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Aging as an Endurance Athlete: Body Composition, Performance and Training for Longevity · The Endurance Athlete Journey

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome everyone to the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Coach Justin.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm here with Coach Katie.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: And this is episode three of our series on the aging athlete.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: So we're we've been taking a deep dive look into some of the nuances of masters or seasoned athletes, some of the things that they have to consider as we get older.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so today's episode, we are going to dig into a little bit of how how training can be structured uh for for aging athletes.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: How do we as coaches uh approach and manage uh masters athletes compared to the younger one, the younger athletes?
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh some of the things that um for one, we want to talk a little bit about body composition.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: It was on our list to talk about in the last episode, but uh that episode got away from us in terms of duration, so we pushed it to this one, and it seems to fit in well with the topic anyway.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: So uh we'll we'll talk a little bit about the changing body composition as we get older.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: So again, this is episode 114.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you for guy thank you everyone for for joining us.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh let's do a little bit of a recap on on how our week has gone.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Katie, why don't you uh why don't you tell us how your week has been?
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's been okay.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: My son started school again on Thursday, so it's just a little bit of a growing pain, or like just the change.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's good because now I can have more routine, but it just takes me a little bit of time to figure out our schedule, and he's got flag football, and we're trying to figure out the bus thing because you know he might be riding the bus home.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: So it's good.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's just trying to get my schedule figured out.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I actually signed up for, so I'm starting kind of a not officially quite yet, but I will be starting my high rocks training.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I did sign up for a local um gym, like a CrossFit gym, and they do high ROX specific workouts.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: So I just signed up for their HIROCs program.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not doing all the other CrossFit type workouts.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um they have cross or high ROX workouts twice a week.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: So I signed up for that today and I'm going to the workout tomorrow.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm just kind of trying to basically ease my way into it a little bit so that when I do officially start in September, I will be kind of have a good routine um with my training and trying to figure out how it's all gonna work with the running because there's a lot of intensity with high rocks.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm trying to kind of figure out how am I gonna still do some running workouts?
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: Because I'm also trying to train for like a 5k um that I'm gonna be doing early October.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: So it's just it's not a big deal because I think you can still do some fast racing and train for high rocks, but I'm just trying to get ease into it, figure out what that routine's gonna look like, how my training's gonna be.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: And then I'll be coming at you all with the I've decided I am going to do my, and this was uh Justin's idea, the highway to high rocks series instead of the road, you know, we're gonna go, we're gonna do a different, a different, uh similar theme there.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: But what did you ACDC?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: The Yeah, so spin-off of the A C D Highway to Hill.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: So we think what we're gonna call it.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: I I like it.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um but I'll start that sometime in September.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: So I'll you know kind of do like an intro about what I'm thinking of in terms of how I'm gonna structure my training and a little more about that at that time.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but yeah, that's that's where I'm at.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_02: I'm trying to get back into better routine with training because I'm really missing that.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like that's been uh not as big a part of my life, and I and that's hard for me.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: I like to be working on something, training towards something, doing something.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: It keeps me it keeps me um balanced a little bit better when I've got my own training, um, my own stuff I'm working towards.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: So, but other than that, I don't know.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just feeling a little bit overwhelmed with things, feeling kind of all up in the air, like I'm juggling a bunch of things, but I think that'll get better soon.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm optimistic.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, how about you?
