Ålder för maximal prestation och progression hos friidrottare

[King Grub]

The aim of this study was to quantify peak age and improvements over the preceding years to peak age in elite athletic contestants according to athlete performance level, sex and discipline. Individual season bests for world-ranked top 100 athletes from 2002 to 2016 (14937 athletes and 57049 individual results) were downloaded from the International Association of Athletics Federations' web site. Individual performance trends were generated by fitting a quadratic curve separately to each athlete's performance and age data using a linear modeling procedure. Mean peak age was typically 25-27 y, but somewhat higher for marathon and male throwers (~ 28-29 y). Females reached greater peak age than males in the hurdles, middle and long distance running events (mean difference, ±90%CL: 0.6, ±0.3 to 1.9, ±0.3 y: small to moderate). Male throwers had greater peak age than corresponding women (1.3, ±0.3 y: small). Throwers displayed the greatest performance improvements over the five years prior to peak age (mean ± SD: 7.0 ± 2.9%), clearly ahead of jumpers, long distance runners, hurdlers, middle distance runners and sprinters (3.4, ±0.2 to 5.2, ±0.2 %; moderate to large). Similarly, top 10 athletes showed greater improvements than top 11-100 athletes in all events (1.0, ±0.9 to 1.8, ±1.1 %: small) except for throws. Women improved more than men in all events (0.4, ±0.2 to 2.9, ±0.4 %) except for sprints. This study provides novel insight on performance development in athletic contestants that are useful for practitioners when setting goals and evaluating strategies for achieving success.

Int J Sports Physiol Perform. 2018 Mar 15:1-24. Peak Age and Performance Progression in World-Class Track-and-Field Athletes.