ThirdEye
Semi-Pro
He was 30, now he's 34. Do you know how big that gap is for any human being, nevermind someone who wins or loses for matters of 1 cm or less?
Feds Racquet
- Thread starter RalphJ
- Start date
He was 30, now he's 34. Do you know how big that gap is for any human being, nevermind someone who wins or loses for matters of 1 cm or less?
BreakPoint
Bionic Poster
I don't know, but I was in better shape and had more stamina at 34 than I had at 30.
Cerps
Professional
Haha wellwell... Okey If you think that applies to everyone shureI don't know, but I was in better shape and had more stamina at 34 than I had at 30.
Say Chi Sin Lo
G.O.A.T.
Yeah it's like saying the Moon has more gravity than Earth.
roger presley
Hall of Fame
Yes!You are former Atp pro player,who has played in the high level tournaments like FO.I don't know, but I was in better shape and had more stamina at 34 than I had at 30.
torpantennis
Legend
This post is only true if you have maximized your physique at all ages. How many of us mere mortals can do that?
BreakPoint
Bionic Poster
Stamina actually increases with age. That's why people in their 30's and 40's actually do better in triathlons than younger people do. Have you noticed that most teenagers tire out rather quickly compared to people in their 30's and 40's?
roger presley
Hall of Fame
But I don't recall anybody in their late 30's and 40's to win any GS tournaments or something like that ,or winning anything. Teenagers can tire out,but not guys in their prime,which would be between 24 and maximum 30 years old.( range is not definite,don't take me for exact numbers). In tennis, reflexes are the thing that is falling with age and there is no stamina that can help you with that. I'm not trying to be smart,that's what Agassi said when somebody asked him about growing older and keeping up with younger players.
roger presley
Hall of Fame
And that's one of the main reasons why Federer took the rf97,for bigger sweetspot (more forgiviness) and more power. He can compensate a little bit his dying reflexes. That shows his greatness (in making such a big change) and willingness so that he can compete with this young guns and extraordinary player like Djokovic.
Bobby Jr
G.O.A.T.
Actually, peak stamina for males is well into to 30s - hence why the best endurance athletes are usually well into their 30s.
It's flexibility, recovery and explosiveness which peaks in the late 20s. Tennis isn't about only one thing - it's about a combination of them, plus skill, innate talent, guile, experience etc.
Re: reflexes. They wont have diminished at all for Federer at his age, not even close. They're more usage-related.
BreakPoint
Bionic Poster
Well, Pancho Gonzales did beat Rod Laver twice when he was 41 years old, just a few weeks after Laver completed his second calendar Grand Slam. Ken Rosewall also made two Slam finals in the year he turned 40. So it is indeed possible to have good reflexes and play good tennis well into your 40's.
BreakPoint
Bionic Poster
Well, so far his RF97A hasn't done as well against Djokovic in Slams as his Tour 90 did.
coolschreiber
Hall of Fame
Actually wait........are we discussing 3.0 doubles that you play now?
Or Roger Federer? haha
BreakPoint
Bionic Poster
We're discussing human endurance.Actually wait........are we discussing 3.0 doubles that you play now?
ThirdEye
Semi-Pro
A tennis game is not a marathon, it's more of a collection of sprints. And you sprint better when you're young, not when you're old.
BreakPoint
Bionic Poster
But when you're young, you get tired after only 100 sprints. When you get older, you can go 200 sprints without getting tired.
ThirdEye
Semi-Pro
But when you're young, you get tired after only 100 sprints. When you get older, you can go 200 sprints without getting tired.
Yeah, but it's the third set and you're already 0-2 against a younger guy.
Cerps
Professional
No. That's just wrong.But when you're young, you get tired after only 100 sprints. When you get older, you can go 200 sprints without getting tired.
smalahove
Hall of Fame
But when you're young, you get tired after only 100 sprints. When you get older, you can go 200 sprints without getting tired.
That's just plain unsubstantiated nonsense. Everything deteriorates with age after you pass the apex in the early-to-mid twenties. The body starts dying. Sorry to tell you mate.
You can however help the acceleration to such a pace, that you subsequently are able to "reverse" you biological age - meaning if, f.inst. past your apex, you spend your next ten years on the couch eating fast food, drinking alcohol and smoking, you've added decades to your biological age. You are then able to "reverse" this "ageing" by changing your lifestyle. However, you are not "reversing" the underlying death process in your body.
this is such a joke. lol. "..shows his greatness" ...yeah, sure
i still stay with my point: he made a realy big contract with wilson and he is not even allowed to switch back.
its just such a big sign for all people with small racquets to switch too, or to people with big racquets to
give their choice for the bigger racquet more sense...you can read it exactly here all day long.
he would show his greatness, if he would switch back to the 90 racquet and win another slam.
but that wont happen. good thing for djokovic - this gives him a much better chance to reach to federers records.
roger presley
Hall of Fame
this is such a joke. lol. "..shows his greatness" ...yeah, sure
i still stay with my point: he made a realy big contract with wilson and he is not even allowed to switch back.
its just such a big sign for all people with small racquets to switch too, or to people with big racquets to
give their choice for the bigger racquet more sense...you can read it exactly here all day long.