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: Any updates?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: This was actually a really good week uh training purpose for you know from a training perspective.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh less pain.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: I felt I felt pretty good.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: My body was feeling good.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: I had my long ride with a short run off the bike today.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've been meeting these guys uh for their for their weekly long ride.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: They're training for uh it's Iron Man Portugal, and I think it's in October, so their rides have been about four hours long, and so I meet them like at a parking lot that's like 45 minutes into their ride, and I jump on and ride with them for the rest of it.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been doing it for a couple weeks, and normally I'm not a big fan.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm I would classify myself as kind of like a lone wolf trainer.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I like to I like to just do my own thing, go my own pace, not worry about anybody else.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of it shuts the world off, and nobody's asking anything of me.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so it's really like a like a me time.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: But I've kind of stepped outside of my comfort zone, and uh these guys were were saying, you know, hey, why don't they were looking for people to join uh their ride.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, you know what, let me just go ahead and and try it.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: And they're really nice guys.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I have a really good time riding with them.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's a difference in training methodologies and execution because I'm training for shorter races.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: My my races that are coming up, I have uh an Olympic aqua bike.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I have two Olympic aqua bikes and two uh sprint triathlons that are coming up in September.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: So my style of of execution is very different than how they ride uh for training for an Iron Man.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: So um they've been they're they're nice enough to just let me go my own pace.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, whenever I get to like an intersection or whatever, I I sit there and I wait for the for them to you know come back up and we all kind of regather and we just keep going.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I've really enjoyed it.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so I had our I last week was just uh an absolute hot mess.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: I got off the bike and it was really it was hot and humid, full sun, and I seriously thought I was gonna pass out.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: I executed a poor nutrition plan for that ride.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: And this week I I was like, no, I'm gonna I need to buckle in and get this get this right.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Executed my nutrition plan perfectly today, drank a lot.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it was it was overcast, but it was still hot and humid.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I felt fantastic like coming off the bike and just went out for my run and executed it well and stayed within you know a controlled effort.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: And one thing that I've been doing is I've been taking pace off of my watch screen, and so I ignore pace completely until I get back and then I go back and look at the performance of of the run.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't I'm not running it trying to hit a particular pace.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even know want to know what my pace is because that starts to plant little seeds in my head, and I I I get I get wrapped up in it, and I said, you know, this is this is just not good for me.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I took pace and all the metrics off of my watch.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: So the only thing that I see now is just the duration of the interval that I'm in, and that's it.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I went out today to run, I felt super relaxed, and I was like, man, I'm I am running really slowly, which is the purpose that I really wanted, like coming off of the bike.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then I came back and looked, and I was like, man, that pace is a lot faster than what it felt like I was running, even after I kind of got my red, my run legs under me and really kind of settled into it.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: I was still like really relaxed and just had really good form.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I went and looked at the pace, and I was like, man, that that is faster than I expected it to be, given the effort that I was putting in and the conditions that I was that I was in.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so that I'm starting to get a little bit uh more accustomed to that that method, and I'm I'm starting to really enjoy it.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um the the running the running by RPE thing is is something that I kind of struggled with, and I I do it with my athletes a lot.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I've got I've gotten some pushback from from some athletes, not not too many of them, but some of them, um, especially the ones that have a strong running background because they're just like, oh, what's what's my pace going to be?
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't know.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever the pace is, just run at this effort, and then we'll see what the pace is.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because I've done races where my watch and my electronics has completely sabotaged my effort.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's either forced me to chase a pace that I couldn't sustain, or I look down at some metric and I was like, I can't sustain this, and I back off.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: And but I've had races where it's like, I don't, I don't think I can sustain this.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: My heart rate is really high.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then I've ignored it and had fantastic races.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm kind of testing out some some different methods here, and I'm trying to detach myself a little bit more from technology.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: I still record everything and I still have the data that I that I want and need, but I'm trying to detach myself from the immediate interaction with data.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, especially for the run, because that's my my weakest, my weakest part.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the bike, I'm still pretty attached to to data.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll be, I mean, I sat down on Friday with uh Chat GPT and was feeding it some some data from my past races, and we were trying to plot out a road to uh an aqua bike national championship uh qualification slot.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, how do I, you know, how do I need to perform?
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: What do I need to how do I need to execute in order to potentially get a slot?
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I think I'm in the ballpark.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, the stuff that it was telling me, it was looking back at all the past performances and it's like this is what we've been seeing, and people in your age group, uh, you're already there to a certain extent and and these in these different aspects, but um, so it was it was promising.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I pay a little bit more attention to the bike because that's the one that really matters uh for that for this next little goal that I've got to see if I can grab a slot for a team USA for the aqua bike.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: But we'll see what happens.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um but so far things have been going really, really well.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I feel like the with the data, I'm like, I don't know.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: I wear my watch, but I don't check it too terribly often on my runs.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_02: I just run I just run, you know, and then sometimes I'll look down at it and I'll be like, oh, I'm going this pace, or oh, but it usually matches my effort.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, I don't I don't feel like I'm one of those people that's like constantly looking at my watch, like constantly trying to see.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: I think there depends, but because I feel like there's probably a good balance there somewhere between that uh looking and not.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: And then sometimes I'll do workouts where on the Garmin, if you set up a workout in there off of training peaks, at least on my Garmin, it'll just do like the countdown.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's one you can toggle it on and it and it and you can toggle it to the other thing, so you can see your pace if you want, but sometimes I'll just keep it on there where it just gives me the countdown and it will like beep at me when I do the intervals, and I don't even I just go based off effort.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I do think that's important to do sometimes, but the there's probably like a good balance there.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's hard.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: But you're right.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't found the balance, I'm not a balanced kind of guy.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_02: If you're doing that like today, if you've been doing that and you would look down and saw you were going at a faster pace for the effort, then you know that the you know what I mean?
