Question for life long Weightlifters

[RJ]

I am not a weightlifter (WL) but I know that individuals like Denny have been throughout their lives.

I was reading a study that said that when one gets older, it is not so much the strength but the agility that decreases Weightlifters from performing as well.

Please let me know if you agree with this. Would you say that your ability to lift as much as you did in your prime has more to do with losing strength or losing the agility to duck under the bar (general terms)?

Thank you,
RJ

[Tom Ryan]

I disagree with the conclusion from that study. Strength declines with age, just as foot speed, reflexes, etc. also decline with age. Feasible training frequency also declines with age. The Russian sports people wrote about this decades ago. I have lifted weights for 57 years and have trained seriously for over 50 years. I trained 5 times a week for decades, and I trained hard with high intensity and few sets of each exercise. I was in my early 30s when I first had to occasionally skip a workout because my body simply had not recovered from my previous workout.

Tom

[dwagman]

RJ, this is interesting as I’m wondering how this particular study defined agility. It would be helpful if you could provide a full citation so that I can look that up. The definition, i.e., the operational definition, you see, is absolutely key because that ensures that the discussion is based on the same idea and concept–or not.

The first thing to consider is how in sport science research agility is defined. Agility refers to a person’s ability to move forward and backward, and laterally with great speed and ease. Put another way, if you can change direction quickly, you’re considered agile. With that definition in mind, you’d have to ask yourself whether a weightlifter, who competes in the clean and jerk and the snatch, is actually being agile. The answer would be no. Therefore, I’d be interested in how the scientists defined agility.

As it relates to age, however, what has been well-researched via credible science (which, by the way, the Russians/Soviets have not provided and thus it should be rejected in its entirety, which is, admittedly a dangerous absolute to state, but largely true) is how in strength and power athletes the first thing that tends to “go” with age is power, i.e., the ability to lift weight, or move, with explosion and speed. Strength, the ability to generate force, is much less impacted by age.

The sport of weightlifting (clean and jerk, snatch), is heavily dependent on the ability to generate power, so that sport, and in general lifts that require a great deal of power, would be impacted more than lifts that do not, such as jump squat vs. squat, one-armed snatch vs. press, clean vs. deadlift, etc.

It’s important, however, to distinguish between chronological age and age-in-sport. Chronological age means very, very little in terms of strength performance and even power production, particularly when the athlete trains based on scientific principles. In that instance, chronological age becomes nearly meaningless, at least until into high age, and in terms of age-in-sport more time tends to actually favor the athlete, though eventually high age (defined as 70’s and up) would eventually take its toll.

And with this, how the lifter trains, or has trained in the past, becomes a much, much more important issue than age, regardless of how you want to define that. With poor training approaches that have relied on myth and conjecture as opposed to scientifically determined ways by which the neuromuscular system responds to the training stimulus, age takes its toll. This can be easily seen in athletes whose lifting performances have decreased over the years, injuries crept in, etc. Perhaps the most important consideration is that injury is entirely nondependent on age, but certainly does impact performance in a big way.

—
Dan

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Those who are enamored of practice without science
are like a pilot who goes onto a ship without rudder or
compass and never has any certainty to where he is going.
Leonardo Da Vinci; 1452-1519

[Denny Habecker]

I think you definitly lose strength, speed, and flexibility as you get older. I Know a lot of flexibility problems are caused by joints wearing out as we age. ALMOST everyone who has been active in sports their whole life is going to have some kind of joint problems in their life. I found that as I passed my early 60’s my strength started to decline at a faster rate than before. I found that the quick lifts did decline much faster than the slower type lifts. In my case a lot of my problems are caused by my hip joints wearing out.

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