Sport is not just for the young

Bremen / DPA

At the age of 78, Roswitha Wahl can do the splits, swing herself onto the parallel bars with ease and do a handstand. Indeed, in the German senior gymnastics championships, the trained nurse regularly comes top in her age group and has “a whole sack of medals.”
She started doing gymnastics as a small child and never lost her love for the sport. Even as others her age are losing their mobility, she says she’s fit as a fiddle and still feels like a 45-year-old. You would not guess she is 78 to look at her.
And she’s definitely not bored. “I’m still in 11 sport groups – I take part in everything and demonstrate everything,” she says. In one club, Bremen 1860, and at the Red Cross, she teaches exercise classes for people with heart problems and other general health problems.
Despite her age, Wahl is not unusual. According to the German Ageing Survey 2014, almost 69 per cent of people over the age of 40 say they’re hardly physically restricted. And they’re fitter than their age group was 20 years ago — people aged 40 to 85 are more likely to take part in a sporting activity than the same age group were in 1996.
People who want to stay mobile after the age of 70 shouldn’t wait until they’ve been pensioned off to take up a sport. They should “think about it earlier,” says Juergen Bauer of the German Society of Geriatrics.
He recommends people start exercising regularly before they get to 50. But endurance sports like cycling and walking aren’t enough. Weight training – with the guidance of a sports therapist – as well as the right diet are also important in maintaining mobility, according to Bauer, who is
head of geriatrics at a hospital in
Oldenburg.
And aside from exercise and diet, there’s a third important component in keeping fit: social interaction. Bauer warns against becoming too isolated after retirement and not socializing enough. Wahl says she noticed the importance of social interaction in 2010, when her husband of 50 years died.
In her grief she was on the point of giving up gymnastics. “I thought the whole world would fall apart,” she says. But after a few weeks had passed, she pulled herself together and went back to her classes – she didn’t want to let her groups down.
And it was the right decision. “Sport saved me,” she says. Wahl doesn’t have her own coach but trains regularly with a friend and the two have become well known for their synchronized performances throughout Germany. And the pair are still keen to learn.
“We want to do what we’ve seen the young ones doing,” says Wahl. That means lots of work on “freestyle” and “cloud pusher” moves for the next competition. Not even injury can hold Wahl back. At the German senior championships recently, the 78-year-old broke two ribs while doing a handstand.
But following the rule that if you fall off your pommel horse it’s best to get straight back in the saddle, Wahl immediately performed the handstand again.