How Masters Endurance Athletes Show Us How We Can All Thrive in Endurance Sports and in Life

The term “Masters Athlete” may be a nice way to say “older athlete”, but I know that I’ve personally learned that the term Masters Athlete refers to athletes we should all respect and look up to.

We are all getting older, and we can’t change that.  But Masters Athletes show us how we can thrive in endurance sports in all of the decades of our lives.

Read this Coach Tip Tuesday:

https://www.fullcircleendurance.com/blog/how-masters-endurance-athletes-show-us-how-we-can-all-thrive-in-endurance-sports-and-in-life  

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Chapters

• 0:00 Opening
• 0:16 What is a Masters Athlete?
• 4:02 What Happens as We Age?
• 6:35 Consistency is Critical to the Success of Masters Athletes
• 8:05 Recovery is Increasingly Critical for Masters Athletes
• 10:22 Masters Athletes Can - and Should! - Incorporate High-Intensity Intervals and Workouts
• 11:40 Why Strength Training is Critical for Masters Athletes
• 15:23 The Best Way for Masters Athletes to Set Goals
• 17:46 The Bottom Line
• 18:11 Closing

Transcript

(0:04 - 12:22)
Hello and welcome to the Full Circle Podcast, your source for insights into the science and art of endurance sports training and racing. I'm your host, Coach Laura Henry. Today is Coach Tip Tuesday. 

I work with a lot of master's athletes. In fact, more than 60% of the athletes on my current performance coaching roster are master's athletes. For those unfamiliar with the term, a master's athlete is an athlete who has reached a certain age and who is training and competing in a sport. 

The generic definition of master's 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 be a greater cause of morbidity. However, I think that's honestly misleading because the minimum age for a master's athlete varies by sport. In most endurance sports, such as triathlon, running, and cycling, an athlete is considered a master's athlete when they reach the age of 40. 

In pool swimming, the term master's athlete applies to any adult swimmer, aka anyone who is 18 years of age or older. And to make things even more confusing, age group athletes often don't consider themselves master's athletes until they reach the age of 50. No matter what age cutoff you impose, the term master's 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 master's athlete than an old geezer athlete? The term master's 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 older, 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 recording this, I'm 37 years old, which means that I have currently lived more than two and a half 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 things are things that Jill never had the opportunity to do. 

I will never ever 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 don't lose something by living longer. I am extremely grateful for the 37 years that I've had, and I will be grateful for however many more I get to experience. All of this being said, there are very real things that do happen as we get older. 

Some of them, such as the aforementioned life wisdom and experience, are extremely positive. Some of them, such as what happens to an aging body, are tougher for people to handle as they come and are viewed more negatively. 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 really sad as I've seen firsthand by working with so many masters athletes over the years that it's very possible to stay active, to set goals, and to 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 of the benefits that come from aging, wisdom and life experience chief among them, to thrive in their training and racing experience. 

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. Quote unquote negative age-related changes start when we are in our 30s and are gradual through our 40s and our 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 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 it 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 listening to 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. 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 know and to internalize and to accept as true. 

If you were or are an athlete who trains consistently during the main season and takes a long break from training over the off season or the winter 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 one 10th of a percent loss per year. Recovery is important for athletes at all stages of life, but it becomes increasingly more important for masters athletes. 

Recovery is a 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 we get older 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 it 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 in volume and intensity and where the athlete's exertion level remains low. It can refer to days off from training within a training week, also known as a micro cycle for masters athletes in particular, it's important that these rest days do not include physical work such as yard work or heavy housework. 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 two to three weeks, recovery can also refer to an entire training block often called maintenance phase in an athlete's overall annual training. Outside of that 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 it should be planned for first before any training volume or intensity is planned, AKA before your other workouts are planned. 

Too many athletes make the mistake of planning the quote unquote fun elements of training first because it's not fun. And sometimes it's 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. 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 two to three days in between high intensity sessions, and they need longer durations of recovery between high intensity intervals and workouts themselves. 

Masters athletes also benefit from a lower ratio of hard or up training weeks to recovery weeks. I always start masters athletes on a two-to-one 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. 

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 recording 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 possibly have fathomed.

(12:22 - 18:57)
Strength training slows the rate of almost every age-related decline in the In order to maintain as much muscle mass, bone density, and cardiorespiratory function that 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 they are controlled by a part of the nervous system that is called a motor unit. When we lift something light, we recruit a smaller number of motor units, and therefore we 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 2 muscle fibers, commonly referred to as fast twitch muscle fibers, have increasing levels of threshold before they want to be utilized. 

The body will use type 1 muscle fibers first, and then only then will it start to recruit type 2. If you train at 50 to 60% of your threshold, you're primarily using type 1 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 utilized. This is also the reason why all athletes, including masters athletes, benefit from including workouts of various intensities, aka high and low intensity, into 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 2 muscle fibers and the motor units that control them. 

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 that fall. Reducing the probability of falls in the first place via strength training, 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 scheduled and included in a training plan. As I mentioned earlier, the shape of training may look different for masters athletes than it did when they were younger athletes. 

Alongside that, goal setting will also 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 a PR, ever again. This means that goal setting cannot always be tied to achieving one's fastest time ever in a given distance or a sport. 

The lack of willingness to accept this truth is also one of the contributing factors to why a lot of athletes sometimes don't continue with endurance sports training as they get older. 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 is when an athlete doesn't start training for endurance sports until they are older, aka past the age of 50. Basically what we're talking about here is training age versus chronological age. 

When I get to be 70 years old, my training age is going to be approximately 50 because I started endurance sports training when I was 20. But somebody who's 50 and starts endurance sports training only has a training age of 20 by the time they're 70. So it's a much different calculation. 

And if someone's training age is younger, they often can see personal bests deeper into their chronological age because their starting point was later. 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, not where they wish they could be, not where they were when they were 35, 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. We are all getting older each and every day. 

If we're fortunate enough, we will 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. That was another episode of the Full Circle Podcast. 

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