Theresa Sbarra during the CrossFit for Health Summit workout at CrossFit Central Downtown I Photo by Tyson Oldroyd
\nAnd we’re talking life-changing lessons.
\nIn her talk, Summit speaker Dr. Rhonda Patrick — renowned biomedical scientist and researcher specializing in aging, cancer, and nutrition — shared an effect of high-intensity exercise she described as “astounding.”
\n“As we age, our heart undergoes structural changes,” Patrick began. “It gets smaller in size and it gets stiffer.”
\nThese changes — especially in sedentary individuals — increase the risk of heart disease.
\nBut as a 2018 study by cardiologists at UT Southwestern and Texas Health Resource revealed, such changes are not only not inevitable, but they’re also reversible.
\nOver the course of the two-year study, sedentary 50-somethings were divided into two exercise intervention groups: one that just did light stretching and yoga and another that followed a high-intensity exercise program, in addition to the stretching.
\n“And after those two years, the structural changes in their heart reverted back almost 20 years,” Patrick said. “Their hearts got more malleable … and it was like looking at a 30-year-old heart.”
\nAnd it’s not just the heart whose decline can be thwarted. Age-related cognitive decline is also “largely preventable,” said Dr. Tommy Wood, an assistant professor at the University of Washington specializing in neuroscience and brain health.
\nThe brain, he said, is just like muscle in its requirements for optimal functioning: it needs proper nutrition and rest, but it also needs to do work.
\n“If you don’t lift weights, then you don’t get jacked,” he says. “With the brain, and most tissues in the body, their structure and function is directly proportional to the demand that you place on them.”
\nCrossFit, Wood said — with its unique combination of varied physical and mental demands in a social environment — is a boon for fighting age-related cognitive decline.
\n“Is it that our function declines over time? Or is it that we just use our brains less over time and then function follows?” he asked. “And … can we change this trajectory with something like CrossFit? I think we can.”
\nIt’s what Sbarra — now a Level 3 CrossFit Trainer — is committed to doing.
\n“I want to help these people enjoy life and just give them confidence,” she said.
\nSbarra started with two senior athletes in June 2023. Today, she has about 17 regulars in the Legends class at CrossFit 585, an affiliate in upstate New York. The oldest, Judy, is 91.
\nSbarra’s approach to training is simple.
\n“I just talk to people about what they need to do,” she said.
\nJim, for example, wanted to walk without his walker. So, they worked on sit-to-stands. Then, they practiced stepping over a low band stretched between two posts of a rig. After two months of CrossFit, Jim walked unassisted through an agility ladder — stepping into each square one foot at a time.
\nSimply, it’s training for life.
\n“Elderly people live daily in 1-rep-max living,” Sbarra said. “So, when you think of how hard it is for you to do your 1-rep-max deadlift, that’s what it takes for them to get off the floor, off the toilet, into the car.”
\nCrossFit, she continued, makes those activities of daily living not only possible for seniors, but also safe.
\n“We have to load them,” she said. “Properly and safely to their abilities.”
\nJim isn’t the only one achieving goals long thought impossible. Sharon got down on the floor and back up for the first time in a year. Ruth straightened her back.
\n“I did something that I never thought I could do,” Ruth said in a video Sbarra took afterward. “And it’s just so joyful, and it gives you a lot more hope.”
\nOf course, no amount of fitness can prevent 100% of age-related physical decline. But it can make the difference between independence, mobility, survivability — joy — and their counterparts.
\n“It’s ‘decline,’ not ‘fall,’” Sbarra said. “Not ‘incapacitated.’”
\n","floatPosition":"floatRight","floatWidth":"floatWidthHalf"}},{"name":"Button","props":{"variant":"primary","children":"CHRONICLES FROM THE CROSSFIT FOR HEALTH SUMMIT","url":"https://www.crossfit.com/essentials/chronicles-from-the-crossfit-for-health-summit"}},{"name":"Button","props":{"variant":"primary","children":"CROSSFIT FOR HEALTH 2024 LECTURE SERIES","url":"https://www.crossfit.com/health/2024-crossfit-for-health-lecture-series?utm_source=owned&utm_medium=internal&utm_campaign=crossfit"}},{"name":"TextBlock","props":{"children":"Brittney Saline is Senior Writer and Editor for CrossFit, LLC. Previously, she was a writer and editor for the CrossFit Journal. She’s been sharing powerful stories from and for the CrossFit community since 2012, covering topics ranging from problems with healthcare and Big Pharma to CrossFit’s potential for reversing symptoms of Parkinson’s disease to discourses on femininity and musculature. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her pug, Leo. Got a story to share? Email Brittney here.
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