Why Runners Get Slower with Age | Hacker News Reader

Why Runners Get Slower with Age

well.blogs.nytimes.com

This is very interesting to me. I'm 48 and play hockey 3 days a week, often against guys in there 20's currently playing college or Juniors. I have been actively increasing my leg workout for the past year and it's noticeable, esp. in my quickness and overall speed.

I'm actually about to start doing squats which are something I've never done much of because I've been lucky genetically and have always had very large calves and thighs. I picked up a book recently espousing the benefits of squats in particular (Starting Strength for those interested) and I think that's the next thing for me to keep or maybe even increase my speed.

The other thing I started doing about a year back now is a upright bike 'sprint' where I basically peddle easy for around 20 seconds, then 10 seconds of full-on max aerobic type sprint. I then rest another 20 seconds peddling easy, followed by 10 more seconds, and finish the same on a final third sprint. When I say full on sprint I mean to the point where I nearly barf every time I complete this part of my workout; you really have to push yourself and not just go a little faster. Prior to switching to this sprint type workout I did a rotation of long day/short days on an elliptical; on my long day I did 40m and on my short I'd do 20m.

What I noticed as I've gotten older is that my endurance remained fairly consistent but my 'explosiveness' was going away. Just switching to the sprints has helped me regain a lot of my speed. In fact a good friend that I've skated with on and off for about 15 years remarked that he thought I was faster now than I've ever been. Considering I've been chasing down 20-something Junior players on break-aways, it seems about right to me.

I think adding in the squats will further help diminish my leg muscle decline and hopefully give me a bit more quickness my first three 'chops' from a dead stop.

I write about all this stuff on my personal blog which focuses on fitness, health and most of all hockey such as this recent post: https://existentialquandary.wordpress.com/2015/09/07/sunday-...

Edit: Book title was wrong - link is in another comment - thanks for linking to it!

squats strengthen your core.

https://www.google.com/webhp?ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=what%20...

"quickness" is absolutely about the core muscles. This sort of quickness is not quite what the article was talking about, but for your case it's relevant.

A major reason why squats are so beneficial is because it strengthens your core.

Sure, squats strengthen your core, but the core isn't a set of magical muscles that automatically make you faster. Strong quads, hams, and glutes are more important. Squats train your legs/posterior chain/core (and upper body to an extent), and also teach the triple extension [0] which is key in explosiveness. Type I and Type II muscle fibers matter as well

[0] http://myweb.facstaff.wwu.edu/chalmers/PDFs/Triple%20Extensi...

Why did you just refer to core stability as "magic muscles" in a disparaging way? What exactly was your goal there?

No one here said your core muscles were the only muscles involved in these exercises, but they are critical.

Stop being a jackass.

Good on you! Squats are awesome. But don't forget to do prehab work or neglect your hamstrings! Tendon/muscle tightness or muscle imbalance can lead to some knee pain when squatting frequently. Stretching/foam rolling should keep you loose, and deadlifts (or glute ham raise or whatever else) will keep your hammies strong.

Your bike sprint workouts sound similar to Tabata cycling intervals: http://britishcyclesport.com/2013/training/tabata-intervals/

Got to agree workouts like that are really hard!

Thanks I hadn't seen this before.

I got the idea from a BBC program on fitness, I think it was a Horizon's where they had the host doing these sprints and they equaled much longer endurance workouts. I was dubious at first but the results seem to hold up.

Mechanisms to think on:

1) Stiffening of tendon tissue via cross-linking and calification.

2) Loss of muscle mass and strength via all of the varied mechanisms implicated in sarcopenia, ranging from mitochondrial dysfunction to extracellular matrix disruption via cross-links and senescent cells, to fatty infiltration of muscles, diminished stem cell activity, etc, etc.

3) Inefficiency in blood flow to muscles, either through neurological impairment in the normal blood vessel dilation process or through cross-linking and calcification to stiffen blood vessel walls.

4) Dysfunction in cartilage for all the reasons implicated there, such as cross-linking, loss of stem cell function, and so on.

There are others, but note that all of these are secondary consequences of types of primary damage that occur as a result of the normal operation of metabolism. They are all targets for repair treatments yet to be constructed.

Can't recommend this book enough: http://startingstrength.com/

Running speed for any event beyond a few seconds is not limited or determined by muscle strength, but the much much much more important aerobic capacity (as they discuss in the beginning, but of course don't bother to make the connection).

Performance in endurance sports also peaks around 27 years of age, so most people will naturally get faster until then and only decline afterwards. So you don't simply get slower with age.

Exactly. Your cardiac output is a function of age, routinely stated as "220 minus your age in years is your maximum heart rate." (Or: maxBPM(age) = 220 - age)

When I'm going all out, my watch says I hit 180 bpm which is pretty darn close to my (220-32=188) max rate.

Source: "endurance sports also peaks around 27 years of age" I have seen most triathletes hitting their best time in their early 30s. Chrissie Wellington actually only started professional ironman in her 30s. She was ironman champion in 2007(30),2008(31),2009(32),2011(34).

Also cardiac output is more correctly a function of stroke volume, how much blood is pumped for each stroke. Therefore very well trained athletes actually have a lower max hr.

Also cardiovascular drift can increase your max HR, this happens when it's very hot or you have lost a lot of water due to sweating, this causes stroke volume to decrease and heart rate to increase while you still at the same physical output. You hear ppl saying my heart rate was so high and i didn't feel like i was working that hard, it's usually due to cardiovascular drift.

Triathletes are a odd group to base this on. In any case, the exact age isn't important and you would of course expect this to vary dramatically. The point was that it is very far from being as simple as "performance decreases as you age".

But you are correct to point out that your parent is very far off the mark. Max HR is not a useful predictor of performance, and you can not calculate it with a formula. What you want is a test to exhaustion to determine it, but these are highly dubious due to the psychological aspect, and at the end of it you might have a correct value for max HR, only to realize that it is pretty useless for any prediction purpose.

Case in point, Chris Froome, winner of the Tour de France in 2015, has a max HR of around 170, yet he can sustain 450W for a hour. Meanwhile plenty of people with a max HR of 200 and beyond can't climb stairs without heavy breathing.

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