Do Speedwork To Maintain Musculature

From Matt Fitzgerald

..... endurance athletes should devote as much effort to developing their speed as they do to increasing their aerobic capacity. Older endurance athletes should perhaps work even harder at their speed than they do at their aerobic capacity. That’s because aging erodes speed more quickly. It does so by reducing the size, contractility and elasticity of muscle fibers and by slowing motor nerve impulse transmission. And in running, particularly, I think slowing is as much a matter of declining mobility as of declining strength and power. Do you see the way many older runners shuffle? That’s an effect of strength, speed, and mobility loss combined.

There’s an interesting study on the causes of aging-related running speed loss in the current edition of Medicine & Science in Sport & Exercise. Finish researchers conducted a number of measurements, including ground reaction force and ground contact time measurements, ultrasonographic analysis of muscle structure characteristics, and maximal isometric force production measurements, on 77 competitive male sprinters between the ages of 17 and 82 years. They concluded, “Age-related slowing of maximum running speed was characterized by a decline in stride length and an increase in contact time along with a lower magnitude of [ground reaction forces]. The sprint-trained athletes demonstrated an age-related selective muscular atrophy and reduced force capacity that contributed to the deterioration in sprint running ability with age.”