Strength or Aerobic capacity, which goes first as we age

[nick rockliff]

Been thinking recently about various PBs over the last 18 years and try to pinpoint what has cause the decline since my peak at 48 and now coming up to 64?

Is it strength or aerobic capacity?

During my peak, I responded best to a diet of UT2, UT1 a smaller amount of AT training and very little speed work.

I'm not doing as much volume now and feel UT2 doesn't have the same training effect as it did in my 40s and 50s. Shorter top end aerobic sessions seem to work for me right now.

There seems to be many older athletes about and wonder what they feel about this as they get older?

[MiddleAgeCRISIS]

That's an interesting question.

I used to play a lot of competitive sport till about 30. I really injured myself and basically didn't do very much of anything for a couple of years.

In that period - I didn't really lose any strength but my cardio completely disappeared.

Now whether that's relevant to someone maintaining training is debatable but I thought it might be an interesting perspective! All the best

[Big J]

Interesting question.

In absolute terms, both peak quite late. The fittest people in the world I would say are professional cyclists and Tour de France winners are often in their mid thirties.

Powerlifters can continue adding strength well into their late thirties and many continue at top level into their 40s. Look at (the strongmen) Mark Felix and Big Z. Hugely strong in their 50s and 40s (respectively).

I think what goes is mobility and recovery. So if you're injury prone, it'll get harder and harder to come back to your previous level. Sports that tend to result in large quantities of injuries (I'm thinking tennis) rarely see players continuing far into their thirties.

So in answer to your question, no idea, but it's nice to ruminate on

[frankencrank]

Strength. As testosterone falls so does muscle mass/strength.

[flatbread]

aerobic capacity starts to go around 30-35

strength starts to go around 50

my bike VO2 max at 27, 5.3 liters/min. At 40, 5.2 -- while still keeping up volume and intensity. At 50, 5.0. differences in labs and motivation, but still a clear pattern. my 5min and 20min watts show a similar decline.

my weight room numbers didn't start to drop until 52.

[frankencrank]

aerobic capacity starts to go around 30-35

strength starts to go around 50

my bike VO2 max at 27, 5.3 liters/min. At 40, 5.2 -- while still keeping up volume and intensity. At 50, 5.0. differences in labs and motivation, but still a clear pattern. my 5min and 20min watts show a similar decline.

my weight room numbers didn't start to drop until 52.

Muscle mass decreases with age. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2804956/ VO2 max will decrease with muscle mass. VO2 max also depends upon capillary density and other muscle issues (mitochondria) but I see no reason that capillary density will, necessarily decrease with age. I am not sure how to explain your data but, on average, I think muscle strength fails faster than " relative aerobic capacity" in those who use both.

[flatbread]

For what its worth every cycling coach ZI ever talked to or read said about the same thing. Vo2 starts to go before muscle strength.

Joe Friel, for one.

[ampire]

Max heart rate also declines and that can limit your aerobic fitness.

[flatbread]

Eventually it all gets worse.

And yes, power lifters and sprinters start to lose peak force and power in their 30s too.

Endurance athletes, we start to loose the top end - what you can do for 2-5min - starting in the 30s, but we can hang on to MLSS and below - the percentage of VO2 you can sustain can actually go up, but you're still losing headroom. And then the MLSS starts to go too.

Gettin old is gettin old.

[max_ratcliffe]

Eventually it all gets worse.

And yes, power lifters and sprinters start to lose peak force and power in their 30s too.

Endurance athletes, we start to loose the top end - what you can do for 2-5min - starting in the 30s, but we can hang on to MLSS and below - the percentage of VO2 you can sustain can actually go up, but you're still losing headroom. And then the MLSS starts to go too.

Gettin old is gettin old.

People used to retire broken and ready for the rocking chair. I've got some pictures kicking around of my granddad when he was about 70. He looks like a 90yo, and any discussion of decline in athletic ability would have been risible, although he'd been a tidy enough sea rower in his youth. A lifetime of smoking and poor nutrition had done him in. We have far better futures ahead of us than our forebears did.

It's different at the elite and near-elite levels of course, but people decline because they stop doing stuff, and for most people, I suspect this is far more significant than the changes due to aging itself at least until 70 and over.

Graham Dawe apparently played professional rugby the wrong side of 50. That's pretty good going, but the old days of athletes retiring at 30 are gone.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

[Gammmmo]

Been thinking recently about various PBs over the last 18 years and try to pinpoint what has cause the decline since my peak at 48 and now coming up to 64?

age?

Is it strength or aerobic capacity?

