Joe Friel's Blog, page 9

Today’s Heart Rate Question

Emailed
Question:

I had my
last sprint triathlon of the season today, and for the first time (and won't be
the last!) I wore my heart rate monitor.

On the
bike, I was feeling good, and actually had an avg heart rate in zone 5b. I was
pushing but felt very comfortable. When I hit the run, I just couldn't get my
legs turning over. 7 days before, I completed a 10k run at an avg pace of 6:34
m/miles, with an avergae heart rate of 182 bpm. Today i averaged 7:07 min/miles
for the 5k run of the triathlon. My avg heart rate for the run (170bpm) was 10
beats below  my functional threshold heart rate of 182bmp.

Two
things stand out at me: first, I was comfortably cycling above my cycling FThr.
Second, I couldn't elevate my heart rate to threshold in the run. I just didn't
have the energy. 

On a side
note, the majority of my training this year has been aerobic, zone 2, as I
completed an Iron distance event in July. Your books were paramount to my
success!

Is there
a simple answer to this?

Appreciate
the time if you or one of you coaches could answer my email.

 

My Answer:

"I
just didn't have the energy" is really the key point here--not
your heart rate. The issue really isn't how high or low your HR was, but
rather your speed--regardless of HR. Train to improve that (intervals, hills,
fartlek, etc along with your z2 training) while placing less emphasis on HR.
It's merely an indicator of how hard the engine is working. It doesn't regulate
performance at all. A related, recent tweet of mine went something like this: "Being
concerned with how high your HR is relative to sport performance is like
telling your auto mechanic that your car is going too slowly because the
tachometer is reading low." Train your engine--the muscular
system--for power/speed and appropriate pacing while getting adequate recovery (rest and nutrition)
and your performance will likely improve. Good luck with your next race!

Aging: Hormones, Training, Risk and Reward

Since
I started this aging series I’ve been getting lots of emails from older
athletes. Perhaps the most frequent comment I hear from them has to do with
recovery. Almost all tell me they recover slower than when they were young. Of
course, as with anything physiological, there is a lot of variance between
athletes when it comes to the age at which this first becomes noticeable. At
age 40 some are already beginning to experience an obvious slowing of recovery
while others in their 50s are seeing little in the way of change. By age 60
it’s usually obvious to those who are paying attention. Recovery rate seems to
be one of the best indicators of actually becoming “old.”

Why
does our recovery after a hard workout take longer with aging? It’s related to something
I’ve discussed in earlier posts – hormones. Hormones regulate our body’s
functions such as metabolism, sleep and mood. They also affect tissue growth
and development – the keys to recovery. As we age we produce less anabolic hormones such as testosterone,
estrogen, growth hormone, and insulin-like growth factor (Waters). All have an
anabolic (tissue-building) effect.

Another anabolic hormone under-produced with
advancing age you are undoubtedly familiar with is erythropoietin (EPO). That’s
also the name of a synthetic drug cycling has been dealing with since the early
1990s and has to do with the fall from grace of Lance Armstrong and numerous
other athletes. It’s produced normally by the body and controls red blood cell
production and their lifespan. Interestingly, it’s also associated with memory.
And, perhaps more importantly, is related to your aerobic capacity (VO2max) that
I’ve been writing about so much here. Less EPO means fewer red blood cells
which results in less oxygen being transported to the muscles and therefore a
reduced aerobic capacity. EPO production also decreases with age (Berliner).

(Some senior athletes tell me they believe there are age group competitors using synthetic EPO because they can afford it – it’s expensive – and there is seldom any testing of age group athletes. Some others are believed to be using much less expensive, over-the-counter
hormone stimulators such as dehydroepiandrosterone, also known as DHEA.
Both are banned in
competition along with other performance-enhancing drugs.)

As
with most aging conditions, we do have some degree of control, albeit quite
limited, over our hormones. You can speed up or slow down your body’s anabolic
hormone production. High intensity training (such as aerobic capacity intervals
or fartlek training) stimulates their secretion more so than low-intensity,
steady-state training (Hackney). Strength training has a similar affect
(Stokes). Both are untested in senior athletes but likely produce similar
results.

As
mentioned before, hormone secretion is especially high when you are asleep, the
key being the consistency of sleep over time rather than the duration of your
snoozing (Randler). Getting to bed at a regular time appears to be important
for natural hormone production. The type of exercise also is important. Although
preferable to no exercise at all, a steady diet of only long, slow distance
year after year while avoiding the weight room is likely to result in a steady
decline in hormonal activity.

This
latter point is why I’ve been encouraging you to train occasionally near your
aerobic capacity (my pace and heart rate zones 5b and Coggan’s power zone 5)
while doing resistance/strength training (again, see my Training Bible for details on both zones and strength training). As I’ve said
before here, there is no doubt that such training is risky. The primary risk has to do with injury, so you must be conservative when starting this sort
of training and cautious with increasing the workloads.

An
important point I’ve learned about training over thirty-some years of coaching
is that all workouts have some degree of risk associated with them. In that
regard, training is similar to investing in the stock market – the greater the
risk, the greater the potential reward. Low risk almost always means low reward
in both instances. As the risk increases so does the possibility of loss. In
the case of exercise this means injury. It also means overtraining. Even if you
are able to push yourself to an exceptionally high level of training while
avoiding injury, you are likely to become overtrained by doing too much
high-intensity training in
too little time thus reducing your hormone production (Urhausen).
Injury and overtraining are why it’s important to be conservative and cautious
with high-risk, high-intensity training.

