I’m not going to document all the physiological changes associated with age – many people far smarter than me have written volumes on the topic – but rather comment on what it means in real terms and some things you can do in response. My basis for this is being well into my 40’s, and far from wilting have been running and competing as fast as I ever have, proving to myself (at least) that there can be life in an old dog for many years!!
Here are some key areas I’ve learned to focus on as you get older…it is the mix of all these things that will help you age well and keep the young guns honest.
All Round Strength and Conditioning
Those impressive quads and guns you had in your prime are not going to last. They get weaker and smaller as you age, and no amount of endurance training is going to maintain that strength. You need to do resistance work using weights, body weight, medicine balls, Swiss balls and other tools. Train the movement rather than specific muscles – functional strength. Sure, it is not necessarily specific to performance improvement, but neither is a loss of strength.
Primary areas to work on are your core strength – basically the region between your thighs and chest (especially your back) – glutes and calves. Glutes and calves play a major role in movement (running, in particular) but weakness in these areas is also a primary contributor to knee and lower leg injuries, while core strength is essential for basic stability.
Include strength and conditioning as part of your training schedule. It doesn’t take a long time, something like 30-40min of focused work 2-3 per week. Don’t be fooled by muscles that look strong and impressive…as the old saying goes, use it or lose it.
Body Composition
A general tendency as we age is an increase in body fat. Often, because this gain is off-set by a loss of mean muscle mass that your weight may stay much the same but don’t fooled that you’re still healthy. Increasing body fat is a health risk, and getting older is not rite of passage to middle age weight gain. Manage your weight and body composition closely to maintain performance and health, which includes being careful about diet.
Self-Maintenance
By this I mean self-massage techniques, and the like. We’ve all got our suspect spots, for me it is my calves, so use spare moments to get stuck into those spots before they become stiff and tight. Use time in front of the TV, in meetings (be discrete!), while waiting for a train, etc. A bit of self-massage here, some stretching there all adds up. An important modality of stretching as you age is neural stretching, especially of your sciatic nerve, which is linked to back strength and health.
Recovery
Nothing reminds you of your age like waking up the morning after a hard session, let alone a race. Of course, the fitter you are the better you will recover – age is no barrier to being fit – but you also need to work with your fatigue, not by ignoring it and working against it. Make allowances for how you feel and what you know your body can cope with – being flexible in your training approach is critical. A fatigued body is most prone to injury and health issues if you stress it too soon.
Having said that, like I said, the fitter you are the better you will recover…although it won’t protect you from being tired. So the best way to improve your recovery is for your body it be fit enough to cope with the stress you’re putting it under. You ‘earn’ the right to train hard by being fit enough to cope with it, and be very careful in trying to train harder than that. Don’t train (too far) beyond your current capabilities.
Training
Last but not least, is the training you do as you age. Generally, your capacity to do a high workload like you have in the past will diminish as your ability to recover also diminishes. However I have found that the higher the workload I maintain, the higher the workload I can sustain. It’s a bit of chicken-and-egg. While being sensible, it is possible to maintain a good workload, if you maintain a good workload rather than accepting what other people say is the ‘norm’, and that you should be winding down. Of course, life circumstances come into play here, also.
As far as the type of training, for most older athletes who have been in the sport for a while, you’ve already got plenty of endurance. So what you need to focus on more is speed and power, which are very time efficient also. The problem is that speed and power training, especially in running, is also very stressful so be very careful in how you approach this…if you’ve given consideration to the previous points you will be better prepared for this type of training because your all round conditioning will be pretty good. High intensity training – there’s many variations of session types – is the key to maintaining performance as you age.
So in summary, age is a real issue for older athletes in terms of your physical capabilities, but it is also the effort you put into maintaining your physical capabilities – and all round health and conditioning – that is the primary mechanism for a long, fit, healthy and competitive life. But all of this is common sense, anyway, isn’t it??
