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She credits the exercises, which she has been doing for 12 years, with allowing her to live independently. “I still live by myself, and I take care of myself,” she says. “It was only when I was in hospital [in 2021] that they said I had to have a walker to go back home alone. So I said, ‘That’s okay by me.’
Exercise is the best prescription for maintaining independence, researchers say. But what is the right dose — in terms of frequency, intensity and duration? What type of exercise is best? At what age do you need to start — and how late is too late?
There are too few studies about exercise among the oldest old to offer definitive guidelines for that age group, says Erin Howden, a researcher and exercise physiologist at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute and co-author of an overview of exercise in octogenarians in the 2022 Annual Review of Medicine. But evidence for the “younger older” — people ages 60 to 75 — is sufficient to provide good, basic advice to anyone who wants to still be working in their garden at 97.
Independent living requires the ability to perform the activities of daily life — bathing or showering, dressing, getting in and out of bed or a chair, walking, using the toilet and eating. Individuals assigned to the exercise group completed a regimen of high-intensity resistance training of hip and knee muscles three days per week for 10 weeks. For each of the muscle groups, resistance machines were set at 80 percent of the one-rep max. The training was progressive, meaning that the load was increased at each training session if the individual could tolerate it. Sessions lasted 45 minutes, and at each session, the exerciser completed three sets of eight lifts for each muscle group. By the end of the trial, exercisers had significantly increased muscle strength and mobility in their hips and knees compared to a group of non-exercisers. Four participants no longer used walkers after the training, getting by with a cane instead. The lead investigator for that study was Maria A. Fiatarone Singh, now a geriatrician at the University of Sydney. For older people, she says, strength training, which helps with balance, is the top-priority exercise because it makes other forms of activity possible.
Credit: the washington post
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Like many in her age range, 97-year-old Sylvia McGregor of Sydney deals with her share of maladies — in her case, arthritis, osteoporosis, hearing loss, 