In general for those that max out their abilities I'd say aerobic capacity peaks late 20s (maybe early 30s as per as said TDF GC winners - but there are more factors at play there and if you look at very recent winners such as Bernal and Pogachar you'd even have to question that) and strength maybe slightly later in the early 30s (again plenty of factors such as injury or event selection but if as cited you look at WSM where people won the title and continued and weren't in time at the same level e.g. Brian Shaw, then you'd have to say early 30s). For many people, even seasoned sporty types, the saving grace is that they're unlikley to have maxed out their own abilities at a younger age and with diligence they can be better when older.

No idea Nick what your background is, but if you felt your peak was at 48 then you'd already begun a decline in both AC and strength for a good 10 years.

[hjs]

Power, jumping/throwing goes first. Flexibility included.
Raw strenght depends a lot on the quality of the joints. Injuries accidents often cause permanent damage.
Both in raw strenght and fitness saw people stay pretty ok pretty long.

Nick, you at 48 where ofcourse a good bit over the top. In your youth you could have clipped the 6.00

Think after 50 nobody can get around getting less, but thats also a personal thing, maybe some people age sooner? Not talking about looks

[flatbread]

Eventually it all gets worse.

And yes, power lifters and sprinters start to lose peak force and power in their 30s too.

Endurance athletes, we start to loose the top end - what you can do for 2-5min - starting in the 30s, but we can hang on to MLSS and below - the percentage of VO2 you can sustain can actually go up, but you're still losing headroom. And then the MLSS starts to go too.

Gettin old is gettin old.

People used to retire broken and ready for the rocking chair. I've got some pictures kicking around of my granddad when he was about 70. He looks like a 90yo, and any discussion of decline in athletic ability would have been risible, although he'd been a tidy enough sea rower in his youth. A lifetime of smoking and poor nutrition had done him in. We have far better futures ahead of us than our forebears did.

It's different at the elite and near-elite levels of course, but people decline because they stop doing stuff, and for most people, I suspect this is far more significant than the changes due to aging itself at least until 70 and over.

Graham Dawe apparently played professional rugby the wrong side of 50. That's pretty good going, but the old days of athletes retiring at 30 are gone.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

no doubt. use it or lose it.

effective training slows the declines in both strength and aerobic capacity (as well as MLSS). following up from gammo, in cycling there have been 40-years olds on grand tour podiums (and horner won the vuelta at 40), and classics podiums, but you don't see the older guys winning something like the match sprint, kilo, or individual pursuit on the track (match sprint is about :10, kilo under :60, and the pursuit is about 4min). marathoners, good up to 40 sometimes, but the 1500 and 800 are a younger man's game.

work all the energy systems (including alactic in the gym) and don't get sedentary. genetics loads the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger....

[MPx]

Lots of conventional wisdom here which must be right, but is not necessarily what those of us who are NOT exceptional athletes see.

Alluded to above...it seems much more important to me how well trained you are. I suspect if I was willing to put in the time and effort I could better all of my PBs now at age 63 despite a lifetime involved with sport and having been erging since 1997. That is of course because I've never been all that good and with a proper trainer and more time and effort there's still some headroom there.

There's also physiological and mental factors which influence both what we might be naturally better at and what we choose to train at, and so what we remain better at. In my 40s I had a significant physical assessment which produced a huge folder of interesting but average data, and one surprise. For my size my lung capacity was lower than average - not awful just right at the lower limit of "normal".

I have always had a strong preference for sprints and interval training and hate long pieces whether at SS or TT pace. Funnily enough it turns out I am much better (relative to others in the rankings/CTC/etc) at sprints and intervals than I am when comparing longer pieces. Doesn't mean I don't do any long stuff of course - I know the rules! - but I'm sure that relative volumes and efforts involved in my training are not ideally skewed. That also has something to do with goals. My primary goals are to stay strong enough and fit enough to continue to maintain our property which involves a lot of building/landscaping/arboreal/groundcare work which always seems to involve needing to lift heavy things. After that of course I like to be as high in the rankings as I can, but only within the constraints of the time/effort I'm prepared to put in.

Anyway, the result is that IMO at age 63 I haven't yet lost much/any power on the erg relative to my younger self. I set low pull and 100m PBs earlier this year - although I guess it could be argued that learning better specific sprint technique might be a significant factor. Confusingly I also set a HM PB - I put that down to a combination of more training volume (up from around 1.5m to 2m meters per annum since 2017) and the fact of having done so few of them over the years. Where I'm noticeably slower now compared to before is the 5k - indeed from 2k-10k really - so there has definitely been some atrophy and my guess is most if not all of it is aerobic.

[flatbread]

A lot of it of course depends on what volume and intensity you've maintained since 30. I've kept up training 10-20 hours a week for the last 24 years, with short transition/rest periods during the year. I kept up racing for many of those years, and doing race-level intensity in training when I wasn't. So of course, I'm going to see a gradual slope downwards.

Going from sedentary to active, or returning to a larger training volume after a years of much lower volume, of course the results would be different. and of course the rate at which things decay is going to be input-dependent. you are what you train. or what you don't train.