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: Like you were actually doing better than you thought you were doing for then.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_02: I think that does like then you start questioning, like, oh, maybe I'm going too fast, and rather than just kind of going in the moment.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: So um or the other end is probably the the route that I would go is I would see the pace and I would see my effort, and I was like, oh, I'm hitting this pace at this effort.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Let's let's go a little harder and we'll see how good of a pace I really can get.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: That that would be my that would be my route and my tendency.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: So kind of and then I may not have had as a successful workout because I would have chased some potential as they're trying to observe some potential of fitness rather than just letting it build and then observe it on race day when it really matters.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's hard, I think, sometimes because like the other day I had a I did that on my watch.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't do I didn't look, and then when I came back, I was like, oh, that's actually like a little bit slower than I was hoping for that effort.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_02: But I did have to get up really early and go like much earlier than I'm used to.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_02: I like to have a little bit more of a warm-up and a warm, like I don't like to jump right into my training first thing in the morning, you know, but I kind of had to for my time.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but at the same time, I'm like, yeah, I mean, it's it's fine because I'm still getting a stimulus and I know this is just like a long road, right?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's not like I wanna I have a certain goal I want to achieve, and it really has only been like a maybe a month now since I started to actually add any speed work and intensity back in, like in any serious way.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm like, I I just sometimes you have to kind of like re have that dialogue in your head of like where you are you're you're upset or something, and then or this wasn't the pace I was hoping for.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_02: And then it's like, oh, but reminding yourself, like it's not every not every workout's gonna go perfect.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I got I executed it 100%, you know, according to my Garmin.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but according to myself and the way I set it up, you know, it just wasn't I was just hoping the pace was a little bit faster for those intervals.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_02: But it was kind of nice not knowing.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: I think if I looked down and saw I would have pushed myself harder than I needed to in that moment, um, to try to hit a pace I I thought I needed to hit for that workout.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't know.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's that's a whole maybe that's a whole conversation on its own.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: But let's get to um Yeah, let's jump in.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: We can talk about pace versus I don't know, maybe effort.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe we've already in that a little bit, but um, I feel like that's always an I think every runner, especially runners, struggle with that.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: But let's dive into the yeah, like the um part three of our master's athlete discussion.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_02: Let's talk about body composition just because I think this kind of follows up from what we were talking about before with like strength training and nutrition, so we can kind of lead in from there and then go to our training and per longevity discussion we're gonna have.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: But any thought?
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, what what are your thoughts?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like, do you have you personally?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I know I know body weight, I want to make sure people understand that body weight and body composition are different.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_02: Like body composition is like muscle mass versus fat mass, right?
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: So, like typically what happens or what people experience as they age is they start to lose a little bit of muscle and gain a little bit of fat.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so I hear a lot of complaints, especially from women, but also from men that, you know, especially around the middle, midsection, like they're not as lean, they start to get more rolls or fat, you know, accumulating in the midsection.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: And um, I think that's a a very frustrating thing for many, especially women, but I think it happens with men too.
• 15:47
  unknown: Yep.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't know, what is your experience with body composition or working with athletes?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, have you kind of run into this with your athletes?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: Just curious kind of what your thoughts are on body computer.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: I I can say I haven't had too many conversations with my athletes in terms of of body composition.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um I am I I I'm a little bit I I try to be a little bit more on the sensitive side when it comes when it comes to weight.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it it's probably because of my own thing, because I'm pretty sensitive to it.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I really don't talk to my athletes a whole lot about it, uh, but I do talk about uh I will talk about like body composition.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: So if I say you know, if some if an athlete comes to me and says, you know, I've got this race coming up, I I need to make race weight, you know, this whole meth so what I try to stress with them is that look, you know, race weight is just uh just a number that you think that you can perform well at.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now, who's to say that if we actually build strength and build muscular endurance, that you can't perform as well, if not better, than the way that you would perform if you were lighter?
