3 ms·

Source: "endurance sports also peaks around 27 years of age" I have seen most triathletes hitting their best time in their early 30s. Chrissie Wellington actual

Source: "endurance sports also peaks around 27 years of age" I have seen most triathletes hitting their best time in their early 30s. Chrissie Wellington actually only started professional ironman in her 30s. She was ironman champion in 2007(30),2008(31),2009(32),2011(34). Also cardiac output is more correctly a function of stroke volume, how much blood is pumped for each stroke. Therefore very well trained athletes actually have a lower max hr. Also cardiovascular drift can increase your max HR, this happens when it's very hot or you have lost a lot of water due to sweating, this causes stroke volume to decrease and heart rate to increase while you still at the same physical output. You hear ppl saying my heart rate was so high and i didn't feel like i was working that hard, it's usually due to cardiovascular drift.

revelation 11y ago
Triathletes are a odd group to base this on. In any case, the exact age isn't important and you would of course expect this to vary dramatically. The point was that it is very far from being as simple as "performance decreases as you age". But you are correct to point out that your parent is very far off the mark. Max HR is not a useful predictor of performance, and you can not calculate it with a formula. What you want is a test to exhaustion to determine it, but these are highly dubious due to the psychological aspect, and at the end of it you might have a correct value for max HR, only to realize that it is pretty useless for any prediction purpose. Case in point, Chris Froome, winner of the Tour de France in 2015, has a max HR of around 170, yet he can sustain 450W for a hour. Meanwhile plenty of people with a max HR of 200 and beyond can't climb stairs without heavy breathing.