Mastering Life: Exploring the Physical Health of Older Masters Athletes and Chess Players

The population of older adults is continuing to grow in Canada, due to the proportion of increase in life expectancy and decrease in fertility rate. Unfortunately, a large segment of these older adults are living longer, but with multiple chronic diseases as well as sustaining moderate to severe injury. As a result, unhealthy older adults are at an increased risk for disability, longer hospital stay and rehabilitation, physical dependency, as well as death. Interestingly, participation in various activities have been advocated to improve the well-being of older adults namely sport and chess. Furthermore, some studies have proposed Masters sport participants as the ideal model of successful aging. To investigate this notion, this thesis aimed to examine the rates of injury and prevalence of chronic diseases among Masters Athletes and competitive chess players in comparison to normative data from the Canadian Community Health Survey.