The contract would have been anyway,the size of head it's not important in this story,could have been 90,95,97,98 or 100.
roger presley
Hall of Fame
As things are today with Djokovic, there is no head size that can help Federer against him.He's just better now.Well, so far his RF97A hasn't done as well against Djokovic in Slams as his Tour 90 did.
roger presley
Hall of Fame
That was totally something different ,forty years ago,only name of the sport is same.
Cerps
Professional
This.
roger presley
Hall of Fame
Then why are we divided in gruops 35+,40+,45+ and so on ,when we are playing ITF veteran tournaments?But when you're young, you get tired after only 100 sprints. When you get older, you can go 200 sprints without getting tired.
coolschreiber
Hall of Fame
Well, so far his RF97A hasn't done as well against Djokovic in Slams as his Tour 90 did.
Granted Federer beat him more often earlier but Federer lost to Djoker with the 90 in 2008 Australian, 2010 USO, 2011 USO
So he wasn't invincible to Djoker after 2007. Now Djoker is at his peak and getting much harder to beat in slams. Well 'harder' is an understatement , impossible lol.
BreakPoint
Bionic Poster
You should check the ages of people who do well in triathlons. Mostly in their 30's and 40's.
BreakPoint
Bionic Poster
Yeah, but then the younger guy retires in the 3rd set because he's too exhausted to continue.
Remember Djokovic when he was younger?
roger presley
Hall of Fame
It's not the same when you're comparing a guy 20years old with someone who is 25 and more or comparing 28 years old to 35.
BreakPoint
Bionic Poster
BreakPoint
Bionic Poster
Because they don't want the older guys to take advantage of the youngsters.
roger presley
Hall of Fame
Everything that you are saying and fighting here about ,like an old granny,is wrong. Just take a look at Federer 2006 and compare it with Federer 2015,you'll see a different person. Same thing happened to Sampras,Agassi,Becker,Lendl,Mcenroe etc. Same will happened to Djokovic and is already happening to Nadal.
roger presley
Hall of Fame
Yes,sure.Because they don't want the older guys to take advantage of the youngsters.
Ihatetennis
Hall of Fame
djokovic is a celiac, he was retiring becuase he was basically feeling like he had the flu
djokovic used to carbo load like we all do, the difference is... gluten makes him sick, it is almost exaclty like having the flu in symptoms.
djokovic got off gluten and we all saw his real ability, and since 2011 look at how many times he has retired compared to before
its ridiculously less
edit: 9 prior to 2011 and only 1 in 2011
no retirements since 2011
BreakPoint
Bionic Poster
I've never believed that whole gluten-free story for a minute. I think he went to a different kind of doctor and got some "help".
BreakPoint
Bionic Poster
I'm just talking about stamina and endurance.
Ihatetennis
Hall of Fame
if you don't know what being a celiac and ingesting gluten can do to you then you have noooo idea what novak went through.I've never believed that whole gluten-free story for a minute. I think he went to a different kind of doctor and got some "help".
my tennis coach is a celiac, when he was diagnosed he gained 50 pounds in 5 months after changing his diet.
not being sick 24/7 makes a huge change in your life
its like having asthma, lets say you breathe and get about 80% of the oxygen normal people get.
If you overcompensate with training to breathe at the same rate as a normal person then when you start asthma medication your oxygen intake is increased drastically.
Im using the asthma example because that is what i went through, novak overcompensated for the lethargy and nausea with training hard and even harder when he started to feel sick.
thats why he was so dominant in 2011, he was playing with a fitness level that was head and shoulders over everyone else, because he didnt have the illness bothering him after that, the reason he isnt the same as then is because once he was healthy, his body didnt need to overcompensate to reach a good level of fitness.
when i had a blood test ,before starting asthma medication, i had extremely high concentration of red blood cells and hemoglobin. when i started my asthma medication i felt superhuman, but over the course of about 5 months my fitness declined because the elevated levels were not needed, and came down to normal.
Now i am fitter than ever and healthier than ever, but only if i exclude that period of time when i had elevated levels of red blood cells and hemoglobin.
Novak was like that especially early 2011, towards the end we saw his fitness go down a tad and his fitness levels found equillibrium.
