Aging and Performance
With 2019 almost upon us, it’s a good time to think about topics for my blog next year. Immediately, the description of what I’ve gone back to school to study blips up: aging and performance. Informed by what I learned last semester, let’s look at these terms. Aging. What a huge topic! There is muscular, bone, joint, ligament, neural, and mental aging, all drawing on changes in our cells that make up those structures. For runners, and all athletes, these factors simultaneously affect us in varying ways and at various stages of life. First, it’s important to distinguish between chronological and biologically aging. Many elements of aging begin to show themselves around age 40. In Bending the Aging Curve (2011), Joseph Signorile suggests there is a huge difference in neuromuscular function (a combination of many of the above-listed things) among life-long trained athletes, who have the highest NMF, those who started training at 40, and those who have never trained. This is good to remember and hardly a surprise. But whatever our starting point, we do experience changes as we age. Let’s consider three. First, Type II (fast-twitch) fibers tend to increasingly turn into Type I (slow-twitch) fibers after age … Continue reading