One Plus One Is More Than Two: Enhanced Physical, Motor, and Cognitive Gains from Simultaneous Multicomponent Training in Older Adults

Regular aging is associated with declines in multiple organismic dimensions, including aerobic capacity, muscular resistance, motor fitness, and cognitive functions. These multiple age-related declines are interconnected and bring negative, sometimes dramatic, consequences for life quality in older ages. I scrutinize encouraging data indicating that training approaches aiming to improve multiple dimensions simultaneously rather than training each dimension separately may be more effective for functional improvements in older individuals. Training programs combining simultaneous multidimensional components, such as aerobic capacity, muscular resistance, dual-tasking exercises, exergames, and dancing, have been shown to induce greater attenuation or even reversal of age-related declines at the behavioral and neural levels in comparison with isolated training of each behavioral dimension. To conclude, I propose applied translational principles for training programs for older individuals aiming to reach the highest achievements in the physical, motor, and cognitive dimensions.