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Wonder if there’s a way to model fitness ROI as you age. If you have to put in 4x the time to maintain the same level of fitness at 60 as at 30, is it worth it? What’s the optimal effort on fitness to maximize time/energy left for everything else? How do you solve for that?
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Replying to @vgr
Will be 58 this March. Explosive power of my youth is gone but everything else is same or better. But I work at it: 10+ hrs/week of cycling & running and lots of strength training. And yrs of experience lets me race smarter to offset the loss of explosive power.
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It doesn’t work that way. maintaining an elite level of fitness is less of an investment of energy and time than getting there the first time. Also some sports are linked with an age window while others get better performance with time.
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I have zero interest in elite performance for its own sake and don’t enjoy the time spent, so my goal is to stop at exactly the point of diminishing returns re: energy/focus for remaining waking hours. Seems to be about 3h/week at this point, spread across 3-4 workouts.
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A rule of thumb is for anaerobic you can maintain at about 60% of your original effort if you split your sets between intensity and reps. Aerobic fitness is harder bc VO2 Max capacity declines very quickly with time off
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