Meltzer D E
Department of Chemistry and Physics, Southeastern Louisiana University, Hammond 70402.
Med Sci Sports Exerc. 1994 Aug;26(8):1053-67.
There is increasing interest among Masters athletes in standards for comparing performances of competitors of different ages. The goal of this study was to develop one such age-comparison method by examining the age dependence of ability in Olympic-style weightlifting. Previous research on the deterioration of muscular strength and power with increasing age offers only limited guidance toward this goal; therefore, analysis of performance data was required. The variation of weightlifting ability as a function of age was examined by two different methods. First, cross-sectional data corresponding to two separate populations of Masters weightlifters were analyzed in detail. Then, a longitudinal study of 64 U.S. male Masters weightlifters was carried out, with performance versus age curves resulting from the two methods were very similar, reflecting approximately 1.0-1.5% x yr-1 deterioration rates. These curves were characterized by common features regarding the rate of decline of muscular power with increasing age, in apparent agreement with published data regarding Masters sprinters and jumpers. We tentatively conclude that Olympic weightlifting ability in trained subjects undergoes a nonlinear decline with age, in which the second derivative of the performance versus age curve repeatedly changes sign.
越来越多的成年运动员对用于比较不同年龄竞争者表现的标准感兴趣。本研究的目的是通过研究奥林匹克式举重能力的年龄依赖性，开发一种这样的年龄比较方法。先前关于肌肉力量和功率随年龄增长而下降的研究，对实现这一目标的指导作用有限；因此，需要对表现数据进行分析。通过两种不同方法研究了举重能力随年龄的变化。首先，详细分析了对应于两个不同成年举重运动员群体的横断面数据。然后，对64名美国成年男性举重运动员进行了纵向研究，两种方法得出的表现与年龄曲线非常相似，反映出大约每年1.0 - 1.5%的下降率。这些曲线具有随着年龄增长肌肉力量下降速率的共同特征，这显然与已发表的关于成年短跑运动员和跳远运动员的数据一致。我们初步得出结论，受过训练的受试者的奥林匹克举重能力随年龄呈非线性下降，其中表现与年龄曲线的二阶导数会反复改变符号。
