At what age are you at your Best/Prime?

Dubble_D · July 9, 2010

Just got faced with a good Question:

At what age are you at your overall Prime?

Plus what factors influence this? i.e Amount of experience/years training?

Maturity? both physically and mental. i.e puberty.

Anything else?

teamfatboy · July 9, 2010

Overall prime for Bodybuilding? or powerlifting, track and field, or life in general ?

ThePman · July 9, 2010

Ya, you have to be more specific. Prime can mean a lot of things.

TonganTerror · July 9, 2010

great topic though I myself have wondered when we as amateur bodybuilders are at our peak(to build muscle) so for bbers I heard that your body is at its best in your 30s???Pman dont tell me its a fallacy cause I been looking forward to 2012 for some time now :pfft: :pfft:

ThePman · July 9, 2010

Most strength sports tend to age well. Powerlifters can go into their 50s or 60s if they don't get hurt. I was told by an IFBB pro I knew back in the States, who was in his early 30s, that he only had a few years of competing left because most guys peaked by around 35.

Speed is the one thing that tends to diminish pretty sharply with age, in that you don't see too many top-level track athletes out of their early to mid 20s. But muscle and especially strength have a lot more momentum behind them.

teamfatboy · July 9, 2010

My (completely unscientific) observation is that endurance athletes (marathon, triathlon/Ironman) tend to peak later than sprinters... many of the Tour de France guys are well into their thirties, and they're covering hundreds of kilometers per day, every day for a couple of weeks.

Dubble_D · July 9, 2010

I was more aiming at both bodybuilders and powerlifter, but then again the forum is open to discussion, thus take into account what you are passionate about.

Old Bull · July 9, 2010

Not There Yet May be when I hit M3s nexy year \:D/

Phedder · July 9, 2010

My (completely unscientific) observation is that endurance athletes (marathon, triathlon/Ironman) tend to peak later than sprinters... many of the Tour de France guys are well into their thirties, and they're covering hundreds of kilometers per day, every day for a couple of weeks.

The aerobic system takes many years of training to reach its peak, I know the increase in the size of their heart takes years of training to occur. Whereas the speed of muscle contraction may begin to decrease at an earlier age?

We all know gaining muscle is quite a slow process, there's no way a person could have reached their peak muscle mass by the age of 20. Each year people can add more muscle mass and improve their physique for BBing. I'm unsure if the age we see most BBers at their best is because that is when their body is most capable of having such a large muscle mass and past that age the muscle begins to degrade or potential for growth slows substantially. Alternatively, BBers could just lose motivation and not want to continue training so intensely to continue the muscle gains once they've already spent so many years training at such a high intensity. I suspect it's probably a combination of those two factors that determine the age most BBers peak.

Powerlifting on the other hand is less reliant on muscle mass than BBing and other factors like technique and neural drive play a large role. Improvements in muscle efficiency and technique can continue to be improved on after the actual muscle growth has slowed down.

Bodybuilding is about muscle mass and physique, whereas Power lifting is about strength. While Strength does relate to muscle size, other factors that also determine strength continue to develop after muscle development slows.

That's my interpretation of things from my basic scientific knowledge, I'd love to read a more succinct and detailed explanation. I also realise I haven't actually answered the question about age at all, if I had to guess i'd say 30s-40s for BBing and maybe 50s for PLing? For people who compete in PLing throughout their whole lives, at what age do their totals typically begin decreasing despite still training hard?