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm seeing that today.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, my performance has increased while at the same time, like the number on the scale is higher and it's not going down.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, unfortunately, I was dumb enough to step on the weight on the scale this morning before I went for my ride for my workout.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, the number the number is what it is, and it's taken me a really long time to accept that number.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: But what I have seen is I've seen a significant increase in strength and muscular endurance.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I know that I'm stronger, and I've seen it, I've seen the evidence of it by the increase in performance and you know, my my abilities to climb hills now on the bike with less effort and actually uh uh achieve speeds that I thought were not sustainable or achievable at the way at the level that I weigh now.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: But now I'm looking at my pacing and I'm just like, man, that that is that is way faster than I thought that I would be able to achieve, given that I'm a heavier guy.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so it's been a lesson for me that I I I have to stop stressing so much about the number of pounds that I see staring back at me, and more so on like how how do my efforts feel when I'm tr when I'm training and I'm racing?
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, do I f if I feel strong, then that that has a lot of of weight to carry with it.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, not maybe that's the wrong way.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: So that that has it that has a uh a significant is significant, I'll put it that way.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um so yeah, I I have I have struggled with my weight my entire life.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so I mean it's one of the reasons why you know I had the gastric bypass and all that kind of stuff, and you know, I've been trying and trying and trying to get this this weight back down to a level that I want it to be, where I think that I can perform better, but right now I'm performing better without being at the lower weight.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I think it's it it's just you may have to change the method in which you train in order to generate that kind of result, but it is possible.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: So I think you bring up an interesting one.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think it's just the society that we live in is just really put so much emphasis in in weight and appearance.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: I mean it's it's fueled, it's fueled this this this thought process that I can't perform unless I look or weigh a certain I mean I remember being in high school even and just that this connection, you know, you make between um seeing athletes perform who are really like thin, and that that's you know, you that that's gonna be what is gonna propel my, you know, my performance too.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: So I remember specifically being in high school and watching this other athlete who was a high level perform performer.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, she was going on to like Stanford or something to run.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: And this was my sophomore year, and I think she might have been a senior, and she was very thin.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_02: And being like, oh, yeah, you know, that so I think there is this tendency to kind of make that connection.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: And then we have on top of it, like a society.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I don't, I don't know, I just was watching something.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, Ariana Grant Grand, is that her name?
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_02: She's okay, so she's very thin, and who knows?
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: Like, who knows what's going on there?
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to speculate on that, but it's like the amount of obsession that people are having and discussion about her body and her weight and her, you know, it's just like, why are we so focused on this person's weight?
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: This poor, I mean, she could maybe she has something, you know, medical, or maybe it's an eating disorder.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: We don't know.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_02: But the amount I've seen of just people being either mean or why like why are we so focused on this individual's weight?
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I do think there's a lot of pressure for like celebrities and stuff like that.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, this is not that discussion, but I do think as a society, we're just, I don't know, there's some sort of weird obsession about being thin or like weight or something that I think women experience, but I also know men experience it as well.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: And then on top of it, like on the athletic side, I mean, it's getting better, but there's just I feel like when I was in college and high school, the examples I had of women who are fast, you know, especially running marathons, were just extremely thick.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Thin, you know, and so maybe even unhealth, unhealthfully so, you know, so it's like you have this pressure and almost this like thing, like, oh, I think people just are like, oh, it is I'm gonna be better if I'm thin.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_02: And unfortunately, it's not always.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, sure, there may be some cases that where losing some weight will make you a little bit faster, but in most cases, I think people are kind of missing the point.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_02: And we're starting to see that a little bit changing, but in realizing that, like, actually, it's not what you weigh, it's kind of how much muscle you have, and maybe body composition matters a lot more.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_02: And the interesting thing about that is just that I've even had experience with my own body composition changes.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, this is also controversial, but in college when I was running, they made us do DEXA scans.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember my freshman year, my body composition was less than ideal for an endurance athlete.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_02: It was like 25% fat or something.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: Pretty high.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's not high.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: That was like high comparably to for their standards.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: From their standards and from when they told us not to compare it to other girls on the team, what do you think we're gonna do?
