Here’s When We Hit Our Physical and Mental Peaks
Even when we’ve peaked in one endeavour, we’re likely getting better in another
4 min
When are we our fastest, strongest and most creative?
Elite swimmers peak in their early 20s, powerlifters peak at 35 and equestrians later still, on average. Creativity peaks either very early in our careers or later, depending on how we think. Our ability to quickly absorb facts reaches its zenith in our late teens, while our vocabulary skills crest in our sixth decade.
Economists, sports scientists and psychologists have analysed Olympic performances and chess matches, as well as thousands of online quizzes to determine the average age when people peak mentally and physically. They are trying to understand how our brain and bodies work and if there are lessons on strengthening each.
The good news is that while we may have peaked in one endeavour, we are likely getting better in another.
“At every age, you are getting better at some things and worse at others,” says Joshua Hartshorne, an assistant professor of psychology at Boston College, who researches how various cognitive functions change with age.
People reach their various physical peaks at different times for different reasons, according to the studies. Fast-twitch muscle fibres help with speed and power—think sprinting—and are more prevalent in our muscles when we are young. Slow-twitch muscle fibres, which are those related to endurance, are more prevalent in muscles when we are older.
Physical attributes can play a role, too. Women have less muscle to lose, and peak at younger ages than men in muscle-intense sports like swimming.
The science on physical peaks
Rafal Chomik, an Australian economist at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research, led a study of peak physical performances among Olympic and professional athletes looking at how well different age groups perform in different sports.
For sports like sprinting, which requires speed, power and maximum oxygen consumption, athletes tend to peak in their mid-20s. In endurance sports, such as marathons, the peak is typically reached by 40. In tactical low-impact sports, like sailing and equestrian competition, athletes compete at elite levels in their 50s.
This is consistent with findings on cognitive capacity, says Chomik, noting that young people are better at tasks requiring raw processing power while older people excel at strategy.
Another finding from the athlete study: Peak performance ages for elite athletes are increasing. For example, the average age of the top 100 men and women in tennis is four to six years older, respectively, than it was in the 1980s. Athletes are competing longer, due in part to advances in training, equipment and sports science.
Steffen Peters, an equestrian who lives in San Diego, has competed in five Olympic Games and won bronze medals in 1996 and in 2016. But he says he had his best year in the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. At the age of 56, he was part of the silver-medal-winning U.S. Dressage Team.
“In my younger age, I had more energy,” says Peters. “But I think at an older age I have extra wisdom that goes pretty far.” Peters plans to compete in 2024 and 2028.
Reaching mental peaks
Mental peaks come at different ages, too. Most people associate creativity with youth, but it depends on the type of creativity, says Bruce Weinberg, a professor of economics at Ohio State University.
“Innovation tends to follow two distinct patterns,” says Weinberg, who co-wrote a study looking at the age when 31 Nobel Prize winners in economics published their most significant research, defined as the one with the most citations. One pattern of thinking is conceptual and the other is experimental.
Economists who challenge conventional wisdom and think more abstractly published their single most significant work at the age of 25. They would be considered conceptual thinkers. Economists who tend to refine their work based on accumulated knowledge and experience wrote their most significant paper in their mid-50s. They would be considered experimental thinkers.
Those same two innovation patterns emerged in studies of writers and artists, says Weinberg. Pablo Picasso, considered a conceptual artist, painted some of his most important works in his mid 20s. Robert Frost, a more experimental innovator, wrote for years before his first book of poetry was published around the age of 40.
Another study of peak mental performance involved the game of chess. Chess is considered a good proxy for “performance in a cognitively demanding task,” says Uwe Sunde, an economics professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
He and fellow researchers analysed 24,000 professional chess matches to track the performance of top players. The researchers compared an individual’s recorded moves with the best moves suggested by a modern chess computer, to see how a player’s performance changed over the years and when they peaked.
Individual performance rose sharply until the early 20s and peaked around the age of 35, says Sunde.
Not all thinking skills peak at the same time or the same age, says Hartshorne, of Boston College. Processing speed—the ability to think quickly and recall information like names—peaks around 18, based on data from standardised IQ and internet-based tests. Crystallised intelligence—the accumulation of facts and knowledge—peaks later. Vocabulary skills peak about 65.
In another study he led, using results of online grammar quizzes, he found that grammar and language-learning skills continue to build for about 30 years. For a native language, the 30-year learning period starts roughly around birth. For a second language, it starts whenever someone starts learning that language.
“Move to Paris and start speaking French at the age of 30 and you can expect continued improvement until you reach around 60,” he says. “Learning goes on longer than we might expect.”
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From making unpopular decisions to learning when to listen, leaders from five businesses reveal what nobody prepared them for — and how running a company has challenged their expectations.
Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
Elon Musk is exploring a potential merger between Tesla and SpaceX, a deal that could reshape the future of AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles and space technology. With a combined valuation potentially reaching $3.5 trillion, the move could bring Musk’s vision of an interconnected technology ecosystem closer to reality, although a deal remains uncertain.
5 min
Elon Musk has engineered ties between Tesla TSLA 3.41%increase; up pointing triangle and SpaceX SPCX 7.79%increase; up pointing triangle that are hard to break, and now he wants to fuse them together permanently.
