As lifelong exercisers get older, they find that they can’t hit a tennis or golf ball so hard, run so fast, lift so much weight, or perform so well, whatever their sport. A study from the City University of Yokohama 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 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 vigorous exercise as quickly as young children (Sports and Exercise Science Reviews, July 2006). The authors feel that previous studies on the topic are lacking. Since children cannot exercise at the same intensity as older people, they don’t put as much strain on their muscles as older people do, and therefore they 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 strenuous exercise. Children can put out only 60 to 80 percent of the power per weight exerted by adults. They don’t work as hard during intense exercise, which is evidenced by much less lactic acid in the bloodstream. Children can do more repeated sets of lifting heavy weights because they don’t do it as close to their maximum as adults do. They can do more “tried hard” wind runs than adults because they don’t work as close to their maximum. Therefore, the decline in athletic performance with aging is not due to an inability to recover from strenuous exercise.
If you are an older athlete competing in sports, you will be able to recover from your hard training days as quickly as younger athletes, but gradually you will lose strength, speed and coordination.
Every muscle in your body is made up of millions of individual fibers. Each fiber is enervated 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 functional muscle fibers, you lose strength. Coordination is also reduced due to the loss of nerve fibers. Since speed is dependent on force, it also loses speed.
However, if you exercise regularly, you enlarge each of the remaining individual muscle fibers. Even if it has fewer functional fibers, the larger individual fibers can generate more force to make it 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 will likely find yourself winning age group competitions as your peers drop out. If you don’t exercise regularly, it is never too late to start.