In the fitness world a couple physical qualities are focused on when it comes to aging. They tend to be strength and balance. A big reason for this is preventing falls. Stronger legs and better balance can hold a person up better. Simple enough.
However, speed and reaction time tend to get ignored. This is despite many believing these qualities age first, fastest and most! Whereby that logic, they should be worked on the most.
I haven’t seen this explicitly said, but my inclination and experience has been-
- Older people believe they can get stronger and perhaps improve their balance. We’ve done a decent job improving awareness on this.
- Older people don’t think they can get faster.
- Personal trainers either don’t think or don’t consider their clients can work on their speed.
Speed is a bit mystical in many ways. Even in sports it’s still commonly said “You can’t teach speed.” This ignores the nice relationship there is between relative strength -how strong you are for your weight- and speed. In other words, you don’t see many fast people that don’t also have some muscle.
Sprinters are renown for failing drug tests for a reason.
With something like a vertical jump, the relationship tends to be even stronger. Kelly Baggett has done a great job showing how for many, as their squat goes up their vertical jump goes up, and as they get around a 2x bodyweight squat that’s right around where most will be happy with it. (Provided the person also practices some jumping.)
Frank Yang, a former client of Kelly’s, showed this nicely almost a decade ago. As his squat and deadlift went up, so did his vertical jump.
Warning- Frank is, we’ll call it eccentric. He’s been known to offend. Don’t lose sight of the point of the videos.
405 pound squat-
500 pound deadlift-
40 inch vertical jump-
Of course things like how long your achilles tendon matter, but we can’t change that. Where strength becomes the foundation.
- Be strong
- Be lean
- Practice using that strength in a fast manner
With everyday clients, we’ve been ignoring the third part.
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I put together a spreadsheet of events going from strength to speed to endurance oriented. I compared the world record to the masters record for 50-54 year olds. I wanted to see, do speed oriented events have a bigger drop off than strength or endurance oriented ones? Because that seems to be the logic, that after ~30 years old speed drops fast, the most, and we have no say over it.
For strength I used raw deadlifts as powerlifting gear throws the numbers all over the place. Deadlifting tends to be the most immune to technique and gear changes anyways e.g. compared to wraps in squatting and nobody knowing what a parallel squat really means. I used some numbers from Powerlifting Watch and USA Powerlifting. For Powerlifting Watch I used the drug free numbers for the all-time record, but I don’t know if masters were / are drug tested (more on that in a minute). So the USA numbers give us some redundancy.
I used two weight classes in case one weight class had something funky going on. Same idea for other events, where multiple events are used for each strength / speed / endurance category.
We’ll go from pure strength / really slow with deadlifting, then we get faster with shot putting then to discus, as a discus is lighter than a shot put.
Then we get faster with high jumping to the 100 meters, even faster to the 4 x100 meter relay as there is a running start, finally moving to endurance. The mile, then virtually pure endurance with the marathon.
Think of it something like moving down this continuum-
almost pure strength -> strength with some speed -> speed with some strength -> speed with some endurance -> almost pure endurance.
All the non-lifting numbers are from Wikipedia.
You can scroll to the right to see everything:
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-> Difference (%) = ((Open Record – Masters Record) / (Open Record)) * 100
While a number jumps here and there, overall they’re all about the same. ~15%. A more accurate way would be to look at the top five performances, as while there are no outliers, we likely still have some anomalies in here. For instance, the events with the two biggest drop offs, the shot put and 4 x100 meter record, involve some freaks of nature with Randy Barnes in the shot put -or maybe it was just really windy that day- and three guys who have run under 9.8 seconds on the same 100 meter relay team. That doesn’t come around too often. Though it’s interesting even with Usain Bolt’s -who was on the 100 meter relay team- world record 100 meters, the drop off to 50 year old performance is still in line with the other events. I would have thought that’d be a greater drop. Maybe the 50 year old performance is just as freaky as Bolt’s!
Anyways, I think we get enough of the picture here. There’s nothing indicating that as we get older speed goes down considerably more than strength.
I also wonder if these numbers are bigger than what would happen for everyday people. My guess is masters athletes are much less likely to take drugs compared to it practically being a requisite for world record performance. Where we may be comparing drug users in their 20s to non drug users in their 50s. That would make the drop off even greater.
Even so, it’s worth taking into account what 50 year old people can still do on an absolute scale. We have ourselves a
- 650 pound deadlift
- 10.88 second 100 meter dash
- 4:25 mile
Being older means being slowER. WeakER. But not slow or weak.