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like compared.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_02: I was looking at the uh, you know, the other girls were talking about what their measurements were, and it was like 15%.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm like, oh my gosh.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: So what I ended up doing, and this is probably one of the things I did okay, was I actually changed the way I was eating at the time because I was kind of backloading my energy and my body composition was suffering, started eating better.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: I ate more during, like fueled better during the day, and built I gained a lot more muscle.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: So my body did not change that much.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_02: My body weight, that is, like my actual weight on the scale might have even gone up a little bit.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_02: But my body composition changed pretty drastically.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_02: I had even people asking me, like, so I meant so in sense I gained muscle and lost body fat, but didn't lose any weight.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I have people who are like think worried about me because they're like, you look leaner.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: So it's it's just like kind of weird to me.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: That's just an example, like because of the way I changed my body composition, I just looked different, um, leaner, and maybe it looked like I had lost weight when in fact I hadn't.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: So um, I just think sometimes weight is an interesting thing to focus on because you could be 30%, 40% body fat and still be thin.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: So you could be like, what's the word?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's like a term for it, like thin skinny fat or fat or something like that.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_02: And even just the thought, I mean, the other messed up thing is even just this thought that this sort of assumption that people make that, oh, you're thin, therefore you must be healthy, you know, like, oh, you're thin and thin equals health.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_02: And that's not the case.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: There's plenty of thin people who probably, you know, are have cancer or experiencing some sort of health condition.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't know, it's uh it's just blows my mind, you know, that our our society kind of in general is focus on thinness.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought we were getting better, and then it seems to me like it's kind of going back to a more negative direction.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so kind of what does that mean for, I guess, for like people who are getting, I mean, I that's a problem in general, but what does that mean kind of for the aging athlete?
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: I think it just I think there's in a little bit more pressure as the body changes a little bit, you know, there's probably a little bit more focus on, you know, when those when certain changes are happening, there's just more like people are more upset, or there's you know what I mean?
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's more like especially with women that I work with, like, oh, I'm I'm still performing well, but I have this middle little bit of fat that's accumulated that may or may not be something they can really control too well because of you know, metabolism changes, but probably also like hormonal stuff.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_02: And um, I think then it just becomes even more people become even more focused on it and you know, upset about it or like you know, obsessive about it, you know, sometimes.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: I that's my experience as as masters athletes.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: I can see how it becomes an issue with a masters athlete because they start to see the degradation in performance, or they start to uh feel feel pain in areas that they've never felt pain before, you know, as as you know, they start to lose strength and and tendon issues, and they start to feel like they're kind of injured, and then they start to look at how their body is changing, and they start to make this association that, oh, well, the the number on the scale is if I can get that back under control, then the pain in my tendon, my the pain in my joints will go away, the tendon issues that I have in my performance will come back.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think maybe some of those are are relative or relevant statements or have stronger possibilities than others.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them there's very little correlation between the number that's on the scale versus uh what they're observing.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that I think seeing the degradation the degradation in performance uh just amplifies you know this this issue.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it's yeah, because they're kind of making that correlation, maybe the different things.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: They are, and it's just like, oh, if I can just get this, if I could just fix this, like if I can just fix this, then I'll see, I'll I'll observe what it is that I want to see.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I have to say, just from my own experience that my my weight could drop, but my performance may not may not improve.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um I may lose weight, but the pain in my joints may not subside.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so, but because that was always my my thought too, is like, you know, if I could just reduce some weight, then then the force that my body has to absorb when when it's training, then would would be lessened, which is a valid, a valid statement.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: But the question becomes is like, okay, well, if I just become stronger, then my body should be able to absorb that force better.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I may not have to lose lose the weight in order to have the pain go away.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: I just maybe need to become stronger so that my body can support and absorb it.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's been my hope.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I haven't I haven't really observed it just yet, but I I think I think I think there is some relevance to that, um, but I don't know at what level that must be true in order to see that, to, to observe that.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I I don't know, like if I say, well, I've gotten stronger, but maybe I just haven't gotten as strong as I need to, right, in order to to alleviate the issues, which is which is a which is a common occurrence with with masters athletes and seasoned athletes.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a really hard topic for me to talk about because uh it's it's a pretty sensitive thing, but it is sensitive, and I think people are.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the one thing that I can say is that I've tried different ways to to bring about the results that I want.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them and s some have been successful and some haven't been.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: So the only thing that I can encourage uh an age a seasoned athlete to do is stop trying to replicate uh the stuff that you did before.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because chances are it's more unlikely for that to to uh bring about the result that you're looking for, more so than it is likely.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: Try something different.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, you know the old adage, if you keep trying if you keep doing the same thing over and over and over again and expect different results, then that's the definition of insanity.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um so that's why I I I love this sport so much, because there's so many different ways to generate the same result.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so if we could just find a way that just works for that particular person in that phase of life, then that's great.