Musk has run both Tesla and SpaceX concurrently over the past two decades, using a schedule that dictated which days he spent focused on each business.
The companies have often shared resources and personnel, signaling their close ties. Last year, SpaceX looked into creating a spacesuit for Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus, a person familiar with the matter said. Tesla last week showed off its new Roadster, a vehicle featuring SpaceX rocket thrusters that it hopes to soon bring to market.
And in recent months, Musk has repositioned both companies by expanding beyond their core operations toward a shared mission centered on artificial intelligence.
The world’s richest man on Tuesday signaled his interest in tying up SpaceX and Tesla, marking what would be the biggest corporate merger of all time. Because he serves as chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, Musk said committees of independent directors at both companies are evaluating a possible deal, adding that a transaction might not come to fruition.
The committees will likely evaluate, with lawyers and bankers, how each company would fare in a potential deal and how a deal might best be structured. They then present their conclusions to their respective boards, who typically vote on whether to proceed.
“It’s an odd Kabuki dance where two groups of people are talking and I can’t be in the conversation,” Musk told SpaceX investors on Tuesday in response to an analyst’s question about a potential deal.
For Musk, the merger supports his vision of a world full of autonomous cars, humanoid robots and weekly rocket launches, as well as the data centers and satellites required to keep the whole thing running.
Some investors and analysts said they expect a transaction would be structured as an all-stock deal, with SpaceX potentially paying a modest premium for Tesla shares.
SpaceX, which has a market value of about $2 trillion, said it is seeing sharp growth in revenue across its businesses, which include operating data centers, launching rockets and operating satellite networks such as the internet service Starlink. Tesla is valued at about $1.5 trillion and is expanding its operations beyond its automotive and energy business. Shares in both companies traded higher following the news Tuesday.
Musk’s substantial ownership stakes in both companies, along with voting control at SpaceX, has enabled him to set the deal in motion. Analysts and investors said the deal will probably face regulatory scrutiny internationally, though some see Musk’s close relationship with the Trump administration as an asset to getting approval.
Blurred lines
The companies haven’t said which directors are on the special committees evaluating a potential deal. Several SpaceX and Tesla board members have either personal or business ties to Musk. And like Musk, venture capitalist Ira Ehrenpreis sits on both boards.
In a filing this week, Tesla outlined millions of dollars in business agreements with SpaceX and its subsidiaries last year, including $143 million in car sales to SpaceX, $3.3 million in advertising that it bought on the social-media platform X and $430 million in revenue from the sale of Megapack batteries for SpaceX’s data centers.
The companies also split the cost of resources including the use of Musk’s SpaceX jet and the bill for his personal security, which he runs through a private company.
Employees at both companies routinely move between companies to work on special projects, and some executives have dual roles, including Charles Kuehmann, vice president of materials engineering at both SpaceX and Tesla, and Ashok Elluswamy, the vice president of AI software at Tesla who runs a joint venture with SpaceX called Digital Optimus.
Over the years, Musk has launched new startups within his empire, including brain-implant company Neuralink, underground-tunnel developer the Boring Company and xAI, the AI startup that merged with SpaceX in February.
It is that AI business that Musk thinks can serve a market worth tens of trillions of dollars, justifying the need for a merger.
The business case goes like this: Tesla is developing robotaxis and robots, which it calls “physical AI.” SpaceX is working on the back end of physical AI: the data-center capacity and internet connection required for those robotaxis and robots to operate continuously.
“I don’t see what the value of Tesla is if it’s not merged with SpaceX,” said investment adviser Ross Gerber, a former Tesla bull turned critic invested in both companies. “If they don’t merge, the brains of everything that runs Tesla is owned by another company.”
On top of it all, both companies face constraints on the supply chains they need to make this world a reality, particularly when it comes to chips. To address this, Musk earlier this year announced a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX and Intel to design and manufacture chips in Texas. “The most epic chip-building exercise by far,” he has said.
Musk at the wheel
For Musk, a merger would also solve two problems: demands on his attention and his lack of control at Tesla.
Tesla for years was Musk’s only public company, a status that came with greater scrutiny. There, Musk reports to a public board, as well as individual investors who make up around 30% of Tesla’s voting power, according to FactSet.
The question of Musk’s attention became a particular focus for investors and the board in recent years after he acquired Twitter in 2022 and launched xAI in 2023, and again in 2025 as he spent time in Washington, D.C., running the Department of Government Efficiency in the early months of President Trump’s second term.
As Tesla’s car business suffered in 2025, Musk threatened to take his AI ambitions outside the company if he wasn’t granted 25% voting control. Last November, Tesla shareholders approved a new pay package for Musk, which created a path for him to vastly expand his stake.
As of Sept. 30, Musk owned a roughly 20% stake in Tesla, according to the company’s proxy filing.
The SpaceX IPO gave Musk a different path. When SpaceX went public in June, the deal’s structure enabled him to have more than 80% voting power at the company—so much that he can’t be fired and decisions can’t be made without his support.
If SpaceX acquires Tesla, he will likely stay in control.
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