In
my next post I’ll address optimal recovery from a training perspective and
offer suggestions on how to plan your training to include a wide range of
intensities relative to your seasonal periodization.

References

Berliner N. 2013. Anemia in the elderly. Trans Am Clin Climatol Assoc 124:230-7.

Hackney AC, Hosick KP, Myer A, et al. 2012. Testosterone responses to intensive interval versus steady-state
endurance exercise. J Endocrinol Invest
35(11):947-50.

Randler C, Ebenhöh N, Fischer A, et al. 2012. Chronotype but not sleep length is related to salivary testosterone in
young adult men. Psychoneuroendocrinology 37(10):1740-4.

Stokes KA, Gilbert KL, Andrews RC, Thompson D. 2013, Different
responses of selected hormones to thre type of exercise in young men. Eur J Appl Physiol 113(3):775-83.

Urhausen A, Gabriel HH, Kindermann W. 1998. Impaired pituitary hormonal response to exhaustive exercise in
overtrained endurance athletes. Med Sci Sports Exerc 30(3):407-14.

Waters DL, Yau CL, Montoya GD, Baumgartner RN.
2003. Serum Sex Hormones, IGF-1, and IGFBP3 Exert a Sexually Dimorphic Effect
on Lean Body Mass in Aging. J Gerontol A Biol Sci
Med Sci
58(7):648-52.

More Interesting Info on Max Heart Rate

Remember
my recent post on a study that found
well-trained athletes had lower max heart rates than sedentary people? Well,
here’s another related one. Researchers at the University of British Columbia
in Vancouver found that max heart rate decreases 3-7% as aerobic fitness
improves. And to further challenge our thinking, the study showed that when
tapering for a race max heart rate increases.
That implies a loss of fitness when tapering. This goes hand-in-hand with the seemingly
counterintuitive concept I’ve often proposed here and in my tweets that
tapering results in a reduction in fitness.

You
can’t cut back on training without losing fitness. If this wasn’t the case then
the way you would improve fitness is by just sitting in front of the TV every
day for several weeks. You have to train hard to make fitness improvements - not slack off. Of
course, what you gain when tapering during a peak period is a reduction in
fatigue that makes you feel more fit.
Coaches often call this “form.” When “on form” you’re rested, fresh, race
ready, and
very little fitness has been lost. The challenge when
tapering is to lose a lot of fatigue while only giving up a small amount of
fitness. That’s what makes peaking for a race so tricky.

Reference

Zavorsky
GS. 2000. Evidence and possible mechanisms of altered maximum heart rate with
endurance training and tapering. Sports
Med 29(1):13-26.

Aging: The Problems of High-Intensity Training

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? Most scientific research
tells us that it’s highly doubtful (Doherty, Faulkner, Foster, Phillips, Raue).
Even though much of this loss appears to be a result of disuse (LaRocca, Leyk, Wroblewski,
Wright), there is no doubt that there is a decline in endurance performance
with age that appears to be inevitable even among elite age group athletes regardless of sport. 

We know, however, that the rate of loss can be slowed if you continue to train
at a workload similar to when you were younger, especially the
intensity of your workouts both in aerobic (Katzel) and strength training (Aagard,
Porter). I wrote about that here and here. But as many readers have told me recently in comments to this blog and in
emails, the problem is an increased incidence of injury resulting from
high-intensity efforts that seem to be especially high among runners. The other
problem is slow recovery. The keys to maintaining aerobic capacity and muscle
mass then are injury prevention and rapid recovery following workouts. I wrote
about recovery and aging a few weeks ago here. So let’s now examine Injury prevention in greater detail.

Modifications
to training are necessary to avoid an increased likelihood of injury. Typically, the older you are the easier it
is to become injured and the slower an injury is likely to heal (Kallinen).
Bones, tendons, ligaments, cartilage and muscles break down and form scar
tissue at lower levels of training stress than they did when you were younger.
An increased likelihood of orthopedic injuries may be the reason runners seem to slow down more than their similarly aged
peers in swimming and cycling. While running is not the only sport athletes get
injured in, it is more likely to produce orthopedic injuries than, for example,
swimming, cycling and cross country skiing. So the normal training stress of
runners often declines at a steeper rate over time. That may well be necessary.

In
terms of continued performance improvement, there is nothing worse than an
injury. It can easily result in a bunch of zeroes in your training log. Missed
workouts mean lost fitness and starting over again.

To
avoid injury, regardless of your sport, there are two things you must always
do. The first is to start at a training stress level you know you are fully
capable of managing. This has to do with how long and intense your workouts are
and your weekly volume of training. The second imperative to avoiding training
setbacks is to be patient with your progress. This is where most athletes make
their greatest mistake. Allow more time at each stage of training than you did
when you were younger. Be patient. Wisdom is supposedly one of the attributes
of age. Apply it to your training.

Increase
your workout durations and intensities slowly over time. Don’t rush to the next
level. It’s too risky. Counterbalance these two workout variables. When you increase the duration of your workouts, decrease their
intensity. When it’s time to increase intensity, decrease duration. For older athletes it's probably wise to avoid increasing both up at the same time. If you do, your risk of injury increases
exponentially. You may have gotten away with a double increase when you were
younger, but it’s now more likely to result in injury.

