This fairly well matches my experience. I slowed down very little from age 49-62, slowing noticeably faster 63-65, slowing even faster 65-69, now i plan to defy physiology and get faster again, we'll see.
I was a mediocre age group swimmer, who quit at 15 to pursue other sports. After a 35 year break, I returned to semi-serious swim training at age 50 when I got into triathlons and then morphed into a full-time Masters swimmer at age 62, three years ago.
I'm actually swimming faster times now than I did at 15 and am continuing to improve and set new PB's at most of my meets. A lot of it is based on good coaching and technical improvement, plus putting in the yardage ( I average about 500K yards per year).
Sometimes I feel sorry for lifetime swimmers and their frustration at getting slower. But at the same time I know that I'm never going to bridge the gap to their elite level of performance, even if I keep improving.
At 65, I still feel I have a lot of room for improvement; my knees hinder my breaststroke kick, but otherwise feel pretty healthy.
Sometimes I feel sorry for lifetime swimmers and their frustration at getting slower.
The answer to that for me was to completely change my focus events :P
Though, granted, I'm only 30 so that strategy will only last for so long!
I didn't do my first swim race until age 68, so I have no expectations other than to keep on keeping on, to stay fit. I've signed up for a meet in January, my third year, so we'll see how much the masters team practices have taught me.
The research I would like to see would address sex differences. Does the relationship between performance decline and age differ between women generally and men generally? Among women, does the pattern in middle age and older relate weakly, or strongly, to age at menopause?
I've never seen such research, and I assume that a robust data set from which to address such questions probably didn't exist until recently because participation by girls and women in sports over their lifetimes has risen a lot during my own lifetime.
... Does the relationship between performance decline and age differ between women generally and men generally? ....
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What she said... AND, I wold like to know if part of the elder performance fall-off could be tied to fewer competitors within a given age group. We all know we tend to perform better if challenged by peers. Merely surviving to say 110 shouldn't suggest that that one performance finish at 110 by one swimmer represents the potential of everyone at 110, should it?
Well --- at 72 3/4 years, I find it more difficult to hold rest intervals at 10 seconds. I need more time to get recovered to out in a hard workout!
15 secs. on 50 & 100's and 20 secs. on 200 & 500 yard swims seem to give me what I need now.
What she said... AND, I wold like to know if part of the elder performance fall-off could be tied to fewer competitors within a given age group. We all know we tend to perform better if challenged by peers. Merely surviving to say 110 shouldn't suggest that that one performance finish at 110 by one swimmer represents the potential of everyone at 110, should it?
My theory is that as one's AG gets older, the many of "average or below average" swimmers drop by the wayside, leaving only good and great swimmers for competition. Like Mark, I stopped swimming early in life (after sophomore year in college) and restarted later in my early 60s. At first I was getting faster, but I'm convinced the layoff was too much and I'll never catch the great swimmers at the top of my AG. Knee surgery from skiing, femur surgery from triathlon training just before I turned 65, and now cervical spine surgery from genetics just before I turn 70, didn't help either.
Its entropy and gravity catching up with us and for whatever reason we generally lose muscle mass as we age beginning some time in our mid 50s or so. Can you reverse this process or stabilize or slow it? It seems to me that Mark's experience would indicate yes, but others on the forum have indicated not so much.
As for male/female, I think I recall reading that the beginning of naturally occurring mid-life muscle loss for males is likely to start earlier. And I would add that I think it takes a lot more work as I've gotten older to stay in some sort of decent shape.
