I have already addressed the question of the decline of records with advancing age. In my post on age factors I analysed the way performances progress during the athletes young age, reach a maximum and then start declining. Two main conclusions were reached in that study. First, the rate of decline is roughly constant (of course, when one considers the entire master population and not just specific individuals). Moreover the same behaviour is observed for men and women. (In my "gerontology" post I present the findings of Tanaka and Seals who have observed a departure from the constant rate of decline for endurance events, but this need not concern us here). Second, an almost linear progression appears to be true also for junior athletes. And what is really interesting, when one compares juniors and masters, young athletes appear to speed up roughly five times faster than old athletes slow down.
All these studies of mine were focusing on running and jumping events. The reason for the exclusion of throwing events is that different age groups use implements of different masses. Thus one is faced, at least on the surface of it, with an "apples to oranges" conundrum. How does one compare performances obtained with shots the masses of which range from 7.26 to 2 kg? It turns out that the answer to the quandary does exist and can be found already in one of the very first posts in this blog.
In a study published in New Studies in Athletics (New Stud. Athl. 29:1 (2014) 75) I addressed the question of how throwing with lighter implements does affect the performance. I ended up by proposing a simple expression which represents nicely the dependence of the length of the throw L on the implement's mass m:
L=a/(m+f)
In the expression above f is a parameter which represents the inertia of the thrower's arm. It is of the order of a few kilograms and depends on the throwing event. The presence of this term ensures the realistic character of the expression. When the mass of the implement goes to 0 the length of the throw increases only up to some limit value.
Just to give an idea of the variety of the masses of the different implements used it is interesting to have a look at the list of best recorded performances in men's shot put. For boys between 5 and 11 years old we have performances obtained with 2 kg shots. Between 6 and 14 the performances are obtained with a shot of 3 kg. Similarly we have 4 kg for ages between 7 and 14 and 5 kg between 11 and 18. In some case a 5.44 kg (i.e. 12 lb) shot was used. Performances for ages 14 to 18 were obtained with a 6 kg shot and finally there exist performances obtained with a 7.26 kg implement for ages 13 to 19. Moving now to the masters' where the weight used by each age group is fixed by the rules, we have a 7.26 kg shot for ages from 35 to 49, 6 kg from 50 to 59, 5 kg from 60 to 69, 4 kg from 70 to 79 and 3 kg from 80 onwards.
Using the expression presented above to bring all performances to ones obtained with a 7.26 kg shot we find the diagram below.
The same diagram for women shot putters shows the same behaviour.
And just to show that the results are not specific for the shot put, here is the same diagram for men's discus throw.
All these diagrams confirm what was already observed for the track events as well as jumps. The progression of the junior and the regression of the masters performances are roughly rectilinear. Moreover the respective slopes have a ratio of five.
All these studies of mine were focusing on running and jumping events. The reason for the exclusion of throwing events is that different age groups use implements of different masses. Thus one is faced, at least on the surface of it, with an "apples to oranges" conundrum. How does one compare performances obtained with shots the masses of which range from 7.26 to 2 kg? It turns out that the answer to the quandary does exist and can be found already in one of the very first posts in this blog.
In a study published in New Studies in Athletics (New Stud. Athl. 29:1 (2014) 75) I addressed the question of how throwing with lighter implements does affect the performance. I ended up by proposing a simple expression which represents nicely the dependence of the length of the throw L on the implement's mass m:
L=a/(m+f)
In the expression above f is a parameter which represents the inertia of the thrower's arm. It is of the order of a few kilograms and depends on the throwing event. The presence of this term ensures the realistic character of the expression. When the mass of the implement goes to 0 the length of the throw increases only up to some limit value.
Just to give an idea of the variety of the masses of the different implements used it is interesting to have a look at the list of best recorded performances in men's shot put. For boys between 5 and 11 years old we have performances obtained with 2 kg shots. Between 6 and 14 the performances are obtained with a shot of 3 kg. Similarly we have 4 kg for ages between 7 and 14 and 5 kg between 11 and 18. In some case a 5.44 kg (i.e. 12 lb) shot was used. Performances for ages 14 to 18 were obtained with a 6 kg shot and finally there exist performances obtained with a 7.26 kg implement for ages 13 to 19. Moving now to the masters' where the weight used by each age group is fixed by the rules, we have a 7.26 kg shot for ages from 35 to 49, 6 kg from 50 to 59, 5 kg from 60 to 69, 4 kg from 70 to 79 and 3 kg from 80 onwards.
Using the expression presented above to bring all performances to ones obtained with a 7.26 kg shot we find the diagram below.
The same diagram for women shot putters shows the same behaviour.
And just to show that the results are not specific for the shot put, here is the same diagram for men's discus throw.
All these diagrams confirm what was already observed for the track events as well as jumps. The progression of the junior and the regression of the masters performances are roughly rectilinear. Moreover the respective slopes have a ratio of five.
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