How older athletes can keep the machinery healthy for performance today while also doing the right things for athletic longevity
Dr. Seiler published a YouTube presentation called “Does Our Endurance Machinery Slow Down At Different Rates as we Get Old?” Dr. Seiler’s presentation concluded that athletic performance does drop due to 3 primary factors:
- Maximum Heart Rate Falls As We Get Older. The drop is steady after age 30 but accelerates after 55. The good news is: (1) at VT1 (the maximum endurance pace, older guys can achieve higher % of VO2Max at the same lactate as younger guys. And, at VT2 (FTP), while older guys have less range in BPM above VT1, old guys can still use a higher % of VO2Max (less advantage than at VT1), perhaps due to larger proportion of slow twitch muscle fibers.
- More good news, looking at multiple biometric factors for older athletes vs. younger athletes with the same performance, older athletes seem to have better cardio adaptation from more years of training. So, while central capacity (heart ability to pump blood) is declining, the peripheral capacity (muscle ability to do work) holds steady if training is maintained.