Dr. Andy Galpin

There was an interesting paper that was entirely speculative, was not from his team, but some biomechanics experts

researchers tried to figure out what would be possible for him to do that.

And the best that they could estimate was that his fast twitch fibers, which we talked about earlier in the show, are about 17% faster than other world-class caliber sprinters.

Again, this is entirely speculation.

We don't know if that's true.

There's no data or evidence of biopsies.

That's public record of Usain Bolt, although I've been on record for many, many times saying I would love to take that biopsy, if you're listening, Usain.

But of course...

some of the magic that goes into sports performance is we don't always get to know why people are how they are.

Now, something else I find extremely interesting about this is what happens to maximum speed as we age.

And the reason I'm drawing this out is we talked earlier about how preserving these fast-twitch muscle fibers is critically important.

And if you look across world records as we age in speed activities versus strength versus endurance, a clear difference

pattern emerges.

People drop maximum speed capability way faster as they age than they drew strength and then certainly endurance.

In fact, the world records in most endurance-based activities really don't change from folks who are 35 years old to 40 or so.

And when they start dropping at 45 to 50 plus, it is fairly small until we get to advanced age.

Speed, on the other hand, falls off a cliff almost immediately.

As an example, I told you Usain Bolt's record just a second ago, 9.58 seconds.

If you go to the first age category, which is 35 years old, the world record jumps up to 9.87 seconds.

And that's just at 35 years old.