Sander001
Hall of Fame
Previous Triathlon World Champions:
Javier Gomez: 32yrs old
Jonathan Brownlee: 22yrs old
Alistair Brownlee: 24yrs old
Gomez: 27yrs old
A Brownlee: 21yrs old
Gomez: 25yrs old
Unger: 29yrs old
The days of people taking your posts at face value are long, long gone.
Bobby Jr
G.O.A.T.
Because tennis has never primarily been an endurance-focussed sport. It's mostly a skill sport.
Go check out major multisport events... The most prolific competitors are usually close to 40. Age brings a hardness and endurance which younger guys can rarer match - even if they're faster and recover quicker. It helps that older guys have usually got their training/eating/recovery routines much more finely tuned too which I imagine is where old tennis players have really excelled in the last 10 years compared to previous (tennis) generations.
Bobby Jr
G.O.A.T.
...
Doing my best not to defend a Breakpoint point ha ha but most of those guys are not good examples of endurance events, they complete in short events (standard or international Olympic distance) which are mostly over in less than an hour. Olympic length triathletes often upgrade (if you can call it that) to longer events once they lose a touch of their peak speed compared to the younger guys coming through.
When you look at endurance events - half-Ironman and longer, such as many multi-sport events are, you see the ages are much older on average.
Take Coast To Coast in NZ, it's one of the the well-known endurance events in the world - a 243km run/bike/kayak race across a mountain-range. The winners are mostly in their 30s. In the last 24 years it's been won by:
Richard Ussher won it aged: 30, 31, 33, 36, 37
Steve Gurney aged: 29, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40
Gordon Walker aged: 34, 36, 37
George Christison aged: 34
Ditto for the Ironman World Championships. Going backwards from this year the winners (age at the time they won):
Jan Frodeno - 34
Sebastian Kienle - 30
Frederik Van Lierde - 33
Pete Jacobs - 29
Craig Alexander - 37
Chris McCormack - 36
Craig Alexander - 35
Craig Alexander - 34
Chris McCormack - 33
Normann Stadler - 33
Faris al-Sultan - 27 (the youngest winner in approx 20 years)
*edit* The youngest male winner ever was actually Scott Tinley in 1982, aged 25.
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roger presley
Hall of Fame
I thought that we were talking about tennis. If we did,I must say that I don't see any close to 40 guy winning slams or masters and I think in today tennis endurance and stamina are very important thing,specially in veteran tennis.
roger presley
Hall of Fame
That's the part of it too.
BreakPoint
Bionic Poster
Did you even bother to read the article? The longer the race and the more endurance is required, the older the athletes that finish first.
Those short races you've listed don't require as much endurance as the longer races, which is why younger people can do well in them. That was my point.
smalahove
Hall of Fame
This reminds me of a recent comment made by a summer olympic gold medalist, when confronted to his non-performance in another sport he competed in, in his age class.
"The important medals have already been taken."
The youngsters, who would have obliterated these results, compete in other sports where the important medals are being handed out. Or do you honestly believe the stamina of your ultra-competitors to be above a Tour de France cyclist? Check out VO2Max evolution with age.
"The important medals have already been taken."
The youngsters, who would have obliterated these results, compete in other sports where the important medals are being handed out. Or do you honestly believe the stamina of your ultra-competitors to be above a Tour de France cyclist? Check out VO2Max evolution with age.
Bobby Jr
G.O.A.T.
If you're suggesting that the younger multi-sport athletes don't compete and that's why the older guys win you are in complete dreamland. Thousands of the current top triathletes in their 20s attempt Ironmans and other endurance multi-sport events around the world just to be the rare person who beats the older guys. Former top short-course triathletes have attempted it for years with almost zero success until they mature more.
Endurance evens aren't just about or VO2Max. They're about having a long-established training and recovery routine, having worked out your limits/pacing and peaking etc - which can take years to sort. If VO2Max was a deal breaker then you logic about age-related VO2Max would therefore suggest 13-19 year olds should dominate since they have generally naturally higher VO2Max than guys in their 20s. But do we see them doing well in even Olympic length triathlons? Never. And 19-20 year olds are the players most commonly hindered by lack of ultimate fitness (for the opposite reason guys in the mid 30s are so good a endurance events - they haven't gotten into good routines/practices yet).
The general, and backed by science, trend is: the longer/harder the endurance event, the older the peak age is (within reason of course).
The peak (male) age for a marathon is 29-30 according to the result of World Marathon Majors (Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago and New York City marathons).
Of course there are other factors, like the different levels of financial reward for shorter events (which can also be competed in more regularly) but to say a male who is 30 is on a fast path to losing their endurance and a guy at 34 must be hindered by age-related endurance decline is patently wrong by virtually every example we can look at.
