It is important that we not confuse improvements in lifespan with the healthspan of individuals. Readers would largely concur that hanging on, propped up by pharma and intensivist interventions is less preferable than time spent engaging with life fully and doing the best to squeeze quality out of diminishing moments. Healthspan matters. Masters athletes skew toward those who value healthspan and see it as the precursor to lifespan and fulfillment. This series of posts looks at age-based causal decline in physical performance factors and how best to combat or slow it; factor by factor.

Maximal Oxygen Uptake

This measure, commonly known as VO2 max is

a measure of the maximum amount of oxygen your body can utilize during exercise. Bettik & Hepple (2008)

Aging coincides with a gradual decline in this physical capacity. Generally, VO2max decreases gradually with advancing age, and the rate of decline is approximately 10% per decade after the age of 25 years, and more specifically was suggested to be 15% between the ages of 50 and 75.

The physiological basis for the age-related VO2 max decline, should take into account both the capacity for oxygen delivery to and its use by skeletal muscle, as these will be diminished. There is long standing evidence that aging reduces muscle blood flow during whole-body (submaximal) exercise in large part due to the reduced maximal cardiac output during exercise seen with aging. The idea that the diffusion of oxygen from blood to muscle-fiber mitochondria plays an important role in determining VO2 max is generally supported by the literature; Bettik & Hepple (2008). In examining oxygen diffusion dynamics, the VO2 kinetics response to moderate exercise was found to remain slower in aged subjects even after a priming exercise bout had minimized the limitation imposed by a sluggish oxygen delivery response (Scheuermann et al. 2002). The potential played by deprecated mitochondrial function in effective V02 mx in thee aged remains a point of debate. As Bettik & Hepple explain the fact that there is a wide variation in the relative physical activity levels of subjects across many studies helps explains differences in findings. It is important to remember mitochondrial oxidative capacity retains the potential to improve with exercise training at least into the seventh decade of life.  This maintained oxidative capacity may represent compensation via an increase in mitochondrial content by exercise to offset declines in function.

Stopping the Rot

Hagberg (1987) surmised based on evidence that  older persons who maintain their activity levels decrease their VO2max at a rate of 5% per decade rather than the 10% per decade decline found in sedentary persons. It was also believed that men and women over the age of 60 either showed minimal or no increase in VO2max as a result of exercise training. Recent data indicates that individuals in this age range can increase their VO2max in response to training and that their adaptive capacity, at least on a relative basis, is similar to that of younger persons. It appears that older persons can minimize the reduction in VO2max that occurs as they age if they maintain high levels of physical activity and that they retain the ability to adapt to exercise training but time marches on inexorably.

As legendary coach Joe Friel points out there is no known way to stop the long-term decline. But you can temporarily maintain or even briefly improve your aerobic capacity regardless of your age.

An example of improving VO2max while aging is a Frenchman by the name of Robert Marchand.3 He was an avid cyclist with a remarkable story. At age 101 he set an age group hour record of 24.25km (15 miles) and had a VO2max of 31. Then he got serious about training. Two years later—at age 103—he broke his own record by going 26.92km (16.74 miles) in an hour. At that age his VO2max had risen to 35 (check that out in the above table). Monsieur Marchand eventually moved into a nursing home where he rode a stationary bike for 20 minutes or so a day. He died at age 109 ..Friel (2021)

Stop the Presses

Very recently, a critical research paper was published that cautions over the cessation ( for long intervals ) of training in masters athletes. An almost linear VO2max decrease was observed in studies on young and older athletes, as well as non-athletes, starting a few days after training cessation, with a decline of as much as −20% after 12 weeks. Besides a decline in stroke volume and cardiac output, training cessation was accompanied by considerable reductions in mitochondrial content and oxidative capacity. This reduction could largely be rescued within similar time periods of training (re)uptake. It is evident that training reduction or cessation leads to a considerably accelerated VO2max drop, as compared to the gradual aging-related VO2max decline, which can rapidly nullify many of the benefits of preceding long-term training efforts; Burtscher et.al (2022).

For masters hockey players take away actions may include but not be restricted to:

• Inclusion of HIIT sessions based around age appropriate, accelerometer verified repeat sprint activity in any program

• Ensuring training breaks are kept to a reasonable period; 4 weeks may be a best practice estimate to enable recovery without deprecating VO2 max severely.

• Balancing HIIT with aerobic threshold training given its tremendous offside for increasing cardiac stroke volume.

Where to next?

If you want to tailor an age and health-appropriate to meet your masters hockey goals………..

References

Betik, Andrew C., and Russell T. Hepple. 2008. “Determinants of VO2 Max Decline with Aging: An Integrated Perspective.” Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism = Physiologie Appliquee, Nutrition et Metabolisme 33 (1): 130–40.

Burtscher, Johannes, Barbara Strasser, Martin Burtscher, and Gregoire P. Millet. 2022. “The Impact of Training on the Loss of Cardiorespiratory Fitness in Aging Masters Endurance Athletes.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 19 (17). https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191711050.

Couzens, Alan. n.d. “How ‘Trainable’ Is VO2 Max Really? – A Case Study - SimpliFaster.” Accessed January 30, 2023. https://simplifaster.com/articles/how-trainable-is-vo2-max/.

Hagberg, J. M. 1987. “Effect of Training on the Decline of VO2max with Aging.” Federation Proceedings 46 (5): 1830–33.

Kim, Chul-Ho, Courtney M. Wheatley, Mehrdad Behnia, and Bruce D. Johnson. 2016. “The Effect of Aging on Relationships between Lean Body Mass and VO2max in Rowers.” PloS One 11 (8): e0160275.

Lazarus, Norman R., and Stephen D. R. Harridge. 2017. “Declining Performance of Master Athletes: Silhouettes of the Trajectory of Healthy Human Ageing?” The Journal of Phy