And this is relative to performance in your younger years. I commonly train older people who have never been in a gym. Where for them, they can end up being as strong as or stronger than they’ve ever been, due to their 20 year old self not being in shape to begin with. A well trained 50 year old can be in better shape than a couch potato 20 year old.
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Once a client has some decent strength; joints are feeling solid, then I regularly implement some speed oriented exercises. Here are some examples from clients of mine:
In his 20s-
30 year olds can do clap push-ups too-
So can people in their late 40s-
Late 50s and still jumping-
A 59 year old who had given up running for about 10 years, hitting 11 miles per hour on the treadmill for a quarter mile-
(You can also see the woman in her early 60s next to her about to start her speed work.)
And a 79 year old working on his reaction time with a ball drill-
That’s a 79 year old with a fused lower back (happened before working with me) and nerve damage in his calves, still working on his reaction time. With a bow at the end (that I accidentally cut off early).
Speed can be worked on just as well as all the other physical qualities, but it needs to be….worked on. You don’t get what you don’t train.
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Want to still be working on your speed? Become a client.
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kierfinnegan
June 2, 2016
This is something I’ve kinda been freaking out about recently. Did next to no exercise* in my late teens up until ~27. Then, as you know, took up powerlifting and injured myself! Used to be an ‘ok’ sprinter but haven’t sprinted since school. You read everywhere that after 30 (I’m 31 next month) your testosterone starts to plummet and you start to slow down.
Have felt like there’s a race against time and that I’m an idiot for not starting this exercise thing earlier. Maybe it’s not all so bad!! Definitely feel lighter on my feet than when I was in my 20s (although you mention the coach potato). Also never thought I’d be doing 10+ pull-ups!
This article’s put me in a good mood!
* lots of random/sporadic weight lifting as a young man – what a waste of time
reddyb
June 3, 2016
Great!
Perhaps the main thing I’ve noticed physically getting in the way of older people is their injury history. To where to get them healthy, then get them where they can start pushing some weight around, then get them to where they can start doing things faster, takes a good amount of time and work. (For me and them.) The sticking with it part of things can get in manys way.
If they’re healthy though, then progress tends to be great. Sure, maybe not as fast as a 15 year old, but still it’s basically as fast as a person could want. The guy doing behind the back clapping push ups is one example. He progressed as fast as anyone I’ve ever trained.
Around the mid to upper 70s is only when I’ve seen everything truly get significantly harder. But it’s virtually impossible to separate all the other things going on at that point e.g. they tend to be on more medications than they can remember (literally), don’t even know the names of all the surgeries they’ve had. Progress can still happen, it can just be a lot slower and harder.
For instance, the 79 year old doing the ball pats, at my request to check with his doctor, he’s had his blood pressure medication progressively lessened because as he’s gotten in better shape and lost some weight, he was getting light headed more easily (blood pressure med is keeping him too low as he needs less of it). There was a good month or so he didn’t want to do much exercise wise because he was worried about the light headedness. Took me some time just to convince him he might not need as much medication anymore and ask his doctor about it. That was a month of pretty easy training, which can be fine, but easy tends to not cause much progress with strength / speed / endurance. The older the person the more this type of stuff comes up.
kierfinnegan
June 2, 2016
PS – that Frank Yang guy….crazy. What do you think of his form? I know new PRs probably aren’t the prettiest but his back seems really rounded on the DL
reddyb
June 3, 2016
His first squat is very good. The 405 and you can see his spine collapse some. As you hit on, can happen when trying to set a PR. Not ideal, but the dude is pushing his body to an extreme few can relate to. Not something he’d want to be happening regularly, but also not something you expect to never happen.
The deadlift is harder to know. Once people get to a high level deadlift, you pretty much expect the thoracic spine to round some. If you watch elite lifters you’ll see this all over the place. However, they are very good at rounding the thoracic spine but not the lumbar spine, which is critical. Of course, the more the thoracic rounds, the more likely the lumbar is to round, at least for the everday person.
Frank may very well be getting some upper rounding but have a lower which is alright. Tough to tell from that angle. Per the squat comment though, wouldn’t be surprised if his lower rounded some also. From what I remember, Frank was like 22 around this time, earlier in his training got away with a good deal of subpar form, and I don’t believe he has much sport history prior to this. In other words, he had a body which was in a good position to be injury resilient and may very well have a spine which handles flexion under load better than others.
Chris harvey
June 2, 2016
Hi Brian,
seem to have made a false move and this comment/ question did not get through.
The video of the woman running is awesome, and the pat ball also. Since I live in Europe and can’t do that at age 76, would be interested if you put some training stuff together for seniors, including balance work. Bought some of your stuff in the past and it is very good.
