From Youth to Masters: Training Load, Injury Risk, and Performance Trajectories that Shape Healthy Aging

Physical activity is a cornerstone of healthy longevity, yet the optimal dose, distribution, and timing of training that preserve function and resilience from youth through older adulthood remain incompletely defined. This Research Topic aims to synthesize evidence on how training exposure across the lifespan shapes performance trajectories, injury risk, and functional capacity—and how these factors translate to mobility, independence, and quality of life in aging. In doing so, the Topic seeks to inform healthspan extension efforts and evidence-based healthy aging policy.

We welcome studies spanning athletes and non-athlete populations (e.g., community-dwelling older adults, recreationally active individuals), with attention to sex-specific differences and life-stage transitions (growth and maturation, midlife changes, menopause/andropause). We encourage contributions that integrate mechanistic insight (tissue adaptation, recovery kinetics, bioenergetics) with applied outcomes (falls, ADL performance, sarcopenia prevention, cardiometabolic risk), leveraging longitudinal cohorts, registries, and real-world data from wearables and training logs. Interdisciplinary contributions are particularly welcome, including exercise science, gerontology, aging biology, rehabilitation, epidemiology, biostatistics, and data science.

We welcome original research, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses, as well as methods papers, brief reports, and perspectives that connect mechanisms to real-world function.

We particularly invite submissions that:

Quantify training load, intensity distribution, and monotony/strain across life stages; model dose–response, recovery, and adaptation.

Map age-related performance trajectories in endurance, strength, power, and functional capacity, including pacing strategies and fatigue profiles.

Characterize injury epidemiology and risk modifiers across ages, including biomechanics, tissue resilience, and return-to-activity pathways.

Examine critical windows and transitions (e.g., peak height velocity, collegiate-to-adult training transitions, midlife shifts, masters adaptations).

Explore sex-specific and hormonal transition effects on musculoskeletal and cardiometabolic health and training responses.

Link training patterns to healthy longevity outcomes, including mobility, frailty, biological aging markers, and healthcare utilization.

Advance methods for individualized load prescription, longitudinal modeling, causal inference, and normative reference curves.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Clinical Trial
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Clinical Trial
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Healthy aging, Training load, Performance trajectories, Injury risk, Functional capacity

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.