Department of Sport and Health Sciences, Technological University of the Shannon, Athlone, Ireland.
SHE Research Centre, Technological University of the Shannon, Athlone, Ireland.
Physiol Rep. 2024 Nov;12(21):e70109. doi: 10.14814/phy2.70109.
High caliber master athletes provide a valuable model for studying inherent physiological aging and performance capacity, without the confounding factor of physical inactivity. Despite the remarkable achievements of female master athletes, their participation rates remain significantly lower than those of their male counterparts, particularly at more advanced ages. This review examines the biological sex gap in sports participation among master athletes and the subsequent disparity in empirical research, thereafter exploring possible contributing factors. It highlights the importance of studying female master athletes to better understand the aging process and offers recommendations to address current evidence gaps. The need for more comprehensive mechanistic data on highly trained older women, novel cataloguing and analysis of real-world datasets, case studies/series, and longitudinal research are also emphasized. Although analyzing the records of female master athletes as a surrogate to determine age-related physiological and performance changes is a common approach, the process may be hindered by the considerably lower participation rates of women. Therefore, an important step toward bridging these gaps is the longitudinal, integrative study of female athletes engaged in lifelong exercise. Such analyses would improve our understanding of senescence in women and may inform interventions targeting the promotion of physical function in older adults.
高水平的大师级运动员为研究内在的生理衰老和表现能力提供了一个有价值的模型，而不会受到身体不活动的混杂因素的影响。尽管女性大师级运动员取得了显著的成就，但她们的参与率仍然明显低于男性，尤其是在更高级别的年龄。本综述考察了大师级运动员中体育参与的生物学性别差距以及随后的经验研究差异，进而探讨了可能的促成因素。它强调了研究女性大师级运动员的重要性，以更好地了解衰老过程，并提出了解决当前证据差距的建议。还强调了需要对经过高度训练的老年女性进行更全面的机械数据研究、对真实世界数据集进行新的编目和分析、案例研究/系列以及纵向研究。虽然分析女性大师级运动员的记录作为确定与年龄相关的生理和表现变化的替代方法是一种常见的方法，但女性的参与率较低可能会阻碍这一过程。因此，弥合这些差距的重要一步是对从事终身运动的女性运动员进行纵向、综合研究。这些分析将提高我们对女性衰老的理解，并可能为针对促进老年人身体功能的干预措施提供信息。