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DJ-
Hall of Fame
I've never believed that whole gluten-free story for a minute. I think he went to a different kind of doctor and got some "help".
Maybe easier for you to digest that story, but it is well known and proven regarding his diet. He was actually contacted first by the doctor. I know family and friends who have had gluten intolerance and did not even know until they changed, and what a difference it makes !
BreakPoint
Bionic Poster
I believe the other factor probably has to do with the body's metabolism. When you're younger, you have a higher metabolism so you burn more calories more quickly. That inhibits your endurance because your body essentially runs out of fuel faster. As you get older, your metabolism slows down so you burn calories more slowly. That helps your endurance since your body's fuel will last longer before being depleted.
It's like the older person is an economy car that gets 40 mpg and the younger person is a sports car that gets only 20 mpg. The sports car may be able to go faster, but given the same amount of fuel to start with, the economy car will go longer and further while the sports car runs out of gas before the finish line.
The downside of a slower metabolism, of course, is that it's easier to gain weight and harder to lose it.
That's why you see so many overweight middle-aged people but lots of skinny teenagers, even though those teenagers probably eat a lot more food.
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smalahove
Hall of Fame
I'm not questioning the fact that ultra-marathoners are pt in their 30s. I am however pointing out their bodies have been slowly deteriorating. However, everyone who's run or cycled any longer distance knows this simple fact: you have to train the distance. I can guarantee you, as soon as there's money in these events, you'll see a rapid decline in age and increase in speed. And those "thousands of top triathletes in their 20s", how do their careers stack up in comparison to the ultra-marathon winners?
From http://www.runnersworld.com/masters/age-matters-for-marathoning
First, the bad news. Whether you're an Olympic champ or a midpack runner, your aerobic capacity falls with age. For a healthy, trained athlete, it's not your heart's stroke volume or your ability to extract oxygen from blood that changes with age, says Sandra Hunter, Ph.D., an exercise scientist at Marquette University in Milwaukee. "It's that your max heart rate declines, and no one can change that. It just plummets." While the classic formula for calculating max heart rate (220 minus your age) is just a rough estimate, "The reality is, your max heart rate declines by about a beat a year." No one knows the explanation, but this drop in aerobic capacity explains why the average 50–year–old can't compete against a 20–year–old. "You can't reach the same max heart rate, so you're operating at a lower intensity to begin with," says Hunter.
Aging also leads to a decline in muscle mass, as neurons supplying the muscles begin to die. "If the neurons shrink and die, the muscle fibers die," says Hunter. "Sometimes they get regenerated by new neurons, but as you age you can't keep pace with cell death. Training can slow the process, but it won't end it." The atrophy seems to pick up about age 60, and hits fast–twitch muscle fibers hardest. That's why speed falls off before endurance.
These physiological changes inevitably alter marathon performance. Though individuals will age differently, studies indicate that beyond about age 35, endurance performance declines by about five to 15 percent per decade [...]
From a physiological perspective, there's nothing special about the decade between age 25 and 35, says exercise physiologist Dugas. Instead, he says, the fact that so many marathoners hit their PRs at that age is probably a relic of their career paths, rather than a statement about intrinsic physiology. "There's not any rule that says you peak in your early 30s," says Dugas. "It's just that many runners don't move to the event until later in their careers."
In the absence of injury or mental issues, the world's fastest runner at 10–K should also be the fastest marathon runner, says Dugas. "If we put you on a treadmill and keep upping the pace, the top speed you achieve in that test is what we call peak speed, and it will predict who's the fastest runner for all distance events," he says. As evidence, Dugas points to Ethiopian Haile Gebrselassie, who broke his own world record in the marathon last September in Berlin, having already set records at 5000 and 10,000 meters earlier in his career.
BreakPoint
Bionic Poster
A faster heart rate will wear you out faster. A slower heart rate means that your body isn't working as hard. Taken to the extreme, if you had a zero heart rate you'd be dead and you can stay dead for a very long time. LOL
For example, Borg had an extremely low heart rate for his age at a resting rate of only 35 beats per minute. He could play tennis forever. In fact, he said that he never got tired playing tennis regardless of long he played. The guy could play three 4-hour matches back-to-back without being tired at all. That's why almost nobody could beat him on clay. He would just outlast you no matter how long it took. He always won the war of attrition.
For example, Borg had an extremely low heart rate for his age at a resting rate of only 35 beats per minute. He could play tennis forever. In fact, he said that he never got tired playing tennis regardless of long he played. The guy could play three 4-hour matches back-to-back without being tired at all. That's why almost nobody could beat him on clay. He would just outlast you no matter how long it took. He always won the war of attrition.
