Managing the Spectrum of Ages in Athletes

Optimizing performance for every player on Angel City’s roster is a multifaceted challenge, but a major factor in how players’ plans are individualized is age. With players whose ages span more than 20 years—16 to 37—there’s a wide range of different needs when it comes to strength and conditioning, rehab, recovery, and other off-field considerations. AngelCity.com talked to Dr. Natasha Trentacosta, an orthopedic specialist at Cedars-Sinai, to learn more.

Older and Wiser

With 48 career NWSL goals under her belt, forward Sydney Leroux is one of the most prolific scorers in league history, and she shows no signs of stopping: at age 34, she was Angel City’s co-leading scorer in 2024, with seven in the regular season.

Although her production hasn’t changed, as she’s gotten older, she has adjusted both the way she takes care of herself and her approach to scoring.

“I used to be known for being really, really fast,” Leroux says. “And then with age and two kids, [I’m] maybe not so fast, but I think I'm a lot smarter than I was when I was younger.”

Where Leroux once had a knack for using pure speed to beat defenders in wide areas before cutting towards goal to score, she’s come to rely increasingly on her incisive reading of the game, using carefully timed runs in behind to connect with her teammates and put the ball in the back of the net.

Leroux’s trajectory, of adjusting her playing style in response to diminished speed, is a common one among athletes entering their 30s, and many factors contribute to those changes, says Trentacosta.

One of those is decreased aerobic capacity. Doctors and exercise scientists quantify what the rest of us might call “fitness”—a person’s ability to perform sustained athletic activity like running or swimming—using VO₂ max, a measurement of an athlete’s maximum rate of oxygen consumption during exertion. Essentially, a higher VO₂ max means an athlete can work harder over a longer period of time. 

“As our body ages, our heart rate drops,” says Trentacosta. “So circulating oxygen less, and the efficiency to transfer that oxygen decreases. Usually [that starts] around your 30s. Then that has sort of a snowball effect on the end result of endurance or aerobic capacity, which is obviously huge in soccer.”

Another factor is a reduced ability to build and maintain muscle. That starts to factor in “especially when women start hitting their 40s and 50s, when they're hitting perimenopause, but can even start in the 30s,” says Trentacosta. That means they’ll generally have to work harder to maintain or build strength. “Weight training is ever so important for the aging athlete, in order to try to maintain as much lean muscle mass as possible.”

Leroux’s strength work is “catered to what my body needs,” she says. “We do a lot of calf stuff. We do a lot of core stuff, core stability—especially because I've had two kids. I’m always trying to work on getting stronger.”

In addition, recovery—both from injuries and from the day-to-day stresses of training and games—takes longer for older athletes. “As we age, our body doesn't bounce back the way it does when we’re in our 20s,” says Trentacosta. “And so you have to factor that into training, because that 30- or 35-year-old is not going to bounce back as quickly as the 15-year-old on the team.”

Finally, older athletes are more likely to have injured themselves in the past, and injuries can add up. “Post-traumatic arthritis is a big thing,” says Trentacosta, “particularly when we talk about knee injuries and soccer.” In short, damage to a joint—even if an athlete gets a successful surgery and heals fully afterwards—can cause the joint to degenerate faster over the span of the athlete’s career.

Every athlete manages these factors differently, and Leroux uses a variety of tools to keep her body pain-free and game-ready. “I love to get a massage sometime in the middle of the week,” she says. “That's really important for me. And then I love getting acupuncture, sometimes every day or every other day–that's my thing.”

Those tools haven’t always been available to elite female athletes. “When I was younger,” says Leroux, “I just ran onto the field and played.” That was partially because she didn’t feel a need to do anything else—more on that in a moment—but also because the resources weren’t available.

“At the start of the league, we didn't have all of these things that we have now—I remember one year I had to buy an ultrasound because our team didn't have that,” she says. “Over the years we've been able to make sure everyone's supported in all facets of the game, on the field and off. It's changed a lot.”

Learning and Growing

The upgrade in training environments and staffing across the league means that young players just starting their professional careers are in a very different place than they were when Leroux was young. And while young athletes may feel invincible, those early years are a crucial time when it comes to building a foundation for longevity.

For 17-year-old Kennedy Fuller, who came to Angel City from the youth level, the off-field support available at the club was new. “Not a lot, if any, of the [youth] clubs have the resources that pro teams obviously have,” she says. “I think what the pros are starting to do really well is that [training plans] are starting to be personalized, not just made for a wide range of 17-year-olds.”

On the strength and conditioning side, one thing Fuller has worked on with staff (including Head of Sports Science Dan Jones and Performance Coach Michael Roman) is getting more explosive in her first three steps, something they’ve addressed using a combination of technique and strength training.

“‘Faster’ and ‘first three steps faster’ are completely different,” she says. “It’s about more pushing than pulling, is what I've learned. So I’m doing more squats and stuff like that to build explosiveness in pushing, and we also review film of my running.”

While it’s easier for younger athletes to achieve those kinds of strength and fitness goals, when it comes to staying healthy, says Trentacosta, they can actually be more prone to certain kinds of injuries. “We know with ACL tears, teenagers and women in their early 20s in high-risk sports like soccer and basketball are at an increased risk,” she says.

What contributes to that risk isn’t completely understood, but there are a number of factors. “We think a lot of it has to do with the activity level,” says Trentacosta. “Younger players are probably doing more on the field than the older athlete. Older athletes have also had more training and more prophylactic work to prevent those injuries.”

Fortunately, there are interventions known to have an impact on that risk. “We have programs out there to help decrease knee injuries in soccer athletes,” she continues. “It's a lot about plyometrics, increasing flexibility, warming up those muscles beforehand, not just running out there cold. It's also about neuromuscular training: repeating these same movements over so that their body gets used to it so that on the field, when they have to do a quick cutting or turning maneuver, their knee is trained not to fall into a vulnerable position.”

Fuller takes that work seriously. “I think for me it’s more about prehab,” she says. “I want to do it not because I'm sore or because I'm hurting. I want to do it because I want to have as much longevity as possible. At the end of the day, you can be the best player in the world, but if you're hurt all the time, it doesn't matter.”

Above all, she says she’s trying to learn as much as she can from the staff and her older teammates. “The best thing my teammates have said is just to ask questions,” says Kennedy Fuller. “You have so many people there to support you.”

Nutrition is one area she’s learned a lot about. After turning pro, she learned she hadn’t been fueling up adequately before games, something she’s had to adjust to. “We eat three times before we play,” she says. “Never in my life had I eaten that much before!” Because she was struggling to eat a big enough meal pregame, she learned she can instead eat a bigger breakfast and more snacks on gamedays.

Trentacosta echoes the importance of fueling up with the right balance of protein, carbohydrates, and fat. “Carbs are so important when you're doing these endurance sports and activities,” she says. “If you're not providing your body enough, it's going to use glycogen and break down your body to get the energy.”

Fuller has also changed her mindset when it comes to sleep. She learned, for example, that naps can be beneficial for athletes. “I'm a big napper,” she says. “And I learned that that's okay and you should listen to what your body’s telling you. If you need more sleep, you need more sleep.”