I’m back home after a two-month stay in beautiful Tuscany. As much
as I enjoyed the riding there, it’s a great relief to back where the two-way
roads are wider than one car. Taking the many blind corners on narrow mountain
roads at high speed often got my heart rate higher than the workout effort
would suggest. It will also take awhile to adjust to being back where drivers are
often angry with anyone on a bike. I’m not sure which is worse.
Now back to the topic at hand – aging and performance…
So far I’ve been trying to summarize what the research suggests are
the primary reasons endurance performance declines with age. As a quick review, here
are what appear to be the culprits:
- Aerobic capacity (VO2max) declining at the rate of 10% or more
per decade - Muscle mass losses of greater 10% per decade
It appears there are several reasons for these huge changes, not
the least of which are weight
gain (more body fat) and the reduced production of anabolic
(tissue-building) hormones.
These changes would seem inevitable. In fact, Carl Foster and his
associates at the University of Wisconsin in La Crosse reviewed the aging
literature and reported that “there appears to be a loss in functional capacity that cannot be
overcome by training.” They continue, “older athletes may be limited primarily
by the inability to maintain the same volume and intensity of training. Also,
older athletes appear to respond more slowly to the same training load than do
younger athletes.”
While this may sound unavoidable and even depressing, bear in mind
that most of what we know about the aging process is based on studies of “normal”
subjects – meaning sedentary old people. As the Boomers have reached their 50s
and 60s in the last few years the research has become somewhat more positive. We’re
learning more about what is possible by studying those who have pushed their
physical and mental limits. As a result, it appears that about half of the loss,
or perhaps even a greater portion, is due to disuse, not aging per se. For
example, a review of the research by Lewis Maharam and associates points out that most of the changes that come with
aging “have been found to be actually the result of a long-standing sedentary
lifestyle.” So we can probably dismiss the results of much of the aging
literature until recently.
That’s been my take-home message in the preceding posts. We shouldn’t
accept the high rates of loss as being inevitable. We have some control over
these losses and how rapidly they occur by employing measured doses of high-intensity
training. Continuing to do only long,
slow distance (LSD) workouts, as many of us do as we age up, has a quite
limited effect on preventing a rapid loss of performance. It’s just a higher
level of disuse than that of the sedentary senior citizen. The body only
responds by growing stronger and fitter if it is challenged. A steady diet of
LSD, while it is quite effective for the aging novice athlete, does little for the highly experienced senior
athlete who has been training with LSD year after year. That’s no longer a
challenge for the aging body.
That’s how I started down this path of training with more intensity
in order to maintain or even improve performance. It doesn’t mean, however,
that high-intensity training should be your only training mode. As with almost
everything in life, it isn’t an either-or solution. It’s a mix of high-,
moderate- and low-intensity that is most likely to boost your physical
performance. Most senior athletes have the moderate and low parts down pat. We
just need to add some higher intensity training which has been shown to boost
aerobic capacity and strength while stimulating hormone production.
In the previous
post I discussed how to incorporate aerobic capacity and strength training into the
Base period. But as I explained, there’s more to it than just high intensity and
weights. You should not neglect the other training abilities I describe in my Training Bible books. In the Base period you still need to include aerobic endurance, muscular force (sport-specific) and speed skills training as
described here. By Base 3a and 3b you should also include the
starting levels of muscular endurance workouts, initially in zone 3 (power,
pace or heart rate). See my Training
Bibles for the details of how to do each of these.
In Base 2, 3a and 3b, when training for events lasting roughly 4
hours or less, muscular endurance workouts are done with increasing frequency
and for longer durations as strength training, which reached a peak by Base 2,
decreases both in terms of workout time and total workload. By late Base 2 and
continuing throughout the remainder of the Base, Build and Peak periods,
strength training moves into a maintenance mode. Aerobic capacity workouts at this
time, while slightly increasing in volume, remain rather brief. Muscular
endurance gradually becomes the primary focus.
For events longer than
about 4 hours, sport-specific training may become somewhat more intense in the
late Base periods with an emphasis on workouts exceeding the lactate threshold.
This is in keeping with the concept that Base training is “unlike” the race. So
when training for an event longer than about four hours, now is the time to
emphasize high-intensity, aerobic capacity training (my pace and heart rate zone 5b or Coggan’s power
zone 5). Events longer than 4 hours seldom are dependent on aerobic capacity efforts
(with the possible exception of bicycle road racing) so it’s best to do such training
early in the season – late Base – and then in the Build period shift the focus to
event-specific intensity.
For the senior athlete the Base mesocycles may look something like
the following. The daily workout routine for the nine- and seven-day
microcycles is more completely described in my previous post. Note that for the senior athlete Base 3 is
repeated.
Base Period 9-Day Microcycle
Day 1 High dose (aerobic
capacity)
Day 2 Recovery day
(off, active recovery, or cross train)
Day 3 Recovery day (active
recovery or aerobic endurance)
Day 4 High dose (strength
and aerobic or muscular endurance)
Day 5 Recovery day
(off, active recovery, or cross train)
Day 6 Recovery day (active
recovery or aerobic endurance)
Day 7 High dose (strength
and aerobic or muscular endurance)
Day 8 Recovery day
(off, active recovery, or cross train)
Day 9 Recovery day
(active recovery or aerobic endurance)
Base Period 7-Day Microcycle
Day 1 High dose (aerobic
capacity)
Day 2 Recovery day (strength
and off or active recovery or cross train)
Day 3 Recovery day
(active recovery)
Day 4 Moderate dose (aerobic
or muscular endurance)
Day 5 Recovery day
(off, active recovery, or cross train)
Day 6 Moderate dose (strength
and aerobic or muscular endurance)
Day 7 Recovery day (off,
active recovery, or cross train)
Note: I’ve found that strength training is best done either after
the sport-specific workout or several hours before to allow for muscular recovery
to reduce the likelihood of injury. This is especially a concern for running.
Again, the above and what I’ve described in previous posts on
periodization are only suggested Base period routines. Yours could be designed
in any number of different ways, such as longer or shorter microcycles, more or
fewer mesocycles, longer or shorter recovery microcycles and how the daily
workouts are arranged. The total workload of the sport-specific workouts
(“aerobic or muscular endurance”) can also be adjusted to match what you are
capable of physically managing relative to recovery while keeping a low risk for
injury and overtraining. In other words, adjust the above suggestions to better
fit your unique needs.
In the next aging posts I’ll provide a similar breakdown for the
Build, Peak, Race and Transition mesocycle periods.
References
Foster C, Wright G, Battista RA, Porcari
JP. 2007. Training in the aging
athlete. Curr
Sports Med Rep 6(3):200-6.
Maharam LG, Bauman
PA, Kalman D, et al. 1999. Masters athletes: factors affecting performance.
Sports
Med 28(4):273-85.