If
injured the timing of treatment is critical. Don’t wait to seek medical help. Every
athlete, but especially you as an older athlete, need someone in your corner
who can treat injuries, or even niggling aches, when they occur. This could be
a family physician, chiropractor, physical therapist, podiatrist or naturopath
who you trust, who knows your endurance sport and who understands the treatment
of aging athletes. I rely heavily on Nate Koch at Endurance Rehabilitation, a physical therapy practice where I spend my
winters in Scottsdale, Arizona. With my summers in Boulder, Colorado I go to
the Boulder Center for
Sports Medicine and to see Dr. Andy
Pruitt, an old friend and fellow aging cyclist. They’ve both been treating my
aching bones and soft tissues off and on for 11 years. I have complete faith in
their effectiveness when I place myself in their hands as I’ve had to do on
numerous occasions.

Closely
related to injuries is arthritis which becomes increasingly common with advances
in age. The best way to avoid this may well be continued exercise since it is less
common in athletes (Maharam). The research doesn’t tell us, however, if
exercise helps to prevent joint disease or if those who experience it drop out
of their sport becoming sedentary and so skew the data. If you suffer from
arthritis you have probably become adept at knowing not only what aggravates
it, but also how to modify your training to accommodate it until the inflammation
subsides. Prescribed medications may well be necessary at these times.

In
my next post I’ll take a look at other aspects of injury prevention and workout
recovery.

References

Aagard
P, Svetta C, Caserotti P, Magnusson SP, Kjaer M. 2010. Role of the nervous
system in sarcopenia and muscle atrophy with aging: strength training as a
countermeasure. Scand J Med Sci Sports
20(1):49-64.

Doherty
TJ. 2003. Invited review: aging and sarcopenia. J Appl Physiol 95(4):1717-27.

Faulkner
JA, Larkin LM, Claflin DR, Brooks SV. 2007. Age-related changes in the
structure and function of skeletal muscles. Clin
Exp Pharmacol Physiol 34(110:1091-6.

Foster
C, Wright G, Battista RA, Porcari JP. 2007. Training in the aging athlete. Curr Sports Med Rep 6(3):200-6.

Kallinen
M, Markku A. 1995. Aging, physical activity and sports injuries. An overview of
common sports injuries in the elderly. Sports
Med 20:41-52.

Katzell
LI, Sorkin JD, Fleg JL. 2001. A comparison of longitudinal changes in aerobic
fitness in older endurance athletes and sedentary men. J Am Geriatr Soc 49(12):1657-64.

LaRocca
TJ, Seals DR, Pierce GL. 2010. Leukocyte telomere length is preserved with
aging in endurance exercise-trained adults and related to maximal aerobic
capacity. Mech Ageing Dev
131(2):165-7.

Leyk
D, Erley O, Gorges W, et al. 2009. Performance, training and lifestyle
parameters of marathon runners aged 20-80 years: results of the PACE-study. Int J Sports Med 30(5):360-5.

Maharam
LG, Bauman PA, Kalman D, et al. 1999. Masters athletes: factors affecting
performance. Sports Med 28(4):273-85.

Porter
MM. 2001. The effects of strength training on sarcopenia. Can J Appl Physiol 26(1):123-41.

Phillips
BE, Williams JP, Gustafsson T, et al. 2013. Molecular networks of human muscle
adaptation to exercise and age. PLOS
Genetics 9(3):e1003389.

Raue
U, Slivka D, Minchev K, Trappe S. 2009. Improvements in whole muscle and myocellular function are limited with
high-intensity resistance training in octogenarian women. J Appl Physiol 106(5):1611-7.

Wright
VJ. 2012. Masterful care of the aging triathlete. Sports Med Arthrosc 20(4):23-6.

Wroblewski AP, Amati F, Smiley MA, et al. 2011.
Chronic exercise preserves lean muscle mass in masters athletes. Physician Sports Med 39(30):172-8.

Aging: A Clarification

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 “off seasons.” In other words, was I now proposing
that as you move into your 50s, 60s and beyond that fast intervals should be
included in the Prep and Base periods. After all, I didn’t come right out and
say it in the blog although it seemed to be implied. And this way of training wasn’t included in my Training
Bible books.

My
answer was that occasional high-intensity workouts should probably be included
weekly and year-round as we get older to maintain aerobic capacity which
appears to decline rather rapidly with age, and probably at a greater rate when
the system is not challenged. This is probably more important for experienced,
serious athletes than for those new to endurance sport. For novices, simply
putting in the time will maintain and even boost aerobic capacity. For the
seasoned veteran this high-intensity training doesn’t have to be frequent or
done with structured intervals as described in a previous post. I suggested to Ralph that
he might consider doing short “fartlek” workouts (fartlek is Swedish for “speed play” and essentially means unstructured: go as fast as you want,
when you feel like it, on whatever terrain you enjoy, for as long as you want,
with recovery whenever you want it, and stop when you’ve had enough) once a
week in those early season periods to help maintain aerobic capacity.

These
don’t have to be grueling workouts that leave you wasted for a couple of days.
In fact, in the Prep and early Base periods it’s probably best to avoid such anaerobically
produced, deep fatigue – as is often the case with Anaerobic Endurance intervals as described in my Training Bible
books – in favor of developing a broad base of aerobic fitness through less
strenuous but long, steady workouts.

And,
by the way, there is no research I’ve ever found which even suggests that there
is “damage” done to one’s aerobic development in the Base period by doing infrequent
high-intensity training. Some athletes and coaches use this as a reason why
anaerobic efforts should be avoided early in the season when Aerobic Endurance is the focus. But I do believe there is a limit to how much of this you should do in Base as it can make
for a long season and put you at risk of training-related breakdowns. Doing
high-intensity interval training week after week throughout the year can also become
monotonous and de-motivating. (My next post here will be on the subject of
age-related training breakdowns.)