Thanks
Chris
reddyb
June 3, 2016
Hey Chris,
Thanks for letting me know on this. I’ve been kicking around an idea for a product tailored towards older people for a while now. Good to know there is some interest.
Thanks for purchasing some material. Glad you liked it!
Chris harvey
October 7, 2016
Hi Brian
me again, so how do you coach someone at a distance to improve at patball?
I am really interested in this and balance so not wheel kicking!
reddyb
October 7, 2016
Hey Chris,
I’d take them through the same progressions I do people in person. This isn’t set in stone, but I do (and Warren above did) something like-
-Bounce and catch; any way the person wants.
-Bounce and catch; alternate hands.
-Bounce and catch; alternate hands, hands have to be on top of the ball -> It’s common for someone to bounce the ball then catch it underneath. Harder to catch it on top.
-Bounce and catch; all one hand.
-Bounce and catch variation while walking.
-Patting; any way the person can.
-Patting; alternate hands.
-Patting; all one hand.
-Patting; two fingers!
For some, this can take a month or two to accomplish (to get up to patting). For others, a week; for others, a single workout. Then I do things like
-Patting; two fingers; standing on one leg.
🙂
Will try to get an article about this eventually.
formid0
April 26, 2017
Keep in mind, there are far fewer people interested in the 100 meter dash at 50 years old and fewer still who haven’t gotten fat and sedentary. The field is not nearly as competitive. 15% probably overstates the theoretical gap.
reddyb
April 28, 2017
The actual gap was calculated in the spreadsheet? (It’s less than 15%.)
I’m not sure about far fewer people being interested in the 100 meters. In comparison to what? If we say in comparison to younger years, I don’t know if that’s going to be much different than other events.
If in comparison to shot putting or high jumping at 50- entry list is much less for jumps and throws compared to running: http://www.worldmastersgames2017.co.nz/media/2054/final-tf-mens-entries.pdf
Also more entries in the 100 meters for 50-54 than in the 1500 meters, or any other distance event.
(Worth considering this is world rankings we’re talking about. While one country might have less interest in e.g. 100 meters, other countries can make up that gap.)
If we say in comparison to the marathon or deadlifting, those difference numbers are still awfully close to the 100 meters in the spreadsheet.
I understand the notion if we were more committed to staying in shape than we could conceivably have more people do these types of endeavors and potentially lower the differences. But one can argue this is analogous to saying if more people were interested in 100 meters sprinting than the record would be lower than Usain Bolt’s. Ehh, a bit far fetched at this point, when you’re talking the top performance ever in an event that’s been around a long time.
The average 100 meter could change in that circumstance, the top 100 meter time though? And even if it did, how much lower would it get?
What’s plausible though, what your comment made me realize we should mention, is all the top records are set by people who generally lose interest over time, as they age and can’t do what they used to. These are people who are most made for the event they set the record in, and are unlikely to do it when older. For instance, you don’t see Kenyans caring about master’s marathon performance or Jamaicans caring about master’s sprinting (at least not yet). Practically by default then, the group of 50 year old marathoners isn’t as built for it as the Kenyans.
In which case if you had e.g. Kenyans still attempting to dominate master’s marathon records, the difference would likely lessen. Otherwise, we’re comparing bodies most made for an event with bodies that are not. Similar to how drug use is likely much different. As well as unlikelihood of training full-time at 50 years old due to having a job, kids, etc. That could add up. Perhaps combine that with much bigger sample sizes, and we’d get another small reduction.
All that could definitely make ~15%, ~10%.
formid0
April 28, 2017
I don’t know if this post made it through the first time, so here it is again.
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Maybe I didn’t express my point carefully. I totally agree with the main thrust of your post.
I was just approximating the gap since the absolute number isn’t very important to my point. I could have said n%.
People are less interested in sprinting at 50 compared to people who are interested in sprinting nearer their prime. The number of men competing in officiated 100-meter dashes aged 15-35 is far higher than the number of men competing in 100-meter dashes aged 40-60.
I don’t think it’s far-fetched to suspect that many high-level competitive sprinters have lost interest in sprinting at 50 years old. This is a significant difference.
Also, I actually think that more people being interested in sprinting *could* lower the 100-meter dash world record. For example, most Americans who are talented enough to challenge sprinting records prefer to train for one of the popular North American pro sports.
As I finish reading your comment, I see you’ve arrived at basically the same conclusion I did.
I too think older people should incorporate speed training in their work, which is how I came across your blog. There is this pervasive myth that peoples’ speed declines really rapidly after 25, but it’s mostly just that everyone gets sedentary and so our mental model gets warped.
reddyb
April 28, 2017
Thank you for the clarification.