As lifelong athletes get older, they realize they can’t hit a tennis ball or golf ball as hard, run as fast, lift as much weight, or perform as well, whatever their sport. A study from Yokohama City University in Japan shows that this gradual decline is due to loss of muscle strength. However, the most significant finding of the study was that older men can recover from hard workouts just as quickly as younger men (Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism, June 2006). Another encouraging study in the same journal, from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, shows that men over 60 who exercise regularly are much stronger than their non-exercising counterparts.
A study from Brock University in Canada also shows that older people can recover from intense exercise just as quickly as young children (Exercise and Sport Science Reviews, July 2006). The authors feel that previous studies on the subject are flawed. Since children can’t exercise as intensely as older people, they don’t put as much stress on their muscles as older people and therefore don’t suffer as much muscle damage. It is the decrease in intensity that causes less muscle damage that allows children to appear to recover faster from total exercise. Children can only put out about 60 to 80 percent of the power per weight that adults exert. They don’t work as hard during intense exercise, as evidenced by much less lactic acid in their bloodstreams. Kids can do more repetitive sets of heavy weightlifting because they don’t lift as close to their max as adults do. They can do more “attempted all out” wind sprints than adults because they don’t work as close to their maximum. Therefore, the decline in athletic performance with aging is not due to lack of recovery from intense exercise.
If you are an older athlete competing in sports, you will be able to recover from your hard training days just as quickly as younger athletes, but you will gradually lose strength, speed, and coordination.
Every muscle in your body is made up of millions of individual fibers. Each fiber is innervated by a single nerve that causes it to contract. With aging, nerve fibers are lost. So with each loss of a nerve fiber, you lose the use of the corresponding muscle fiber, and with fewer muscle fibers working, you lose strength. Coordination also drops due to loss of nerve fibers. Since speed depends on strength, you also lose speed.
However, if you exercise regularly, you enlarge each of the remaining individual muscle fibers. Even if you have fewer functional fibers, the larger individual fibers can generate more force to make you stronger.
The good news from these studies is that the same training principles apply at any age. Even if you can’t compete effectively against younger people, you’ll likely find yourself winning age-group competitions as your peers drop out. If you don’t exercise regularly, it’s never too late to start.
