Performance trade-offs and ageing in the ‘world's greatest athletes’

The mechanistic foundations of performance trade-offs are clear: because body size and shape constrains movement, and muscles vary in strength and fibre type, certain physical traits should act in opposition with others (e.g. sprint versus endurance). Yet performance trade-offs are rarely detected, and traits are often positively correlated. A potential resolution to this conundrum is that within-individual performance trade-offs can be masked by among-individual variation in ‘quality’. Although there is a current debate on how to unambiguously define and account for quality, no previous studies have partitioned trait correlations at the within- and among-individual levels. Here, we evaluate performance trade-offs among and within 1369 elite athletes that performed in a total of 6418 combined-events competitions (decathlon and heptathlon). Controlling for age, experience and wind conditions, we detected strong trade-offs between groups of functionally similar events (throwing versus jum...性能权衡（performance trade-offs）的机制基础已十分明确：由于体型与体态会限制运动能力，且肌肉的力量与肌纤维类型存在差异，部分身体特质与其他特质之间理应呈现拮抗关系（例如短跑与耐力运动）。然而，性能权衡现象却极少被观测到，且各类特质间往往呈现正相关关系。针对这一难题的潜在解决方案是：个体间的「素质（quality）」差异可能掩盖了个体内部的性能权衡。尽管当前学界围绕如何明确定义并量化个体素质仍存在争议，但此前尚无研究将特质相关性划分为个体内与个体间两个层面进行分析。本研究针对参与过总计6418场全能项目赛事（十项全能decathlon、七项全能heptathlon）的1369名精英运动员，对其个体间与个体内的性能权衡现象展开评估。在控制年龄、运动经验与风速条件的影响后，我们观测到功能相似的赛事组别之间存在显著权衡关系（例如投掷项目与跳跃类项目）。