Play On : The New Science of Elite Performance at Any Age

A lively, deeply reported tour of the latest in fitness science and technology, revealing the strategies of elite and amateur athletes as they stay fit longer than ever before  
Age and sports: try talking about one without the other. At their core, sports are about challenging our physical limits, age being the final and most stubborn of those limits, through sports and exercise many of us first experience the reality of aging. Yet our notions about the place of sports and fitness in our lives keep getting more ambitious, as we age.                 In every major American sports league, the number of players over 35 has grown prodigiously over the last couple of decades: Tom Brady, Meb Keflezighi, Kerri Walsh Jennings, Kobe Bryant, David Ortiz, Roger Federer, Kelly Slater — a new breed of top professionals and Olympians are overturning notions about how long a sporting career can last. They’re showing an athlete's performance peak is “not a point but a plateau.”                 And it’s all happening now. Sports science has advanced light years in its understanding of how athletes age, and surgical and medical techniques have come even farther. A glimpse over the horizon shows technologies that promise not just to slow aging, but reverse it entirely, and what that means for weekend warriors. From balance boards to ice tubs to beet‑and‑cherry      cocktails, here are the secrets to extending your peak years like never before.