Aging: Muscle, Strength and Performance

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 better than most young athletes. They
can do it because they have the right genes and they continue to push both
their physical and mental limits. They’re unwilling to accept a number as a
reason that they can’t do it. While aging does inevitably take a toll on
performance, it’s small compared with the loss of functional performance that
“normal,” inactive people experience due to disuse. Most people “rust out”
rather than “wear out.”

Strenuous exercise is a key to not only the quality of life, but also to
its quantity – how long we live. This is difficult for science to “prove” as
university ethics committees charged with approving study protocols aren’t too
big on manipulating human subjects’ lifestyles to see who lives longer. That
leaves us with animal studies on the affects of exercise on health and
longevity.

One such aging and exercise study using mice was done at McMaster
University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada and reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences in 2011 (Safdar). Mice that were bred to age rapidly were divided
into two groups. One group was sedentary. The other group ran on treadmills
three times per week for 45 minutes each time at a brisk pace – the equivalent
of a 50- to 55-minute 10km run for humans. By 8 months, which is roughly age 60
for humans, the sedentary mice were frail, grey and dying. In the picture you
see two of the subject mice. On the left is an exerciser. A sedentary mouse, of
the same age (30 months) is on the right. There’s an obvious difference in
their physiological ages.

All of the sedentary mice were dead by 12 months of age. But by that age
the exercisers were still young looking and behaving – and none had died. It’s
much the same for humans, I suspect. Exercise regularly and strenuously and
you’ve greatly extended both the quantity and quality of your life.

Exercise is perhaps the most powerful medicine there is when it comes to
health and longevity. Your chronic diet ranks right up there, also. I’ll get to
that in another post.

I suspect you already know this. If you’ve been an athlete for several
years it’s undoubtedly obvious that your age-mates look older than you. By the
time you are in your 70s you will be much more active than your “normal”
friends. Your quality of life will be much better. And chances are you will
live longer.

But, of course, most of us old geezers don’t train and eschew the
shuffleboard lifestyle simply to live longer. That would be nice, however. We mainly
do it to enjoy the challenge of athletic accomplishment with like-minded
athletes. I’ve never met a serious athlete who spoke only of exercising to live a long time and wasn’t interested in improving
his or her athletic performance, regardless of age.

Living a long time is a welcome side affect, but let's get back to athletic performance.

The point I’ve been making in the past few posts is that the decline of
performance with age has been shown to result from a decrease in aerobic
capacity (VO2max) in most experienced,
aging athletes – not to decreases in lactate threshold or economy, the other
two primary factors in endurance performance. There could be lots of reasons
for this decline. The reason that is the most commonly reported in the
scientific literature is a reduction in both high-intensity training and
training volume that is common as we get older (Foster, Hawkins, Tanaka, Trappe,
Wiswell, Young). And, as I discussed here, the more powerful
influencer of aerobic capacity is the intensity at which we train. But there is
a lot of physiological stuff that may have to do with the reduction in how much
oxygen we can process while exercising.

The decline in aerobic capacity may also result, in part, from a loss of
muscle mass. This too is often related to the decline in high-intensity
training, but apparently has an aging-related component even among serious
senior athletes (Faulkner). In the normal (meaning “sedentary”) population,
muscle area decreases up to about 40% from age 20 to 80 (Doherty, Lepers). The
decline is considerably smaller - and sometimes even non-existent - in senior athletes as I explained here. 

Increasing the intensity of training places greater stress on the
primary working muscles for your sport and encourages muscle development. This
is because exercise, especially highly intense exercise, is anabolic (builds muscle
and other tissues) as the body responds by increasing its production of
hormones such as testosterone, estrogen, growth hormone and insulin-like growth
factor (Cadore, Kraemer, Stokes). Hormone release occurs
primarily during sleep which is why it’s so important to snooze a lot when
training hard.

Another way to accomplish gains in muscle mass is through resistance
training (Arazi, Lemmer, Melov, Porter) – “lifting weights.” Regardless of age,
strength training, especially with heavy loads, has been shown to slow the loss
of muscle fibers, which is common with advancing age, while maintaining muscle
fiber size (Aagard). Lifting heavy weight loads has also been shown to benefit
endurance performance (Ronnestad), but is somewhat more controversial. If true,
this may be due to type 1 muscles (slow twitch, endurance muscles) being able
to manage a greater load during endurance exercise thus delaying the use of type
2 muscles (fast twitch) during exercise (Ronnestad).

Then there’s the matter of bone density as we get older. Lifting heavy
weights can play an important role here, too. Running is an excellent way to
maintain bone health due to the increased load placed on the legs, hip and
spine. But it does nothing for the arms. Cycling and swimming are less
effective when it comes to maintaining bone density as load bearing is quite
low (Gomez-Bruton). Strength training, however, has been
shown to maintain or even increase bone density, an area of concern for both
men and women, with aging (Marques, Yarasheski).

Much the same as with sport-specific, high-intensity training, lifting
heavy loads in the weight room can be risky for the senior athlete who has not
been doing so regularly for some time. The key here, just as with getting
started with interval training, is to begin conservatively, meaning light loads
with few reps and sets, and progress to greater loads and volume slowly allowing the body time to adapt. A single,
overly enthusiastic mistake made in the weight room could jeopardize a season
and even your athletic career. Be cautious when just starting out, especially
when doing whole-body lifts such as squats and dead lifts.

In my Cyclist’s Training Bible,
Triathlete’s Training Bible and Mountain Biker’s Training Bible I describe the
weight training system I’ve used with the athletes I’ve coached. You can also
find general guidelines for cycling and triathlon strength training programs here. 

