The impact of previous athleticism on exercise habits, physical fitness, and coronary heart disease risk factors in middle-aged men.

A longitudinal study was performed to determine differences in physiologic variables, health behaviors, risk factors, or clinical status between former athletes (FA) (N = 345) and nonathletes (NA) (N = 75). The subjects, 420 self-referred white males aged 25-60 years old, were examined for prior athleticism and health. Athleticism was determined through self-reported high school or college athletic history. Baseline physiologic and health behavior characteristics were not different between the two groups. Of those study participants (N = 203 FA, 48 NA) who were sedentary at baseline, 208 (N = 167 FA, 41 NA) voluntarily began an exercise program during the followup period (average followup = 56 months). These numbers correspond to exercise adoption rates of 82 and 85% for FA and NA respectively, and were not statistically different (95% CI FA = 0.76, 0.88, NA = 0.73, 0.97). Repeated measures analysis of covariance was performed to determine if physiologic responses to adoption were different between FA and NA. No statistically significant difference was found between the two groups, time effects were similar in the two, and no significant interaction of time by group was observed. We conclude that prior athleticism has little apparent impact on health and health behaviors, thus suggesting that contemporaneous exercise has more impact on clinical variables.