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Both Young And Older Athletes Need Recovery Time

By My Fitness Hut | November 17, 2008

One of the most overlooked areas in sports fitness training is "not training" or recovery time. Your body can only take so much training stress before it begins to break down.......and, it doesn't matter if you are young or old. Part of your offseason training includes rest and active rest.

A study from Griffith University in Queensland, Australia found that recovery times from intense workouts are the same for older and young athletes. This is true even though muscles weaken with aging because of decreased muscle fibers (the remaining muscle fibers work as well as those for a younger athlete). The tests were performed using two groups of experienced cyclists racing in 30-minute time trials on three consecutive days. The first group had an average age of 24 while the second group's average age was 45.

Both groups maintained their average power, had the same amount of muscle damage and had the same drop in their maximal heart rate during the third time trial.

Loss of muscle fibers may be part of the reason why older athletes must work harder to compete with younger athletes.

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