How Masters Endurance Athletes Show Us How We Can All Thrive in Endurance Sports and in Life - Coach Tip Tuesday

I work with a lot of Masters Athletes.  In fact, more than 60% of the athletes on my current Performance Coaching roster are Masters Athletes.  For those unfamiliar with the term, a Masters Athlete is an athlete who has reached a certain age and is training and competing in a sport.  The generic definition of “Masters Athlete” describes an athlete who has reached the age of 35 (because this is the age at which things such as cardiovascular issues tend to become a greater cause of morbidity).  However, that’s honestly misleading because the minimum age for a Masters Athlete varies by sport.  In most endurance sports (such as triathlon, running, and cycling), an athlete is considered a Masters Athlete when they reach the age of 40.  In pool swimming, the term “Masters Athlete” applies to any adult swimmer, aka anyone who is 18 years of age or older.  To make things even more confusing, age group athletes often don’t consider themselves Masters Athletes until the age of 50.

What is a Masters Athlete?

No matter what age cutoff you impose, the term “Masters Athlete” is honestly a nice way to say “older athlete”.  Especially in our youthfulness-obsessed culture, isn’t it so much nicer to consider yourself a Masters Athlete than an “old geezer” athlete?

The term “Masters” is applied here out of respect for the life experience and wisdom that generally comes from living longer.  While our culture has resisted, put down, and sometimes vilified aging and growing old, I’ve personally always considered it such a gift to be able to grow older.  My friend Jill died when we were 14 years old.  As of the time of my writing this, I’m 37 years old, which means that I have currently lived more than 2.5 times longer than Jill got to.  I’ve graduated high school, college, grown up, made friends, seen my family expand, set and accomplished goals, had multiple jobs, owned a house, and traveled the world.  All of those are things that Jill never had the opportunity to do.  I will never complain about getting older and getting to see another birthday.  I truly feel that each additional year adds to my life; it doesn’t steal something from me.  I am extremely grateful for the 37 years I’ve had and I will be grateful for however many more I get to experience.

All this being said, there are very real things that do happen as we get older.  Some of them (such as the aforementioned life experience and wisdom) are extremely positive.  Some of them, such as what happens to an aging body, are tougher for people to handle as they come.  This is true in “regular” life and also in the athletic lives of endurance athletes.  In fact, I’ve observed that the physiological changes that come with the blessing of a longer life can be off-putting and/or challenging enough that some athletes give up training for endurance sports.  This makes me sad, as I have seen first-hand by working with so many Masters Athletes over the years that it’s very possible to stay active, set goals, and train well deep into life.

Yes, Masters Athletes can enjoy training, movement, and racing even as they age.  Yes, what that looks like may look different from what it looked like when they were younger, but it is possible.  It’s important to note that just because it’s different doesn’t mean that it’s negative.  By paying attention to some key areas, Masters Athletes can leverage all the benefits that come from aging - wisdom and life experience chief among them - to thrive in their training and racing experience.

What Happens as We Age?

Before we dive into how Masters Athletes can thrive in their training and racing, it’s important to acknowledge the very real things that happen to human bodies as we age.  “Negative” age-related changes start when we are in our 30s and are gradual through our 40s and 50s.  Once we reach our 60s, age-related changes occur more rapidly and are generally much more obvious.  This is true for each subsequent decade that we live past our sixth decade, and these changes will occur increasingly more rapidly with each subsequent decade past age 60.

Starting around age 35, we start to experience sarcopenia, which is the loss of muscle mass.  Sarcopenia is significant because it decreases our ability to apply power or force.  It can also impact physiological factors such as bone density, balance, resting metabolic rate, and our efficiency biomechanically.  Also around age 35, according to research conducted by Dr. Philip Skiba and other leading experts, we lose about 1% of our strength and fitness every year.  

As we age, we also start to experience a loss in VO2 Max, or the maximum amount of oxygen our bodies can absorb and use during exercise.  This decrease in VO2 Max impacts our maximum heart rate, lactate threshold, aerobic capacity, and exercise economy.  Lactate Threshold is the point at which lactate builds up in the blood faster than the body can remove it or metabolize it during exercise.  Aerobic Capacity is related to VO2 Max, but is subtly different; it is how efficiently the body can utilize oxygen during exercise.  Exercise Economy is also related to VO2 Max and Aerobic Capacity; it describes how the body converts chemical energy into mechanical energy (aka movement or locomotion) and is effectively how efficiently the body moves and uses oxygen during exercise.  All of these factors combine to determine our athletic performance at any stage of our lives, but they are especially important for Masters Athletes to note since they all decline as we age.

