Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights_ - Alex Hutchinson [68]
You don’t lose everything at the same rate. If you compare the age-group world records for the 100 meters and the marathon, you see a sharper decline in endurance compared to speed. This pattern is replicated in other sports like swimming. The decreases, as a percentage of the world record, also appear to be steeper in women than men—but researchers suspect that there’s no physiological reason for this. Instead, the records for older women are likely weaker because not as many women as men continue to compete in organized sports as they get older.
Another study, by researchers at the University of Texas’s Cardiovascular Aging Research Laboratory, examined age-group records for weightlifting. The records for Olympic-style lifts like the snatch and the clean-and-jerk, which rely more on muscular power than on absolute strength, declined more quickly than pure tests of strength like the bench press, squat, and deadlift. It’s this loss of muscular power, rather than strength, that causes the most problems for seniors in day-to-day life—which is why researchers now recommend that seniors include at least some power-building exercises in their program (see Chapter 5).
Age-group records offer a general picture of how the human body changes over time. But if you’re interested in knowing how your own body will change, these records have a subtle but important flaw. The records show the best performances of many different people, each of whom flourished for a brief period before fading to sub–world-record levels at later ages, thanks to health problems, changes in motivation, or other issues. There’s a big difference in the performance trends displayed by this type of “cross-sectional” data compared with “longitudinal” data that follow specific individuals for many years—and the differences are encouraging.
Starting with a study of masters track and field athletes published in Experimental Aging Research back in 1982, researchers have found that longitudinal data show a less steep decline in performance than cross-sectional data (i.e., age-group records). The decline seen in age-group records tends to be quadratic, which means it gets steeper and steeper as years pass. On the other hand, more recent studies of runners and swimmers who have trained continuously for several decades show evidence of decline in a straight line. You’ll get slower no matter what, but continuous training seems to prevent the decline from accelerating (at least for a while).
For sports like running and swimming, age-graded performance tables offer a way to assess how you’re doing from year to year. For each five-year age category, performances are expressed as a percentage based on statistical analysis of existing performances. Just remember that if you can stay healthy, motivated, and consistent, you should be able to beat this cross-sectional curve—if you do, your age-graded score will get better as you get older.
How can I stay motivated to exercise as my performances decline?
When Ed Whitlock became the first septuagenarian to run a marathon in under three hours in 2004, it was thanks to a simple but grueling training plan consisting of two-to-three-hour runs around a local cemetery, nearly every day. That regimen presented two key challenges that are familiar to any masters athlete: staying healthy, and—just as important but less obvious—staying motivated. In fact, when asked why his race performances in his 50s were less impressive than the years before and after, Whitlock points to the second factor rather than the first. “The main reason—or excuse—is that I was busy at work, so while I did continue running throughout the decade, my training dedication fell off,” he says. “I am sure if I had been more dedicated and better organized I could have done more.”
The physical declines that accompany aging are well documented, but there’s strong evidence that the decline in masters athletic performance is steeper than purely physiological reasons can explain. Indeed, experiments where mice are given unfettered life-long access to exercise