one concern unites them: self-making/re-storying and the ageing body. They both produce highly personal but also sociologically pertinent accounts using auto-ethnography. Sparkes (Chapter 13) explores the potential threat to his masculinity that his changing physical capabilities might pose. He eschews the decline narrative, which others have already found hinders how we can retain meaning as we age and in the search for other, more satisfying ways of narrating his own relationship to his body, appeals to ways of narrating the body and self which do not trap him in a sterile choice between rejecting decline and failing to embrace what his body can still accomplish. Meanwhile, Pfister and Lenneis (Chapter 14) offer a critique of the enfeeblement of ageing women. They describe an encounter with female participants involved in an intervention designed to measure the physiological impact of participating in the team sport of floorball. Pfister joined the women in their socialisation into the sport and their discovery not only that they could become good at floorball in older age, but also enjoy it on a range of different levels.

These gendered experiences draw attention to the crucial role played by structures in influencing what people can accomplish as they age. The transformative power of physical activity cannot be envisaged without raising fundamental but also personal questions about the best way to become old and deal with the question of physical change and presence in the physical world. These questions have particular pertinence and resonance for the people whose experiences inform the final theme of the collection: place and space. We chose to close the collection with this theme because it takes us back to our original problematisation of physical activity: it cannot be seen first and foremost as a problem of motivation or individual responsibility. Some people...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction: Rethinking Physical Activity and Sport in Later Life
• 2  Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour: A Vital Politics of Old Age?
• 3  Physical Activity and Narratives of Successful Ageing
• 4  Fitness and Consumerism in Later Life
• 5  Type 2 Diabetes and Commitment of Seniors to Adapted Physical Activity within the French System of Therapeutic Education
• 6  Pathways to Masters Sport: Sharing Stories from Sport Continuers, Rekindlers and Late Bloomers
• 7  Keeping It in the Family: The Generational Transmission of Physical Activity
• 8  Physical Activity Programmes in Residential Care Settings
• 9  Physical Activity and Dementia: Tai Chi as Narrative Care
• 10  The Multidimensionality of Pleasure in Later Life Physical Activity
• 11  The Contingencies of Exercise Science in a Globalising World: Ageing Chinese Canadians and their Play and Pleasure in Exercise
• 12  Fell Running in Later Life: Irresponsible Intoxication or Existential Capital?
• 13  Ageing and Embodied Masculinities in Physical Activity Settings: From Flesh to Theory and Back Again
• 14  Ageing Women Still Play Games: (Auto)ethnographic Research in a Fitness Intervention
• 15  Physical Activity among Older Adults with Visual Impairment: Considerations for Ageing Well with Sight Loss
• 16  Local Environments and Activity in Later Life: Meaningful Experiences in Green and Blue Spaces
• Index