Can A 50 Year Old Be As Fit As A 20 Year Old?

A person's VO2max typically declines with age. It usually peaks in your 20s, and sometime in your 30s it starts to fall by around 10% per decade — but proper training can close a lot of that gap.

We put this to the test with a three-part aerobic fitness assessment at a West Midlands testing facility: a warm-up phase, a lactate threshold evaluation with progressive speed increases, and a maximal aerobic capacity test on an inclined treadmill.

The results define your lactate threshold, lactate turn point and VO2max, and map onto six training zones — recovery running, easy running, steady running, tempo runs, aerobic intervals and speed work — each with its own effort level and purpose.

Proper warm-ups and cool-downs around each of these sessions minimise injury risk and get the most out of the training benefit, whatever your age.