Category Archives: Aging & Performance

I am involved in a research project at UVM developing interventions to enhance stride length (and therefore speed!) in older runners.  These interventions are jumping and skipping plyometric-form drills I’ve previously blogged about.  Borrowing from what John Babbington prescribed for his Wellesley cross country team and also discussed by Peter Reaburn in The Masters Athlete, I have been consistently doing these for over 20 years.  I firmly believe I’ve benefitted from this regimen.  The premise of plyometrics rests upon generating maximum force in the shortest time (Reaburn, 2009.) To be clear, the drills I use and prescribe for older runners are not as intense as the ones you’ll see demonstrated online by college or younger athletes. But they do generate force quickly! Through this research, I’m looking to expand this practice beyond myself and those I’ve coached.  As part of a proposed research paper, I’ve described how the expected decline in endurance running speed accelerates after age 50.  This took me right to the World Masters Athletics (WMA) adopted age grade (AG) tables, which most of us are probably familiar with.  At root, these tables are derived from best-ever times reported by age and gender for various distances.  The computed … Continue reading →

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 →

It’s hard not be somewhat aware of the effects of aging on our running – it shows in our race and training times! We slow down and at root we grudgingly accept that.   But to be honest, my understanding of all the elements driving this was rather vague. Aside from injuries and accidents I was holding up pretty well. Something has changed, however, in the past couple years. The age grade tables suggest my per mile 5K pace should have increased a total of 11 seconds over the past three years. But I’m seeing an increase of 30-40 seconds! So what’s up? For one, I’ve spent much of the last year studying exercise physiology in preparation to return to grad school for research in aging and performance. I’ve been a sponge – absorbing anything I can find about why we slow down as we age.   Most of the constraints are explained by impacts on our muscles, bones, cardiovascular, and breathing systems. A somewhat comprehensive list I’ve compiled includes: Changes in muscular and connective tissue quantity and quality Decline in the number of neurons and a slowing of how fast nerve impulses stimulate our muscles Reduced key hormonal production such as … Continue reading →