Heidi Lichtwark Community Manager Sport Bay of Plenty

Currently, people aged over 65 are 14 per cent of New Zealand's population. In 2050, this group will be 25 per cent of the population.

Recently, at Sport BOP, we were fortunate to have an older adult's physical activity planning workshop with Professor Bevan Grant from the University of Waikato. The session was informative and thought-provoking for several reasons.

Firstly, Bevan is an acknowledged expert in this field; and secondly, he has lots of great stories and research to demonstrate key issues.

There are a multitude of sport and physical activity plans for children – mainly based around the school setting – but almost nothing for older adults (people aged over 65 years of age).

As Bevan said, working with older adults isn't as popular – it's not viewed as being as glamorous or rewarding. So, there is a great opportunity for something to be developed in this space.

There are some challenges though. The age-range from 65-100 years is very broad; this cohort of people has multiple preferences and needs. While there is much interest in maintaining older adult's health, the most sustainable reasons for involvement in physical activity and sport are not driven by health needs alone. A range of reasons includes social connections, self esteem, family interaction, lifestyle aims, travel, mobility, achievement and fun.

Some of Bevan's stories were from being 'on the ground”. He talked about his involvement with older adults groups and the wonderful people he had worked with. These peoples' rich experiences and ideas reinforced his passion for this work. He explained how older adults – in their own words – were often having plans/activities ‘done to them'. While these people were joking, there is a tendency to treat all older adults as one group – and we think we are doing them a favour by sharing our skills.

Bevan referred to the ‘fitness revolution' which started in the 1970s in response to changing lifestyles, sedentary work patterns, and use of cars for transport. The older adults of today did not have parents who went to the gym or trained for events etc.

There was a general understanding that pushing the body too hard physically could be harmful. Research done in Canada involving discussions with older adults about their physical activity resulted in a paper called ‘My heart couldn't take it', to reflect the premise that physical activity wasn't appropriate for older adults, 'and it wasn't good for you to push the body too much”.

We will be thinking about this at Sport BOP and working with key stakeholders to develop a ‘living document' type plan for this group in the coming year.