For the serious senior athlete who is focused on high-performance
racing, periodization of strength training must be considered. In regards to
this, the best time for serious weight lifting is in the Prep and early Base
periods of the season. Heavy and frequent lifting just prior to and during the
race season (Build, Peak and Race periods) will be counterproductive for performance. That’s the time for
strength and muscle maintenance. Again, this is all explained in my Training
Bible books.

For my next post in this looong
series on aging I’ll get into how to avoid the common pitfalls of
high-intensity training – both sport-specific and for weight lifting.

References

Aagaard P, Svetta C,
Caserotti P, et al. 2010. Role of the nervous system in sarcopenia and muscle
atrophy with aging: strength training as a countermeasure. Scand J Med Sci Sports 20(1):49-64.

Arazi
H, Damirchi A, Asadi A. 2013. Age-related hormonal adaptations, muscle
circumference and strength development with 8 weeks moderate intensity
resistance training. Ann Endocrinol
(Paris) 74(1):30-5.

Cadore EL, Lhullier FL,
Brentano MA, et al. 2008. Hormonal
responses to resistance exercise in long-term trained and untrained middle-aged
men. J
Strength Cond Res 22(5):1617-24.

Doherty TJ. 2003. Invited
review: aging and sarcopenia. J Appl
Physiol 95(4):1717-27.

Faulkner JA, Davis CS,
Mendias CL, Brooks SV. 2008. The aging of elite male athletes: age-related
changes in performance and skeletal muscle structure and function. Clin J Sport Med 18(6):501-7.

Foster C, Wright G, Battista RA, Porcari JP. 2007.
Training in the aging athlete. Curr
Sports Med Rep 6(3):200-6.

Gomez-Bruton A,
Gonzalez-Aguero A, Gomez-Cabello A, et al. 2013. Is bone tissue really affected by swimming? A systematic review. PLoS One 8(8):e70119.

Hawkins SA, Wiswell RA.
2003. Rate and mechanism of maximal oxygen consumption decline with aging:
implications for exercise training. Sports
Med 33:877-88.

Kraemer WJ, Hakkinen K,
Newton RU, et al. 1999. Effects of
heavy-resistance training on hormonal response patterns in younger vs. older
men. J
Appl Physiol 87(3):982-92.

Lemmer JT, Hurbert DE, Martel, et al. 2003.
Age and gender responses to strength training and detraining. Med Sci Sports Exerc 32:1505-12.

Lepers R. “Gender and Age Considerations in
Triathlon.” In Triathlon Science (editors
Friel J, Vance J). 2013. Human Kinetics: Champaign, IL.

Marques EA, Wanderly F,
Machado L, et al. 2011. Effects of
resistance and aerobic exercise on physical function, bone mineral density, OPG
and RANKL in older women. Exp Gerontol 46(7):524-32.

Melov S, Tarnopolsky MA, Beckman K, et al.
2007. Resistance exercise reverses aging in human skeletal muscle. PLOS One 2(5):e465.

Porter MM. 2001. The effects of strength
training on sarcopenia. Can J Appl
Physiol 26(1):123-41.

Ronnestad BR, Mujika I. 2013. Optimizing strength training for running
and cycling endurance performance: a review. Scand J Med Sci Sports [epub ahead of print].

Safdar A, Bourgeois J, Ogburn DI, et al. 2011. Endurance exercise
rescues progeroid aging and induces systemic mitochondrial rejuvenation in
mtDNA mutator mice. Proc Natl Acad Sci
USA 108(10):4135-40.

Stokes KA, Gilbert KL, Andrews RC, Thompson D. 2013. Different responses
of selected hormones to three types of exercise in young men. Eur J Appl Physiol 113(3):775-83.

Trappe SW, Costill DL, Vukovich MD, et a. 1996. Aging among elite
distance runners: a 22-yr longitudinal study. J Appl Physiol 80(1):285-90.

Wiswell RA, Jaque V, Marcell TJ, et al. 2000. Maximal aerobic power,
lactate threshold and running performance in master athletes. Med Sci Sports Exerc 32:1165-70.

Yarasheski KE, Campbell
JA, Kohrt WM. 1997. Effect of
resistance exercise and growth hormone on bone density in older men. Clin Endocrinol
(Oxf) 47(2):223-9.

Young BW, Medic N, Weir
PL, Starkes JL. 2008. Explaining performance in elite middle-aged runners:
contributions from age and from ongoing and past training factors. J
Sport Exerc Psychol 30:737-54.

Interesting Info

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. 2008. Training induced changes in maximum heart
rate. Int J Sports Med 29(2):129-33). Seems contrary to logic, huh? Science hasn’t been able to
unequivocally determine the reason why, but it probably has to do with how much
more efficient an athlete’s heart is when compared to the hearts of sedentary
folks. We get more blood pumped per beat so need fewer beats to get the job
done. In fact, the best way to get your max heart rate higher, a goal I
sometimes hear athletes suggest, is to lose fitness. That will do the trick. In
other words, a high max HR is not a good predictor of how highly fit you are.
It’s just the opposite. You want a low HR. This is especially true during
aerobic exercise. The lower your HR is relative to your power or pace, the more
aerobically fit you are. 

Back to the aging series tomorrow.

Aging: High-Intensity Training

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 mass and body weight. I’ve already
discussed the last one here. Let’s move on to how your
aerobic capacity and muscle mass may be maintained or even increased. I’ll
discuss the first one in this post and then tell you what I’ve learned about
muscle mass later on. I’ll also get into what can be done to avoid age-related training
interruptions due to injury since aerobic capacity training and muscle
development may increase your risk.

