Swimmers seem to peak between the ages of 15-30, about 5 years earlier than runners and other athletes.
I have always wondered why this is. Can anyone enlighten me please?
Swimmers seem to peak between the ages of 15-30, about 5 years earlier than runners and other athletes.
I have always wondered why this is. Can anyone enlighten me please?
They certainly start training heavily a lot younger than runners...
Johnny Law wrote:
They certainly start training heavily a lot younger than runners...
Exactly, how many runners do you see in track meets or cross country at the age of 4-13 years old. Go to a swim meet and there will be hundreds.
Also the publics perception, tell a kid to run 5 miles at 10 years old and it is almost child abuse, tell a kid to swim 5000 meters and it is a workout
But the sun exposure those swimmers get makes them look way older than they are - especially the backstrokers (face up to the sun a lot). Aaron Piersol looks every bit of 30+ years old and he's just 21.
Why is a Swimmer considered old at 30?
They can (and some do) compete and compete well at age 30. Most world class swimmers are world class by the time they are 15-17 years old. Imagine being world class at 15, and still having the fire to train at that level at 30 years old. They burn out, just like runners do.
Aerobic potential decreases with age once a person in fully grown, max heart rate goes down year by year, so if aerobic ability was the only factor an athlete would peak as soon as they are fully grown. However, muscle strength increases towards the thirties from years of accumulated training. So, at some point there is a perfect balance for an event between muscle strength and aerobic power, for swimmers it is in their teens or early twenties as they do not need the same muscular strength to counteract gravity as runners. This is also why we see some african runners peaking in their early twenties, they have been training harder from an earlier age than their western peers.
Aaron Piersol is only 21yo? Goodness gracious.
It's a good question. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that swimmers get into the sport at a very early age and can do a lot more volume of training than a runner can. You see the same thing in tennis. Kids who are 16 years are winning Grand Slam events. They're swinging a racket from the time they're 5 years old. And they're getting good coaching. It's taken very serious with the goal of making a champion out of them.
The issue principally turns on the ratio of heart size and body weight. The human heart generally reaches its maximum, natural size about twelve years of age. So, in a certain way, if aerobic development and muscle strength were not factors, one's best natural aerobic performance would be at about twelve years old--when one's heart is a large as it will get and when one's body weight is as little as it will get. The difference between runners and swimmers is that the former have to battle gravity, and so muscle strength and thereby increased aerobic capacity to allow for the development of that strength is needed.
Jon Orange wrote:
Swimmers seem to peak between the ages of 15-30, about 5 years earlier than runners and other athletes.
I have always wondered why this is. Can anyone enlighten me please?