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: But it may not be replicable in somebody else.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: The method may be completely different, but I don't know.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: I I I I can just say I I don't I don't have an answer.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I did.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um so yeah, I mean it's hard, I think, with um I mean maybe we can kind of pivot a little bit to like talking.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think maybe talking through like how you would navigate um the body composition changes a little bit.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like, so let's say someone is experiencing um that I think there are some I think the first I think I mean this maybe I don't I don't think it's controversial, but I just want to point out that like most of the time it's not because um our metabolism is slowing down in any substantial way as we age.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think that's often what people say to me is oh, I'm now I'm in my 40s, uh, my metabolism is slower.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_02: And there may be a little slight bit of truth, but the research really shows that metabolism, or at least our basal metabolism, meaning our resting metabolic rate, actually doesn't slow that substantially.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it really does depend on our muscle mass.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_02: So the more muscle mass we have, um that's probably why it would slow in a as aging, because we lose muscles.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_02: So that's just another plug for maintaining or gaining muscle.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_02: So your metabolism doesn't slow.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_02: But what I tend to see more often is people, even when we're training, like um our outside expenditures go down.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_02: So right now I'm in a phase of life, I have a seven-year-old son and he's busy.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm running around, right?
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_02: With him, I'm doing stuff.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_02: He wants to, you know, go for a walk, he wants to go to the park, like I'm chasing him around a little bit, like I'm go to the park with him.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_02: I'm active, like, and I don't really count that too much because it's just what I'm doing, right?
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_02: But um, let's say there'll be a phase where he's a teenager and maybe he doesn't want to hang out anymore.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not taking him to the park, I'm not running around, like I'm doing my running and all that, but now my expenditure just in general has gone down.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think sometimes that's probably more of what's going on with some of the body weight slash body composition changes, is that yeah, maybe we're and maybe we are just doing what we always did and we haven't changed, you know.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_02: You're like, well, I trained like this in my 20s and I never strength trained, and I'm not, you know, going to.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_02: And well, of course, then you're probably gonna have some negative body composition changes as you get older for all of these reasons.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_02: So I think, you know, the kind of thinking about it from that perspective, yes, hormones can influence it a little bit when estrogen levels go down for women.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_02: We do have a tendency to maybe store a little bit more in our midsection.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's just sort of part of menopause.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, unfortunately, that may happen.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_02: So no matter what you do, you could still maintain your muscle mass and just have a little more fat accumulate there.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um I would I would say like maybe you changing up the training a little bit might help.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe adding more strength or intensity or just doing things a little different might help.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_02: Eating, you know, maybe you have to pay more attention to how you fuel.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe you can't potentially get away with as much excessive amounts of carbs, maybe things like that just kind of impact you a little bit differently because of some of these changes.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_02: But I think that, you know, just think I think what I would suggest for anyone who's kind of having body composition changes is just to kind of think through what's changed?
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_02: Like what's changing my activity levels?
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_02: You know, maybe you're not able to train as hard as you used to, maybe because of time, or maybe you do don't have little kids anymore, and now you're not running around after them, and maybe you have a desk job that you didn't used to have.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_02: Those are probably more likely the culprits than it would be like just metabolism.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_02: And then kind of thinking through that, you know, fueling different, like how you maybe need to focus a little bit more on fueling or your training and changing that up a little bit so that you can, and and the goal shouldn't be like necessarily weight loss.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_02: The goal truly is maybe going and getting like a DEXA scan done and go, or you know, a bioelectrical impedance like BIA scan that you can get at, like a gym, and just kind of measuring where you're at and maybe focusing then a little bit more on improving body composition and not so much on weight is my suggestion.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: Actually getting a measurement done to see where your body composition is.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, if you want to do that on a fancy device or a scale or however, but always use the same thing when you go to measure it again.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and just focus on, yeah, building muscle, maybe like making some nutrition changes to better support that, not reducing calories necessarily or a restriction, but just focusing on the body composition rather than the weight is where I would say what I would suggest for most um most people who are in that situation.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because well, the situation that that I've been in, which is I think pretty uh it's it's had my my mind bent a little bit, is I uh I have one of these fancy scales that you know will return to me you know what's my what's my water weight, what's my muscle mass, fat mass, and weight, and all that kind of stuff.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, I was trying to figure out okay, in my is my body composition changing.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I started to track, you know, every time that I would weigh in, I would record what my water weight was, what my lean my muscle mass was, and what the weight was.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, okay, well, if if the weight isn't going anywhere, then if I can see an upward trend in muscle mass, then that just tells me my composition is changing.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm I don't want to say that I'm replacing fat with muscle because that's not the case, but you know, I am building muscle, and so really the net effect is that there is no change.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: So the number on the scale can actually stay constant, but I'm getting stronger, building more muscle, and in effect, burning more fat.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: So what I found was that my muscle mass hasn't really increased significantly over the past two years.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I strength train a lot compared to what other endurance athletes train.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so the question becomes it's like, well then how how easy or hard is it to actually put on muscle as a master's athlete?
