Will You Slow Down This Year?

Does Age Have to Slow You Down?

A COMPLAINT I HEAR over and over is:  “Once I reached 40, everything changed.” And, for those of you over 50, the sentiment about diminished performance is even stronger. Mounting research on Masters athletes has delved into the particulars of the changes in performance with age.

Initially, peak performance slowly drops with age, but the process of performance loss accelerates from year to year. According to a 2008 study, there are relatively modest decreases until 50-60 years of age, with progressively steeper reductions after that. No one is immune from this: Males and females, elite and non-elite athletes show similar patterns in all three disciplines.

Another important question was asked in a study just last year: What are the sport-specific and distance-specific declines with age? Perhaps unsurprisingly, cycling showed the least amount of age-related changes, and there was less of a steep decline in overall performance in the Olympic distance compared to Ironman. Swimming showed the highest rate of decline in performance.

Why do these drops in performance occur with age? There are three factors to consider:

VO₂MAX

It has been shown that VO₂max is the best predictor of age-related changes in performance. VO₂max declines with age by approximately 1 percent per year after the mid-30s.  Interestingly, this drop is even higher in well-trained athletes compared to sedentary individuals.

“We do not completely understand the mechanism by which VO₂max declines with age,” says Dr. Phil Skiba, my coach during my world championship season who currently works in the University of Exeter’s Jones lab, the world’s leading center on oxygen transport and use. “However, it’s possible to slow the decline by as much as tenfold through hard, consistent training.”

LACTATE THRESHOLD

Lactate threshold (LT) denotes the point at which the muscles begin to become progressively more inefficient in terms of oxygen use, and begin to use progressively greater amounts of carbohydrates for fuel. “LT is a very good predictor of endurance performance−in some ways more important than VO₂max,” says Skiba. “It does not seem to decline in the same way with age, especially in athletes who remain fit and well-trained.”

EXERCISE ECONOMY

This is a measure of the amount of oxygen the body uses to do a task. If two athletes weigh the same and are running at the same speed below LT, the athlete using less oxygen is the one who is more economical. This does not seem to change much with age, which is good news indeed!

More good news: These are generalizations, as not everyone experiences the same rates of decline for the same reasons. And many athletes report personal bests later in life, which suggests that most athletes are working so far below their true potential that they can improve performance in the face of a declining physiology. Skiba uses this analogy: “Imagine that your fitness is a ladder. The top of the ladder is VO₂max. With age, you lose rungs from the top of the ladder. If you keep training, you can still climb higher and higher. Most people never get anywhere near the top, so they keep setting PRs. They never realize they have lost the rungs above because the ladder was so tall to begin with.”

Joanna Zeiger