Comment by ThrowawayTestr
11 days ago
The most devastating fact of life is that physical (and mental) performance drops off at around mid 30s. Hakuho, by far the greatest sumo wrestler in history, retired at 38 when he should have retired years earlier.
> The most devastating fact of life is that physical (and mental) performance drops off at around mid 30s
Different faculties peak at different times. While MIT/Harvard research shows that raw processing speed peaks early, it highlights that social intelligence and crystallized knowledge don't peak until our 40s or 50s [I]. Specifically, the Whitehall II study identifies age 45 as the inflection point for initial reasoning decline [II], while research from Stony Brook found that changes in brain network stability—the metabolic cost of cognitive maintenance—typically don't begin until age 44 [III].
[I] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/095679761456733...
[II] https://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.d7622
[III] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2416433122
Yeah, it's hard to maintain physical performance as we are more susceptible to injuries which keeps us away from constant training, but our brain doesn't suffer by injuries, what allow us to go further. I think what makes people to drop at advanced age on "non-physical sports" it's to focus on other aspects of life over the sport because it's exaustive, if not impossible, to focus on both.