I always hear people say "the younger you are, it's easier for you to get in shape" is this really , down to the bottom true?

I think a lot of this belief comes from the fact that as you age you lose muscle mass (at least without some form of resistance training). An older person that has never lifted will tend to have less muscle mass than a twenty-year old. This is also where the excuse of your metabolism "slowing down" is also relevant. Of course your metabolism is slower...you've got less muscle mass burning calories. So as a younger person you've got a bigger base of mass working in your favor to build upon, whereas an older person has to build up muscle that they've lost over the years. The important thing to remember is that it's never to late to change things and achieve positive results:bb:

Thanks, I'm 18 so don't have to worry about old age for a while..

A lot of it has to do with recovery time also.

I always hear people say "the younger you are, it's easier for you to get in shape" is this really , down to the bottom true?

The longer you haven't been in shape, the harder it is. So those that decide to get in shape at 40, should have a tougher time getting into shape as amassing those many years without being in shape.

So yes that is right. Be the exception and prove it wrong.:tucool:

Going by personal experience I would say you are absolutely bloody right......


What was that joke (?).....Middle age is when you wake up every day feeling like you went out and got hammered the night before but you hadn't touched a drop.

The number one difference is recovery...period.

Also the ability to put on muscle is slower even if you lift your ass off. (I'm talking 'roid free)

You can accomplish marvelous things all your life if you train and eat right. I'm doing stuff my parents never dreamed of. Of course the era and the expectations were somewhat different back then.

If you train right all along you can match or even better your lifts when you were younger.

You can still get the old bull to plow the field. it just takes a little longer to get him out of the barn sometimes.

Of course. The body just starts to fall apart. You can see this in almost any athletic field. After early 20's (give or take) the body's ability to recover and grow properly from exercise decreases. However, when this is plotted against time and a person spends years training for an event, there is a sweet spot at which the body is still in pretty good recovery shape but, when combined with the training regiment, the athlete hits the peak of their field. This is why the world's best endurance athletes are generally in their 30's and not 50's (even though they may have been training consistently that entire time and even in cases where they are not injury prone) and the same reason why strength athletes are generally better at younger ages than at 55 as well, even if they continue to workout mercilessly.

However, unlike the cop-out pathetic excuses that most people use, such as "When I hit 30 it was impossible to lose fat", the decline is pretty gradual. I'm 28 and only started running properly less than a year ago and can easily beat the average 18 year old. And there are 48 year olds who can smoke me as well.

So the details of this are only really pertinent if you want to be top of a sport. If you start running at 30, chances are you won't be running any 3:50 miles in your life.

Per the post before mine, I think the best thing is to consistently workout for decades on end--something a scant few people do, so it's not surprising that they wake up when they're 42, feel and look like sh*t and complain about their age, excusing their next door neighbour who's up at 5:30 am feeling awesome and working out in the garage as an enigma and living a life they could not, but they are lazy and that is all there is to it.