‘Against the grain’: over 75 years and joining a community exercise programme

Abstract

This study explores the meanings that 22 men over 75 years attributed to their experience when joining a community exercise programme. Information gathered via interviews was analysed by inductive analysis. Four dominant themes emerged and these provide a framework for representing the findings. All men believed a physical active lifestyle was desirable for well-being and quality of life, although engagement at various levels is strongly influenced by the social construction of ageing and one’s personal history. Being physically active via a programme in later life is as much an embodied as a technical endeavour. It is also as much biographical as biological, and for ongoing engagement exercise must be deemed purposeful to self, irrespective of whether or not what occurs is in accordance with the scientific script prescribed for optimal health. Just being ‘older’ poses a variety of challenges to adopting a physically active lifestyle in the later years, something the men in this study imply needs to be better understood.