Nutrition and Performance in Masters Athletes PDF

Preface

Just because we grow older as athletes does not mean we are not aspiring to train and compete hard. Whether it be for fun, Žtness, friendships, personal bests or gold medals, people of all ages can enjoy participating in systematic training and competing in events organized for older athletes.

In 1994 I completed my PhD at the University of Queensland. The thesis focused on lifetime athletes over the age of 60 years and what factors explain the age-related declines in endurance, speed and strength performance in those athletes, despite a lifetime of physical training. In that era, few researchers were focused on older athletes. At the time the exercise physiology research was dominated by studies on young elite athletes – their aerobic capacities, their anaerobic thresholds, muscle Žbre composition, blood markers and changes in these parameters with acute exercise and chronic training. Older athletes were for the most part not seen as a cohort of interest in research.

Through my PhD studies I became aware of an academic book titled Sports Medicine for the Mature Athlete. It was edited by a hero of mine, Professor John Sutton, a man who practiced what he preached as both a researcher and masters athlete. John had a gift for bringing people together to share research outcomes and to lead research teams focusing on applied sports science research.™His book was the Žrst book I had seen that brought the then-limited research related to older athletes together in one source.

This book you are now reading is my dream – to bring the increasing body of knowledge pertain ing to masters athletes together in one coherent and highly applied book. My aim was to do what John's book did for me: To encourage young sports scientists to pursue research related to masters athletes. After many years on the bureaucracy treadmill within academia, I am now able to pursue that aim.

For this book, I have carefully invited a cast of contributors knowing that they too can bridge the gap between theory and practice. I have asked each of the contributors to focus on the topic of their chapter and to discuss the limited available research related to that topic that has speciŽcally focused on masters athletes. Their biggest challenge related to their chapter topic was to interpolate from the many studies undertaken in younger athletes and the relatively smaller number of studies in healthy older non-athletes. They have met this challenge with style.

Critically, from an applied perspective, the primary goal of this book, I have asked the contributors to include three major headings at the end of each chapter. These are

1. Implications for Sports Medicine Professionals and Clinicians

2. Implications for Masters Athletes and Coaches

3. Future Research Directions

The aims of these sections are to both bridge the gap between theory and practice as well as stimulate young researchers to undertake research focused on masters athletes to provide them with research ideas, and to encourage them to undertake applied research with a cohort of highly-motivated athletes with a lot of experience to offer and share with young and old sports scientists alike.

I sincerely hope this book contributes to the growing feld of masters athlete sports. Importantly, I™hope it also contributes, as John Sutton's book did for me, to the feld of applied sports science. I also hope this book assists readers from all walks of life in achieving their goals whether it be as an athlete, coach, sports administrator, sports medicine professional or sports scientist. Train and exercise for life I say, knowing that exercise is indeed medicine!

Finally, let me thank each of the 38 contributors who individually or in teams brought their chapters together. I know how much work these things take! Thanks also to my endnote referencing guru, Libbie Blanchard, for her experience in helping bring the referencing lists together at the click of a few buttons! Also thanks to Randy Brehm and Kari Budyk at Taylor & Francis and Amor Nanas at MTC. I thank you all for your patience over the journey. To all 42 of you who helped me bring this dream to a reality, I hope you are as proud of the end product as I am.