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Back from the brink: ageing, exercise and health in a small gym

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2011

EMMANUELLE TULLE  and
NIKA DORRER
EMMANUELLE TULLE*
Affiliation:
Department of Social Sciences, Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow, UK.
NIKA DORRER
Affiliation:
Department of Social Sciences, Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow, UK.
*
Address for correspondence: Emmanuelle Tulle, Department of Social Sciences, Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow G4 0BA, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper discusses findings from a qualitative study which explored older adults' experiences of becoming regular exercisers in a gym triggered by health problems and their interactions with their younger gym instructors. A key question which the study sought to address was whether becoming embedded in the sub-field of exercise challenged traditional discourses of ageing (age habitus). While these older gym users reported significant benefits (greater health capital, expanded social networks and a return to active life after illness), they nevertheless were engaged in a complex and ambiguous negotiation of attitudes to bodily ageing and meanings of fitness and competence. In contrast, the instructors subscribed to a model of physical activity oriented towards physical capital as greater fitness. The paper suggests that these positions manifest competing understandings about what constitutes appropriate and desirable physical capital in later life. Budgetary constraints, beliefs about physical ability, professional expectations and the persistence of the discourse of decline prevent this gap from being easily bridged and allow alternative notions of ageing physicality to colonise the sub-field of exercise. The paper concludes that there is a need to develop ways of breaking down barriers in communication to overcome divergent understandings of what constitutes legitimate physical capital as we get older.

Keywords

old agephysical activityphysical capitalage habitushealthgym
Type
Articles
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 32 , Issue 7 , October 2012 , pp. 1106 - 1127
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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