"95% of People over The Age of 30 WILL NEVER SPRINT AGAIN"

This claim has been making its rounds in the internet for some months. I could not determine on what hard statistics, if any, people are basing this claim. Certainly, the AVERAGE fitness of the vast majority of the populace plummits as time goes forward. So there is some truth to it. 

In my experience, which is considerable now (over the two-decade mark of professional training and coaching), people do rapidly get weaker after teenage years. And it is true that widespread health and fitness statistics are worsening and at an accelerating rate. As people age, they get weaker. Weakness raises risk OF fall and risk FROM fall and risk IN recovery. That is, the weaker you are, the more likely you are to fall. Moreover, the likelier you are to take serious injury. Moreover again, you are likelier to get sick or even die in the hospital subsequently. In graphs of death from fall, the prevalence in a population is precisely linear with strength loss.

However, there is also a large body of evidence that older populations can make immense progress if they train. And our concept of what older populations can tolerate in training needs some updating. I have worked with clients in their 70s and 80s who absolutely can and do sprint, and they get faster with training over time.

Simply put, if you train to get slow, you get slow. If you train to be faster, you get faster. If you train to get stronger and have better balance, you get stronger and improve balance. If you train to get weaker and have terrible balance, you get precisely what the inactivity and avoidance bargained for you.

I live this. I don't just study it. I don't just have thousands of case studies from over twenty years of 70,000+ hours of experience in the field. I live this. In my son's recent endeavors to run faster, and in pondering this meme making its circles in the social media, I began to wonder: how fast can I sprint nowadays?

About ten years ago I was able to hit 19.0 to 20.0 mph on free runner treadmills. And although I seldom train sprinting in the conventional sense (as opposed to just really faster rower or airdyne or cycling), I KNOW I am still pretty fast. But I did not know PRECISELY.

So I set out about a month ago to see. Day one I was still able to top out the treadmill at a respectable 12.0 mph. Currently, I canNOT maintain it (as I haven't trained this in years) for minutes at a time; but I can hit it for 10-30 seconds, depending on the incline. It equates to the pace of a 5 minute mile. My treadmill goes no faster. So all I had readily-available at my finger tips was incline. At 12.0mph, each 1% incline reduces the per-mile time by 10 seconds. At 12%, that's the same force required to run 15.0 mph on a flat surface, a 4-minute-mile pace. 

Steadily, every two days or so, I tried another couple percent higher. Ultimately, I was able to hit 12.0 mph at 12% for 10-20 seconds. On the free runner treadmill at Lifetime, my son and I topped out at pretty high speeds, my highest being 16.2 (pictured above are two screen captures from videos of my attempts, one at 16.0 and the other 16.2). It's no 19-20... yet. But I also haven't been earnestly training it for years. I suspect in a few months I could surpass my prior sprint speeds.

Speed and power are essentially the very top progression of strength, agility, balance, coordination. Thus, sprinting is critical in some format for everyone. It has to be based on the individual's ability. But there is no real reason anyone should avoid going fast eventually. Train it gradually. Be patient. But you may be surprised at just how rapidly you can regain ability you might've thought impossible. And it assuredly will go a ways to dispel the meme that's making its rounds.

Truly, you'll be surprised simply be incorporating it for even 4-6 weeks. I was. At my buddy's gym today I tried 12.5mph at 15% incline, which equates to the same amount of force to go 17.31 mph on a flat surface ( see video below). It's actually pretty funny how slow a 6'3" guy at 270+ lbs of bodyweight looks even at 12.5mph. Now I realize not everyone out there is already training 1,000lb belt squats and insane lower body lifts - so yes, of course, I had a head start of a significant advantage to retraining the high speed. But for each person out there, there will be a small impact and speed at which you can start. Maybe it's a walk. Maybe it isn't even a walk. I have had clients who need to begin with cycling. We work up to a walk and/or reverse walk very very gradually. But once they have enough strength, we can tolerate impact in the training. That process can take a year with compromised individuals. I know. I have trained people like this many times. But afterward we can take single-leg impact. Then they can jog. For short bursts, then they can run. Ultimately, many will regain moderate sprinting capability. And among people who have been diligently training incredibly heavy strength, the road back to fast runs and sprints is unimaginably short. 

Let us all be curious about where we are with regard to this skill and work at curating it.
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