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Thread: Hypothetical question about age and strength

  1. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bcharles123 View Post
    But hypothetically one twin starts at 20, peaks at, say 38, then maintains and maybe declines until death. The other twin is a novice at 50. Will he catch his brother, everything else being equal.
    No. You can build muscle at a younger age that you can't when you're older. Not all of this will stay, but some will.

    Quote Originally Posted by sbhikes View Post
    I think the question is more had I started a long time ago would I have attained loftier goals than having started later in life?
    Yes, but you can still probably get closer now than a man could. Testosterone plays a lower overall part in your development, so its decrease with age isn't as big of an issue.

    Quote Originally Posted by ThereWolf View Post
    Let's replace "twins" with "clones"
    Not a bad idea. Then we don't confuse people with whether we're talking about identical twins or not.

  2. #22
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    Out of interest I was just reading up on identical twins. Apparantly the embryo can split into two anywhere between 1 and 12 days after conception. This could be the reason that some identical twins are more similar than others, in which I'm guessing that a later division might result in more genetic similarities than an earlier split. Sorry this isn't quite on topic but I thought it was interesting nontheless.

  3. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by danlightbulb View Post
    Apparantly the embryo can split into two anywhere between 1 and 12 days after conception. This could be the reason that some identical twins are more similar than others, in which I'm guessing that a later division might result in more genetic similarities than an earlier split.
    No, that ain't the deal, at all. The genetic material is still identical, no matter where in the process the split occurred, because no new DNA was introduced. They're still identical twins. My whole point in this discussion is that ENVIRONMENT is probably as big a factor in phenotypic expression as genotype. And ENVIRONMENT always varies, to varying degrees, between two people.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe View Post
    No, that ain't the deal, at all. The genetic material is still identical, no matter where in the process the split occurred, because no new DNA was introduced. They're still identical twins. My whole point in this discussion is that ENVIRONMENT is probably as big a factor in phenotypic expression as genotype. And ENVIRONMENT always varies, to varying degrees, between two people.
    Agreed, although my opinion shouldn't carry much weight in this discussion. I recently read an article that brought up the effect of "noise" in addition to nature vs nurture, and think some may find it an interesting read.

    http://www.slate.com/articles/health...identical.html

    But are nature and nurture the whole story? It seems not. Even identical twins brought up in similar environments won’t really be identical. They won’t have the same fingerprints. They’ll have different freckles and moles. Even complex traits such as intelligence and mental illness often vary between identical twins.

    Of course, some of this variation is due to environmental factors. Even when identical twins are raised together, there are thousands of tiny differences in their developmental environments, from their position in the uterus to preschool teachers to junior prom dates.

    But there is more to the story. There is a third factor, crucial to development and behavior, that biologists overlooked until just the past few decades: random noise.

  5. #25
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    Does any of this matter? People are always wondering about their ultimate potential. I have these little white 0.25kg microplates. I hold them up and say, "I don't know what you can ultimately do, but I know you can do this much more."

    Progress. You can progress. Yes, we have limits - but most of us are far below those limits anyway. So progress.

  6. #26
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bcharles123 View Post
    Coach, as a thought experiment, if twin A starts lifting early in life, say age 20, and twin B starts at 50, at what age, if ever, will their lifts be roughly equal? Assume training is optimal for each at every stage.

    On the one hand, I can imagine that gains achieved at an early stage are enduring, on the other hand, it seems possible that both converge on their genetic potential which, by definition, is identical.

    For context, I started at 50 and I'm wondering at what point the age I started is irrelevant.

    Thanks!
    My guess is that if you trained from 20 years old you would be stronger at all points in the timeline, than beginning at 50.
    Just a hunch.
    I didn't start proper strength training until 50 too.
    But what difference does it make, just get as strong as you can from where you are today.

  7. #27
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    As a purely acedemic it's interesting. If the decision to lift or not lift at age 20 reeulted in a parellel reality I'd suspect that the 20 yr old would always be stronger than the 50 yr old. As others have pointed out though lost potential should only be mourned for so long before trying to meet any potential still on the table.

  8. #28
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    FWIW, saw this in my intro psychology class, identical twins separated very young and didn't meet until 30s, same mannerisms, same interests, ones fatter


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    Semantics. "Identical" twins doesn't mean exact replicants, it means "not fraternal." At least, that's how I've always understood it.

    Who needs a twin to do this study? It's pretty simple for those of us who started training later in life. I really got going at age 51. If I had started at 18, I would've lapped my 53-year-old self in 2 years. Well, probably not double, but substantially stronger for sure, absolutely no doubt about it. And that's taking into consideration 'environment' in both positive and negative directions.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Joe Murphy View Post
    Semantics. "Identical" twins doesn't mean exact replicants, it means "not fraternal." At least, that's how I've always understood it.
    I guess you've always understood it wrong, Joe. There does seem to be a lot of confusion here. "Not fraternal" means identical, as there are currently only two mechanisms by which natural twins can be born, and "identical" means genetic replicants. The same genes, identical genetic copies.

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