We cannot stop or reverse the process of time.  (In fact, you are now older than you were when you started reading this, and nothing in the world can change that.)  But what we can do is slow the rate at which age-related physiological changes occur in the body, and one of the best ways to do this is via movement.  Hence, a lot of people’s instinct to shy away from endurance training and racing is actually counterproductive and will only serve to accelerate (or at least keep the same) the natural rate of physiological decline that we all experience as we grow older.

Consistency is Critical to the Success of Masters Athletes

I’ve said it so many times, but it bears repeating again because it’s especially true for Masters Athletes: Nothing - and I mean nothing - beats consistency.  Consistency is doing something (such as workouts or a movement practice) repetitively and often.  A lot of athletes mistakenly prioritize intensity (aka a hard level of physical exertion that they can physically feel) in their workouts, but consistency beats intensity every day of the year.  Showing up week after week, year after year is what enables Masters Athletes to build strong foundations, keep injuries at bay, and continue to have success in endurance sports.

As mentioned earlier, we lose 1% of our strength and fitness every year once we reach the age of 35.  This means that any breaks in consistency and periods of detraining or training cessation will be incrementally more impactful every year past age 35.  (This is very important to note and internalize if you were/are an athlete who trains consistently during the main season and takes a long break from training over the off-season each year.)  We cannot stop or reverse this loss of strength and fitness, but we can significantly slow the rate at which these losses occur.  By remaining consistently active year-round and by not taking prolonged breaks from training, this 1% loss per year can be reduced to 0.1% per year.

Recovery is Increasingly Critical for Masters Athletes

Recovery is important for athletes at all stages of life, but it becomes increasingly more important for Masters Athletes.  Recovery is a very catch-all term that refers to a bunch of different things in the lives of endurance athletes.  How long Masters Athletes take to respond to and adapt to training changes alongside the other age-related changes that we’ve discussed (aka the time to adaptation slows down).  As such, recovery becomes more necessary for increasingly greater intervals and periods of time as athletes age.

Recovery is a critical component of all training plan design, and is built into every athlete’s Annual Training Plan in many important ways.  Recovery can refer to the periods of time in between intervals or sets in workouts.  It can mean actual workouts themselves that are lower volume and intensity and where the athlete’s exertion level remains low.  It can refer to days off of training within a training week (also known as a microcycle).  (For Masters Athletes in particular, it’s important that these rest days do not include physical work such as yard work or heavy house work.)  Additionally, recovery can refer to entire weeks of training (often referred to as Recovery Weeks for obvious reasons) in an athlete’s training plan when training volume and intensity are reduced from what they were in the previous 2-3 weeks.  Recovery can also refer to an entire training block (often called Maintenance Phase) in an athlete’s overall annual training.

Outside of training plan design, recovery can refer to sleep, stretching, foam rolling, massage, dry needling, hydration, and other non-training activities that have the function of being restorative (mentally, physically, or both).  

Recovery is so important for Masters Athletes that I believe that it should be planned for first - before any training volume or intensity is planned.  Too many athletes make the mistake of planning the “fun” elements of training first; because it’s not fun (and is sometimes even tedious and boring), recovery is an afterthought for them (if it’s even a thought at all).  For time-pressed Masters Athletes, training volume and intensity should be adjusted down before recovery is reduced.  If Masters Athletes don’t have time for recovery, they don’t have time for training.  It’s as simple and as hard as that.  

Masters Athletes Can - and Should! - Incorporate High-Intensity Intervals and Workouts

Speed is one of the elements that declines as we age, and higher-intensity sessions take increasingly more out of us as we age.  For these reasons, a lot of athletes mistakenly think that they should shy away from doing any kind of speed, high-intensity, or anaerobic work in training.  We’ve learned that the opposite is true: age-related declines in aerobic capacity, muscle mass, and neuromuscular efficiency are significantly reduced in Masters Athletes who include variations in intensity (aka both hard and easy sessions) into their training.

While incorporating both high- and low-intensity sessions into training is something that remains important for athletes at all stages of life, what does change is how these sessions are handled and scheduled as athletes age.  Recovery between high-intensity sessions needs to be thoughtfully considered for Masters Athletes.  In my experience, most Masters Athletes need at least 2-3 days in between high-intensity sessions and they need longer durations of recovery between high-intensity intervals in workouts.  Masters Athletes also benefit from a lower ratio of hard or “up” training weeks to recovery weeks.  I always start Masters Athletes on a 2:1 cycle (meaning that we have two “up” weeks followed by a “down” or recovery week); I then adjust as necessary based on how the athlete responds to and tolerates training.

