Joe Friel’s Blog

Can the loss of performance with aging be overcome by training? Can you maintain your 35-year-old aerobic capacity and muscle mass, the keys to aging performance, when you’re 55 or even 75 years old? … [Read more...] about Aging: The Problems of High-Intensity Training

Ralph Heath, a 62-year-old cyclist and former client of mine, asked me recently if what I was suggesting in my previous posts is that older athletes should do high-intensity training even in their … [Read more...] about Aging: A Clarification

What we thought we knew about “normal” aging isn’t really normal for humans at all. Master and senior athletes provide proof of that every time there’s a race. Many older athletes continue to perform … [Read more...] about Aging: Muscle, Strength and Performance

Did you know that the max heart rates of trained athletes are lower than in age- and gender-matched, sedentary people? We just can’t get our heart rates as high (Whyte GP, George K, Shaver R, et al. … [Read more...] about Interesting Info

In my previous posts I’ve been making the point that the physical aspects of performance that science tells us are most likely to need our attention as we age are aerobic capacity (VO2max), muscle … [Read more...] about Aging: High-Intensity Training

In the last few posts (here, here and here) I’ve made the point that as we age the training variable we probably most need to focus on is aerobic capacity (VO2max), according to the research on … [Read more...] about Aging: Your Aerobic Capacity

Science measures aging in many ways. Take telomeres, for example. Those are the caps on the ends of your DNA strands. Scientists use them as markers of cell age since the longer they are, the younger … [Read more...] about Aging: An Excuse?

People such as Diana Nyad who recently swam from Cuba to Florida at age 64 change the standards of what it means to be “old.” There are hundreds of aging athletes who have made great sports … [Read more...] about Aging: Is It Just a Number in Your Head?

There’s no doubt that there is a loss of athletic performance with aging. We will never see a 70-year-old athlete take gold in the Olympic Games marathon. Sports scientists have offered … [Read more...] about Aging: What’s Behind the Decline?

Scientists who study aging have been telling us for years that we can expect a loss of muscle mass as we get older. We’re simply destined to lose muscle fibers, especially type II fibers – the fast … [Read more...] about Aging: What’s Happening to My Muscles?

The traditional advice from the medical community is that older people (usually meaning age 50 and up) should avoid strenuous exercise. Instead, once we reach that doddering age, we should walk – not … [Read more...] about Aging: More on Science

In the last five posts here I’ve been examining the effects of aging on my training, racing and life in general (vision, recovery, more on recovery and vision, race weight, performance). It appears … [Read more...] about Aging: Research

I’ve got training logs that go back to the 1970s when I first started recording my workouts. My heart rate data started in 1983, power in 1995. I had intended to go back and review all of that before … [Read more...] about Aging: My Performance

I’ve always considered my racing weight to be 154 pounds (70kg). Why? That’s what I weighed when I was 18 years old. Over the years my out-of-season weight has gradually climbed. In my 30s and 40s I … [Read more...] about Aging: My Race Weight

It seems there is never enough time to do all I want to do. By the time I watch the Tour de France, work out a few hours, answer emails (it seems that is what I mostly do these days), and other stuff … [Read more...] about Aging: Update on Recovery and Vision

When I was in college around 50 years ago (wow, am I really that old?) I was a runner on the track team. The coach used to have us do what I now call "Anaerobic Endurance" intervals 3 to 5 … [Read more...] about Aging: My Recovery

 and Prescription Cycling Sunglasses  It's been quite a while since I posted here. I used to think I was simply too busy due to travel, but now that I'm on vacation in Boulder for … [Read more...] about Aging: My Eyes…