{"id":138582,"date":"2025-09-07T04:10:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T04:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/138582\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T04:10:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T04:10:06","slug":"venus-williams-lebron-james-cristiano-ronaldo-elite-athletes-are-extending-their-careers-into-their-40s-how-health-wellbeing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/138582\/","title":{"rendered":"Venus Williams, LeBron James, Cristiano Ronaldo \u2013 elite athletes are extending their careers into their 40s. How? | Health & wellbeing"},"content":{"rendered":"

At this year\u2019s US Open, when 45-year-old tennis great Venus Williams<\/a> stepped on to the court to play in doubles, it was alongside a teammate who wasn\u2019t even born when Williams won gold in the singles at the Sydney Olympics.<\/p>\n

Given that the peak performance age for a tennis player has traditionally been considered to be around the mid-20s, it was an extraordinary feat to be competing at a major, but Williams\u2019 exceptional extension of her athletic career is increasingly common.<\/p>\n

The basketball superstar LeBron James<\/a> this year made history by being the first NBA player to have played in the league from his teens to his 40s, while last year the Australian basketballer Lauren Jackson defied the odds by competing in her fifth Olympics, aged 43.<\/p>\n

The 50-year-old Uzbek gymnast Oksana Chusovitina is aiming for her ninth Olympics<\/a>, and in Japan, Kazuyoshi Miura<\/a> has broken records by continuing to play elite football \u2013 at 58 years old.<\/p>\n

These achievements are astounding because at an age when most ordinary mortals are starting to feel the effects of declining muscle mass, reaction times, cognition and stamina, these elite athletes are still performing extraordinary physical feats that put incredible pressure and stress on their ageing bodies. Furthermore, they are doing so in a sporting environment that has continued to push the boundaries of what the unenhanced body can achieve, well beyond what was thought possible, or even safe, just a few decades ago.<\/p>\n

So what does it take to be able to keep leaping about a court or charging down a field at an age when many other elite athletes have called it a day and when most non-athletes are happy if they don\u2019t slip over in the shower?<\/p>\n

LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers takes a shot during a basketball match in 2024. Photograph: Harry How\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The extraordinary longevity of these elite athletes is down to a mix of genetics, environment and lifestyle, according to associate Prof Christina Ekegren<\/a>, a physiotherapist and researcher at Monash University in Melbourne.<\/p>\n

The Williams sisters, for example, no doubt have great genes, but they have also made the most of them. \u201cThe thing about Venus and Serena is that they\u2019ve been training at a very high level from a very young age, so they\u2019re starting out at a very high base level of fitness and strength,\u201d Ekegren says. The younger of the two sisters retired at 40 after a stellar career that spanned decades, but her older sister Venus is still going strong<\/a>, becoming the oldest competitor to play singles at the US Open this year.<\/p>\n

Venus Williams plays against Karol\u00edna Muchov\u00e1 at the US Open on 25 August 2025. Photograph: AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat differentiates some of the athletes that you\u2019re talking about is they\u2019re very smart in their approach to healthy ageing as an athlete,\u201d says sports and exercise physiotherapist Ben Herde at Grand Slam Physiotherapy in Melbourne.<\/p>\n

One of the normal processes of ageing is sarcopenia, or the gradual loss of muscle mass. It happens as a result of changes in hormones, in activity levels, in nutrition and in the muscle structure itself. But it\u2019s not necessarily inevitable, and Herde says there\u2019s increasing emphasis on strength training for older athletes, specifically to combat this decline. \u201cIf you compare that to someone who\u2019s not training versus training, just that increased muscle mass will obviously give not only increased power and function, but it will offset the loads that go through the cartilage and the bones and even the neural structures,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Like most things age-related, it\u2019s a case of \u201cuse it or lose it\u201d, Herde says. Elite older athletes are able to keep doing what they do because they don\u2019t stop and let themselves decline.<\/p>\n

Australian basketballer Lauren Jackson competes in the Olympics in Paris in August 2024. Photograph: Gregory Shamus\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Athletes who compete for decades also adapt to their changing bodies. They may be more selective about the competitions they enter, or play a different position on the field that exposes them to less risk of damage or demands less of them physically. \u201cIf you look at it like Australian rules football, they might have been a really dynamic, hard-running midfielder, and then as they become older, they\u2019ll put themselves into the forward line where there\u2019s less running,\u201d Herde says.<\/p>\n

But older athletes aren\u2019t invincible. Despite their carefully maintained strength, agility, body condition and skill, they do inevitably face a greater risk of injury as they age and, like the rest of us, those injuries take longer to heal. Part of remaining at the elite level in older age is taking more time to allow for a proper recovery both from injury and normal training, says Prof Jeremiah Peiffer<\/a>, professor of exercise science at Murdoch University in Perth.<\/p>\n

Cristiano Ronaldo, 40, schedules recovery sessions to help his longevity on the field. Photograph: Gualter Fatia\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of this longevity within sport is because people are able to give the time necessary to recovery,\u201d Peiffer says. \u201cThe more time you can give to recovery, the more time you\u2019re not running around doing other stuff, the more likely your body\u2019s going to adapt appropriately.\u201d For example, football star Cristiano Ronaldo, who is still playing at 40, specifically credits scheduled recovery sessions as key to his longevity and achievement, according to Men\u2019s Health<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While elite older athletes are doing all the things the rest of us hear on a regular basis from our doctors and physios \u2013 eat well, stay active \u2013 they do pay a price for taking that healthy advice to the extreme.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe paradox to that is that there are a number of things that come with prolonged lifetime high-volume training that can be a bit detrimental as well,\u201d Peiffer says. Elite athletes, particularly those who participate in endurance sports, have a significantly higher risk of irregular heart rhythms<\/a> in middle age. And there are increased risks of musculoskeletal conditions such as osteoarthritis<\/a>, especially in athletes who have experienced knee injuries.<\/p>\n

Despite the risks and challenges, Ekegren says, it\u2019s important to see older people still excelling on the sports field, and to inspire the rest of us to put a little more effort into keeping up our physical activity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have this stigma in society that we can\u2019t achieve to the same extent as we get older,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I think that\u2019s really untrue, and I think it really all comes down to how much you\u2019re doing in your daily life.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At this year\u2019s US Open, when 45-year-old tennis great Venus Williams stepped on to the court to play…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138583,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-138582","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}