[media-credit name=’TIM BAIRD/Herald photo’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]A visiting kinesiology professor at the University of Texas said evaluating physical functions of elders would be the key to successful aging, in a lecture Monday at the University of Wisconsin.

Waneen Spirduso — who defined physical functions as strength, power, endurance, flexibility, mobility and balance — kicked off a series of lectures to honor UW kinesiology professor emeritus Margaret Jo Safrit, who worked at the university for 21 years before retiring in the early 1990s.

"It’s important for each old adult … to know where they stand in terms of their physical function on all the components of physical fitness," Spirduso said. "It’s important for people to know how far they are from frailty [and] what their physical reserve is."

According to Spirduso, the biggest challenge in researching elderly physical functions is a lack in measurability because factors like fluctuations in mood, anxiety and depression may play a role in affecting an older person’s performance.

"Older adults, for good reasons, have some days when they are depressed and other days when they are not," she said. "If you catch them in this state instead of a better day, their physical functions will be lower than in another time."

There are a few 75-year-olds who can power lift 285 lbs., Spirduso said, and there are some who can’t stand up from the floor. There are some who can run a 10k run, and some who can’t stand in line for 30 minutes.

According to Spirduso, balance, reactivity, mobility and coordination should be taken into consideration when researching physical functions because those become concerns when people get older, "whereas young people just take that for granted."

"If you look at the number of people over the age of 70 who are unable to perform basic physical functions, you’ll find that less than half the women can do or have no problem doing things like walking, climbing stairs, stopping, crouching or kneeling," Spirduso said.

According to Spirduso, aging affects men and women in different ways. Nearly 17.8 percent of 70-year-old women have difficulty walking, compared to 12.3 percent of same-aged men. About 12.3 percent of women find it difficult to climb stairs, and 8.2 percent of men have difficulty climbing stairs.

"It is important to find ways of determining and assessing the aging population’s needs before it is too late," Safrit said at the lecture. "[The greatest challenge] is not having appropriate techniques to prediagnose the problem and say, ‘This is what you’re going to be based on what you can do right now if you don’t do something about it.’"

Safrit, who currently lives in Silver Spring, Md., said she was surprised to know UW’s kinesiology department had dedicated a lecture series to honor her work in the department.

"[Safrit] is probably best known by her students not only for her research, which is outstanding, but as a mentor," said UW alumnus Terry Wood, who studied with Safrit during his graduate school year and is an emeritus associate professor at Oregon State University. "There hasn’t been a single student [of hers] that hasn’t progressed in the field."