The
research on aging in experienced endurance athletes tells us that in order to
reduce the decline in aerobic capacity with advancing age, training must be
intense. That typically means just below, at or above the lactate threshold
(anaerobic threshold, functional threshold, etc) based on heart rate, pace, speed, power or perceived exertion. For experienced endurance athletes, an exercise
regimen based solely on long, slow distance will do little to improve or even
maintain your aerobic fitness status over the years.

Of
course, you simply may not be able to improve it, especially if you’ve been
training intensely for many years. Even with such focused training there is
still the age-related performance decay that research has repeatedly shown us
is inevitable. Your current age and history of exercise consistency has a lot
to do with how great the gains may be in the future. If your training has been
inconsistent and you are in your 50s you’re more physiologically capable of significantly
reversing the downward performance spiral through training than if you are in
your 70s. That doesn’t mean a 70-year-old can’t make performance gains after a
few years of slacking off. It’s just somewhat harder to accomplish due to
physiological changes that occur with advancing age such as reduced hormone
production.

There
is also the matter of genetics. Some people apparently won the genetic lottery.
They are endowed with a great capacity for hard workouts with little risk of
breakdown. They can do high-intensity training and experience a quick and
positive response. Others of the same age can do the same workouts over the
same time and see little or no performance change. Life just isn’t fair.

There’s
little doubt that intense training is risky. As workouts become more
challenging, the chances of injury, illness and overtraining increase. Intense
training needs to be modulated in regards to your current level of fitness and personal
age-related limits. Those limits may have become magnified by the absence of
high-intensity training in recent years. If that’s the case, you need to be
extra conservative with training changes as you ease into what I’m going to
propose below.

If
high-intensity training is something you haven’t done for a long time or never
before then there are several things you must consider. These include the type
of hard workouts, the frequency of hard workouts, short-term recovery from hard
workouts and nutrition relative to hard workouts. I’ll cover these last few
points in future posts. But for now let’s look at high-intensity training for
aerobic capacity.

The
most effective and efficient use of your time and energy to increase training
intensity is by doing some type of interval training.

When
doing intervals the absolute intensity, duration of the repetitions, number of
repetitions and the durations of recoveries between them must be only slightly
more challenging than your estimated current capacity for physical stress. Because this type of
workout can be quite stressful, an interval session should be preceded by a
gradually progressing warm-up and should end when a reasonable workout goal is
attained, when it is apparent that high-end performance is declining or when
effort feels unusually high for the output (pace, speed, power).

If
you have been diagnosed with coronary heart disease, have concerns about your
heart health or be on statins or other medications that alter heart rate then
you should consult with your doctor before starting an interval-training
program. Fortunately, the risk of heart attack among apparently healthy
athletes as they age is quite low (Mengelkoch).

If
you’ve previously done intervals throughout your sport career but have had a
gap in recent years then you know how to get started again. But if long, slow
distance training has been your only training method then you may need some
guidelines for interval training. That’s what follows.

A
typical first session for someone who has not done interval training recently
may be something such as…

a. Warm-up
10-30 minutes gradually ratcheting intensity up to zone 3. It’s common for
older athletes to need more warm-up than young athletes. Warm-up may also vary
by sport. For example, it is typically longer for cycling than for running.
Swimming generally falls between these two.

b. Do 3 x
3-minute reps with each rep in zone 4 and 3 minutes of recovery in zone 1
between them. Rep intensity may be based on heart rate, pace, speed, power
or perceived exertion. Some of these are better than others depending on the
sport. Heart rate-based intensity is perhaps the worst way to gauge how hard to
work with intervals as heart rate rises slowly. It may take several minutes to
achieve zone 4 during which time you are left guessing how hard to work. Most
athletes err on the side of starting intervals too fast to force heart rate up
and then slow down later as zone 4 heart rate is finally achieved. This is just
the opposite of what should be done which is to finish each rep with a slightly
higher intensity than it was started.

c. Cool
down with several minutes of easy exercise in zone 1. As with the warm-up,
the duration of the cool down depends on the sport with cycling typically long
and running relatively short.

At
first such a workout may only be done once in a week, but over time the number
of such weekly sessions may be increased to two. It’s uncommon for senior
athletes to be capable of doing more than two in a week. I’ve coached some who
can but they are rare and more likely in their 50s rather than their 70s.

An
indication of improving fitness is that the speed or power of the reps
increases relative to heart rate. To determine this you can divide the combined,
average speed or Normalized Power for the reps by the combined, average heart rates for
the reps. As this ratio increases your fitness is improving. TrainingPeaks calls this “Efficiency Factor (EF).”

As
the EF for your interval sessions rises, increase the number of reps. As the
longer-rep sessions become tolerable begin to gradually increase the duration
of the reps. When you can easily manage about 20 minutes total combined rep
time (such 4 reps of 5 minutes each at zone 4) with recoveries about 1/4th
as long time-wise as the preceding interval (75 seconds for a 5-minute rep) in a single workout then you are
ready to move onto slightly more intense intervals. Start again
with 3 x 3 minutes with 3-minute recoveries, only this time just above lactate threshold.

Over
several weeks as the intensity moves up to zone 5b heart rate or pace (see my
Cyclist’s Training Bible
or Triathlete’s Training Bible for details on zones) or zone 5 power (see
my Power Meter Handbook), restrict the rep durations to 2-4 minutes with recovery durations
of the same length. And restrict the total combined interval time to no more
than about 15 minutes. At this intensity most older athletes generally should
not do more than one such session per week while perhaps continuing to also do
one of the zone 4 sessions in a week. The time gap between such weekly sessions
should be at least two days, three is usually better. Some athletes will not be
able to handle two interval sessions in a week. That’s not unusual. If unsure,
do only one per week.

