By Jim Thornton C onsider three of David Costill’s many accomplishments. One: In 1966, he became the first director of Ball State University’s famed Human Performance Laboratory. Over the next half century, he and his colleagues published hun- dreds of studies that have revolutionized the scientific under- standing of exercise physiology and sports performance. Two: A lifelong athlete himself, Costill swam at Ohio Univer- sity and later took up marathon running, a switch that helped him coax many of the world’s most celebrated guinea pigs to his lab—legends such as Frank Shorter, Alberto Salazar, and Bill Rogers. After 15 years of 70-miles-per-week training, Costill’s knees gave out. “When I switched back to swimming for fitness,” the Indy Aquatic Masters member says, “my research also shift- ed to swimming. That’s probably what drew me into the whole field of exercise physiology—I wanted to understand myself.” Costill set his first FINA Masters world record at age 60. Since then, he’s set so many others he can’t keep track of them all. “But I’m pretty sure,” the 83-year-old says, “I currently hold five.” He’s only off by one. He holds four. Three: Costill’s daughter, a genealogist, discovered her dad has already lived longer than any Costill in the family line dating to the 1700s. “On a one-case basis, and being a little biased,” he says, “it makes it difficult to pick out why you think you lucked out. But I certainly would argue strongly in favor of physical ac- tivity playing a huge role.” ENDURANCE OF YOUTH In such conviction, he’s hardly alone. Scott Trappe, a former Costill grad student and current director of the Human Perfor- mance Lab, is one of many researchers worldwide investigating the age-defying impact of exercise. In a study funded by the Na- tional Institutes of Health and published in 2018 in the Journal of Applied Physiology, Trappe and colleagues recruited a “large and unique” cohort of lifelong exercisers, average age of around 75, who’d been inspired by the exercise boom of the late 1960s and early 1970s, got hooked on training, and have been at it ever since. They also recruited similar numbers of healthy nonexer- cisers who were about the same age and young exercisers whose average age is in the mid-20s. Each performed a cycling test to measure maximum oxygen consumption (VO2 max), the gold standard of aerobic fitness. Each then underwent a muscle biopsy to assess aerobic enzymes and capillary density, two keys to endurance performance. Trappe expected to find a clear “hierarchical pattern” among the three groups, with the young exercisers testing significantly better than the lifelong exercisers, who, in turn, would at least moderately outperform the older nonexercisers. The results, however, weren’t quite as he expected. Research is finding how exercising across your lifespan can slow, and in some cases halt, aging Peter H. Bick Indy Aquatic Masters member David Costill holds 25 U.S. Masters Swimming records. 33 ju l y- au gu st 20 19