Why Strength Training is Critical for Masters Athletes

Like recovery, strength training is often an afterthought (if it’s even a thought at all) for endurance athletes.  When I was new to endurance sports, I was one of these athletes who had a dismissive attitude about strength training.  But even in the relatively small amount of time I’ve been an endurance athlete (approximately 16 years as of the time of my writing this) and therefore the relatively small amount of aging I’ve done as a human, I’ve seen how incredibly important strength training is to a body that is growing older.  I cannot do the same things now at 37 that I could when I was 26, and I need to work to maintain strength in this 37-year-old body in ways that my 21-year-old self couldn’t have possibly fathomed.

Strength training slows the rate of almost every age-related decline in the body.  In order to maintain as much muscle mass, bone density, and cardio-respiratory function as we can as we age, we need to lift heavy things.  Muscle fibers only contract maximally (meaning that they can only be utilized at their greatest force) and are controlled by a part of the nervous system called motor units.  When we lift something light, we recruit a smaller number of motor units (and therefore use fewer muscle fibers to complete the task).  When we lift something heavy, we recruit a larger number of motor units (and therefore use more muscle fibers to complete the task).  

To increase the amount of force or strength we have, we need to increase the number of muscle fibers that are doing that work for us.  Type II muscle fibers (commonly referred to as “fast-twitch muscle fibers”) have increasing levels of threshold before they want to be utilized.  If you train at 50-60% of your threshold, you are primarily using Type I muscle fibers (more commonly called “slow-twitch muscle fibers”) and are leaving a lot of muscle fibers on the table that will never, ever be recruited.  (This is also the reason why all athletes - including Masters Athletes - benefit from including workouts of various intensities in their overall training plan.)  If you are working at 90% or more of your threshold, you cross the “stimulus barrier” that is required to recruit more Type II muscle fibers.  This is why it’s essential that Masters Athletes incorporate heavy lifting into their training routines. 

Alongside that, we need to maintain our balance and mobility (which are both overlooked components of strength training).  Falling is the second-highest cause of accidental deaths, and the mortality rate for falls increases rapidly as we get older.  Approximately 50% of older adults who fall and fracture a hip will die within 12 months due to complications from that fracture and fall.  Reducing the probability of falls in the first place (via strength, mobility, and balance training) is the best way to reduce this mortality risk. 

From an endurance training perspective, strength training helps athletes of all ages retain the proper posture and mechanics that are essential to seeing true and compounded adaptations and gains in endurance sports over time.  Endurance sports training is catabolic, meaning that it breaks the body down.  Strength training, on the other hand, is anabolic, meaning that it helps build the body up.  If athletes are going to be training for endurance sports and want to continue to be able to set goals as they age, they need to build their body up as much as possible, and strength training helps them accomplish that.

I recommend that Masters Athletes plan for two strength training sessions per week and that they build these into their schedule after they prioritize scheduling recovery.  Once recovery and strength training are accounted for, then endurance sessions (such as swimming, biking, and/or running) can be included.

The Best Way for Masters Athletes to Set Goals

As mentioned earlier, the shape of training may look different for Masters Athletes than it did when they were younger athletes.  Alongside that, goal setting also will look different.  There is a point in all of our lives when we will never be able to set a personal best time (also commonly referred to as a personal record or PR) again.  This means that goal setting cannot always be tied to achieving one’s fastest time ever in a given distance or sport.

I encourage athletes of all ages to set process-related goals alongside any time-based goals that they set.  Process-based goals focus on the actual process and actions of training and race execution that are necessary to perform well rather than what the time on the clock says.  Masters Athletes in particular benefit from focusing on process-based goals since they are generally in a stage of life when achieving their fastest time isn’t possible anymore.  (A notable exception to this is an athlete who doesn’t start training for endurance sports until they are older (aka past age 50).)  Some examples of process-based goals are:

• Consistent pacing and/or executing a negative split
• Maintaining good pedaling mechanics while riding
• Focusing on executing good breathing and form while swimming
• Developing and executing a solid fueling and hydration plan during workouts and racing

All of this being said, Masters Athletes don’t need to shy away from setting time-based goals just because their days of their fastest times ever may be behind them.  I encourage Masters Athletes who want to set time-based goals to set these goals based on where they currently are.  By thoughtfully considering recent training and accepting where they currently are physiologically, it is possible for Masters Athletes to set achievable time-based goals in endurance sports.

The Bottom Line

We are all getting older, each and every day.  If we’re fortunate enough, we’ll get the opportunity to live many decades and to experience the blessing of a full and long life.  It takes work and a fair amount of patience, but with the right approach, respect for what aging means for our physical bodies, and a mental acknowledgement that slower and older isn’t bad, athletes can thrive in any season of life.