Once
you become fully accustomed to doing intervals you can modify the components of
the session by changing such elements as the duration progression of the reps,
terrain for the reps, number of reps, total combined time of the reps and
durations of the recoveries. You can also combine various types of interval and
steady-state sessions into a single workout. But be patient with such advances.
Don’t rush into them or you greatly increase your risk of injury. Patience is
the key to training consistency as you get older. If in doubt, leave it out.

All
of this brings us to the peripheral training adjustments that are usually
necessary for older athletes to avoid injury. I’ll get to that after discussing aging and muscle mass in my
next post.

References

Mengelkoch LJ, Pollock ML, Limacher MC, et al. 1997. Effects of age, physical training, and
physical fitness on coronary heart disease risk factors in older track athletes
at twenty-year follow-up. J Am Geriatr Soc 45(12):1446-53.

Aging: Your Aerobic Capacity

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 aging, as it appears to decline faster than
lactate threshold (Allen, Coggan) and economy (Tanaka, Tanaka). So next we'll examine aerobic capacity a little more closely since it seems to be the primary
limiter for most of us (Hawkins, Wiswell).

Note,
however, that this doesn’t mean it is the limiter for all older athletes, especially those who have been in their sport
for a short time, perhaps three years or less. Of course, there may well be
several things, not just aerobic capacity, that are holding you back when it
comes to improving your endurance performance as you get older. A likely
candidate for this list is your body weight. Another related physical matter is the loss of muscle mass. I'll come back to these shortly.

For
now we’ll take a bit deeper look at aerobic capacity. Let’s start by getting a handle on
what it means.

Aerobic
capacity is determined using this formula:

VO2max = ml O2 / kg / min

The
common way VO2max is determined in a lab is to have you run (or bike) starting
at a low intensity with increases every few minutes until you can no longer
continue. It isn’t fun. But it produces a number – your VO2max – which is an
indicator of your endurance fitness. At your peak output, just before failure,
the amount of oxygen you’re consuming per minute (“min”) is measured using a
device hooked up to a mask over your nose and mouth in order to measure the gases you are breathing in and out. The
measured oxygen component of those gases is referred to
as “ml O2” (milliliters of oxygen).

A
computer, which is a part of the testing device, divides your ml O2 per minute
by your body weight in kilograms (“kg”). If you’ll recall from your elementary school
math class, whenever you divide two numbers, as the denominator (the number
you’re dividing by) increases, the quotient (VO2max in this case) decreases. So
what does that mean? As your body weight increases, your aerobic capacity
decreases. This should be obvious to you. You’ve probably had times in your sport
career when you’ve put on a bit of weight. At those times running, cycling or
cross country skiing uphill has been harder. If you lost weight it became
easier. Both of these are reflections of your aerobic capacity at the time.

All
of this means that there are two formula-based determiners of your aerobic
capacity – body weight and ml O2 used (“min” is constant). Lower weight means
higher VO2max. Higher weight means lower VO2max. Simple.

The
other determiner is not so simple. This is the component of aerobic capacity
that has to do with how much O2 you used at peak, sustained effort. It includes a whole bunch of stuff such as how much blood your heart
pumps per beat, how many red blood cells you have to carry the oxygen, the
number of tiny capillaries in the muscles to deliver the blood, the amount of
aerobic enzymes in the working muscles to “pull” the oxygen out of the blood into the muscle and convert it to energy, and much more. (Note that I didn’t mention lung capacity.
That only becomes an aerobic capacity issue if you have a lung-related disease
or condition.) 

Other
than losing weight, there are two primary ways to improve the oxygen-using components of aerobic capacity with
training. One is by doing a lot of long workouts. The other is by training with
high intensity. As an older athlete who has been training for years and years,
more long, slow distance workouts aren’t going to do much for you in this regard. That brings
us back to high-intensity training which, if you’ll recall from my last post, was shown by Trappe, Costill and
associates to be the best way to preserve aerobic capacity as we age.

In
my next post here we’ll examine the details of high-intensity training to
improve aerobic capacity and a few of the adjustments that are usually necessary
as we age.

References

Allen
WK, Seals DR, Hurley BF, et al. 1985. Lactate threshold and distance-running
performance in young and older endurance athletes. J Appl Physiol 58:1281-4.

Coggan
AR, Spina RJ, Rogers MA, et al. 1990. Histochemical and enzymatic
characteristics of skeletal muscle in master athletes. J Appl Physiol 68:896-901.

Hawkins S, Wiswell R.
2003. Rate and mechanism of maximal oxygen consumption decline with aging:
implications for exercise training. Sports Med 33(12):877-88.

Tanaka H, Seals DR. 2003. Invited
review: dynamic exercise performance in masters athletes: insight into the
effects of primary human aging on physiological functional capacity. J
Appl Physiol
95(5):2152-62.

Tanaka H, Seals DR. 2008. Endurance
exercise performance in masters athletes: age-associated changes and underlying
physiological mechanisms. J Physiol
586(1):55-63.

Trappe
SW, Costill DL, Vukovich MD, et al. 1996. Aging among elite distance runners: a
22-year longitudinal study. J Appl
Physiol 80(1):285-90.

