For sure by that time in your life your tendons, rotators et al have taken a beating but careful training and listing to your body can extend your climbing career to a ripe old age I am convinced.
ColinCrab you are missing the point of my post. It is all about
careful training and listening to your body. It is almost impossible to do so at a crag like the Hole.
I am building up a booming practice of codgers with ailments from cranking on too steep rock and even older guys training at CityROCK regularly trash their shoulders.
I have last year climbed up to 26 on trad. 99.999999999% of people will find that harder than 26 sport so to suggest its easier is total BS! But the mechanics are different on your body partly because there are the extra dimensions of carrying a heavy-ish trad rack, the weight of the rope and the drag and of course you have to be able to place the gear and that means the holds tend to be a little larger because you have to take a hand off to do so. This means that one uses one's feet more and in a different way to sport at equivalent grades.
At the hole I have to hurl myself between the holds and can do up to 5 of those hardish routes in about 3 hours when I am going well. That is not sensible for your body! You won't, can't do that on trad. It is slower and the climbing is more "deliberate". It is rare for people to get over-use injuries from trad. And it is almost unheard of that people crater on trad when climbing at the harder grades.
Ask Evan Wierx and Steve Bradshaw about their fingers from cranking hard moves. Even Clinton recently did his shoulder. My fingers are stuffed but I can still trad to 25 or so
Anyway people will do what they wanna do. And it can only be good for business