Wiswell RA, Jaque V, Marcell TJ, et al. 2000.
Maximal aerobic power, lactate threshold, and running performance in master
athletes. Med Sci Sports Exer
32:1165-70.

Aging: An Excuse?

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 the cell is. They grow shorter as you get
older. The length of telomeres is also directly related to aerobic capacity
(VO2max) and therefore endurance performance. So how long are your telomeres?

A
few years ago scientists at the University of Colorado in Boulder measured the
telomeres of young (18-32) and old (55-72) subjects (LaRocca). Each group was divided
two sub-groups – sedentary and endurance-trained – so there were four groups in
all. When the telomeres of old sedentary subjects were compared with those of
the young sedentary, the oldsters’ were 16% shorter. They really were “old.” Those
of the old, endurance-trained subjects were only 7% shorter than the
endurance-trained youngsters. Old athletes had telomeres that were 13% longer
than their sedentary peers. Telomere “age” was directly related to activity
level. Exercise keeps you young. I doubt if this is any big news for you.

It
also appears that the more intensely you exercise the younger you are if we accept aerobic capacity as a marker of aging. And as we also learned previously, aerobic capacity seems to be the marker of performance in which we experience the greatest losses as we age.

David
Costill’s Human Performance lab at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana has
produced many valuable studies for endurance athletes over several decades.
Here’s a classic that gives us a clearer picture of the relative importance of
duration and intensity in training and aging when it comes to aerobic capacity.

In
the late 1960s and early 1970s 53 elite, male runners were tested for several
parameters of fitness including aerobic capacity. They were re-tested 22 years
later. In those two decades all experienced a loss of VO2max (and more than
likely telomere length also since they are closely related). Nothing new there.
But here’s the kicker. Those who continued to race and trained with high
intensity had the least decline in aerobic capacity – 6% per decade (68.8 to 59.2 mlO2/kg/min).
Those who focused on “aerobic fitness” while decreasing their intensity
experienced a per-decade drop of 10% (64.1 to 48.9). And, as we might expect, those
who stopped all training lost the most – 15% per decade (70.7 to 46.7).
Intensity is the key.

That
information may produce some new challenges for you, not the least of which is
the motivation to train with higher intensity.

Simply
knowing this is not going to make it happen. You must actually do something
about it by training as you did when you were younger – with some age-related
adjustments. I want to get into this topic of how to adjust training for age,
but first we need to examine your commitment to serious training. Training to perform
better, whatever that may mean for you, starts in your head.

What
can you achieve in sport? That comes down to setting goals. I’m not going to go
into all the goal setting stuff you’ve been reading and hearing about for years
and years such as being measurable, well-defined, time-oriented and on and on.
You know this. So let’s move on to goal setting as a function of age.

The
starting place for better fitness is setting goals based on what you believe
your aging body (and mind) can handle. Aiming for the stars sounds good when
talking with your pals, but that usually means low commitment because you know
down deep it isn’t possible. Be realistic and honest with yourself. On the
other hand, don’t dummy down your expectations by assuming that you are
incapable of attaining a high level of performance simply due to the number of
years you’ve been on the planet.

Most
all athletes, regardless of age, can achieve a lot more than they think they
can. Don’t be afraid to set high goals. However, I’d rather see an athlete set
a goal they know is achievable and then later on, once imminent success becomes
apparent, take it up another notch. That’s far better than starting too high
and losing motivation to continue toward the unachievable.

Therein
lies the key question: What am I capable of achieving? I’m asked that question
a lot. I’m afraid my crystal ball is a bit cloudy. There is no sure way of knowing
what your potential is. But here is how you can go about getting a ballpark
answer. We have to look backward before projecting forward.

The
more challenging and structured your training has been in recent years and the
more dedicated you’ve been to working out, the less room you have to get
faster. But if you’ve been slacking and you know it, then there is probably a
great deal of improving you can do in the years ahead despite your age. If your
race times have slipped more than 20% in the past decade, for whatever reason,
and you are currently healthy then I would fully expect you could achieve at a
higher level. But if your times have increased by 5% or less in a decade then
you may be quite close to your potential. Between these extremes is anybody’s
guess.

For
most athletes, regardless of age, the greatest obstacle to better performance
is seldom physiological but rather psychological. Most people simply lack the
motivation. This can, and does, happen at any age. Being 50 or 60 or 70 doesn’t
mean you have a pass to train more easily and yet some how perform well. Patting
yourself on the back for merely finishing is a sure way to injure your
shoulder. High performance has been and always will be based on hard work. That
means higher intensity and more speedwork. But many of us seem to gravitate to
slower and less stressful activity levels over time as if we’ve some how earned
it. Then all too often we complain about how slow we’re getting.

You
aren’t old until age becomes your excuse. If you continue to remind yourself of
your age and use it as a crutch, no matter what that number is, you’ll come to
believe that high achievement is impossible. That’s probably the way your
parents saw the world. At least mine did. After a certain age you weren’t
expected to do anything strenuous. Gardening and a walk around the block was
about as tough as it got. Just grow old, get fat, and accept that as
simply the way life is. You can have that if you want, but it doesn’t have to
be that way. You are the master of your own fate no matter your age. Refuse to
accept it as your excuse.

References

LaRocca
TJ, Seals DR, Pierce GL. 2010. Leukocyte telomere length is preserved with
aging in endurance exercise-trained adults and related to maximal aerobic
capacity. Mech Ageing Dev
131(2):165-7.

Trappe
SW, Costill DL, Vukovich MD, et al. 1996. Aging among elite distance runners: a
22-year longitudinal study. J Appl
Physiol 80(1):285-90.