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: Do we are we interested in putting on muscle or are we interested in building strength?
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because we know from a previous episode that we did there is a there is a distinction between getting stronger and building muscle.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: So what I found is that I'm it's it must be just really hard for me to build muscle.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: I can build strength, but for some reason I'm just I'm not building muscle.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I I'm confused.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, I think you have a good point.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_02: I think it is really hard to have like actual hypertrophy of muscle when you're an endurance athlete because you're kind of working, it's just really hard to without some sort of maybe calories surplus, you know, or just not doing endurance exercise.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think if you I think if you were to actually like really reduce the amount of actual like cardiovascular training and focus more on strength, you'd probably be able to gain a little more muscle, but it's just but you're gaining strength.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_02: So I mean you're actually yeah, so that's the important thing that does come into play a little bit with um the composition piece.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um kind of depends on where someone's at, how much muscle, uh how easy it is for them to build muscle, how much they're training.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_02: When one thing that, you know, may work a little bit better for some people is just main like the focus on maybe maintaining muscle and losing body fat rather than losing weight.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that might be a better goal.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, or if you truly want to gain muscle, because maybe you're getting into your master's age and you're realizing you've never done strength training and your muscle mass is declining, you may have to go through a phase, um, like a certain phase where you do a lot more strength training and kind of just some level of cardiovascular training, but you reduce it so that you can build muscle, but it kind of does either way, you can't really build a lot of muscle in any sort of like calorie deficit.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's really hard, um, or if not impossible.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_02: So kind of thinking about that, if you know, it's kind of like one of these things where you have to, depending on what you're like, maybe you're looking at like a DEXA scan or something, and it's telling you your body fat percentage is um kind of a little bit higher than you want it to be.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe your muscle mass is low or you know, comparably, you know, sometimes they have it where it's compared to like other people of your age.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe you're determining, yeah, like you're you could gain a little more muscle and you could lose a little body fat, you know, you'd have to kind of do it almost like I think of how I would work with like a like a bodybuilder.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_02: I don't really work with bodybuilders much, but the way you would approach that is kind of like either one of two ways, you would either first focus on losing a little bit of body fat and then focus on gaining muscle, or you would focus on at least, and not putting maybe not if you're worried about gaining weight, not necessarily being in a surplus, but really having a focus of like heavy on weight training, um, low cardiovascular, so maybe just maintenance level of cardiovascular, and then adequate nutrition, like adequate fueling, so you're not necessarily, I mean, maybe in a slight surplus, so you can actually gain muscle, but you wouldn't actually gain a ton of weight, actually.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_02: You'd probably just shift your body composition a little bit so that you would actually, because you have to kind of be at least somewhat in a surplus, but you'd be surprised how the body works.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_02: When I was doing my power lifting experiment years ago, and I was only running like maybe two miles a week.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_02: I only was strength training and I was eating in a huge surplus, I thought.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_02: I was calculating out, I was I was actually um recording everything on my fitness pal or uh or you know, a similar um tracking tool.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, How am I not gaining a whole bunch of weight?
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's because of the type of um metabolism I have, or the or the fact that I was strength training so much I had such a stimulus that I wasn't burning the same amount of calories I was on when I was running, but it was very surprising.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like I gained a little bit of weight, but it was like a lot of it was visibly from muscle.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like it was gaining, um, and so what I'm trying to say is like what you may find is that you gain a little, even if you gain a little bit of weight, your muscle mass goes up, and therefore maybe your body fat comes down, percentage comes down, so the actual composition changes.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_02: So again, we're we don't want to be overly focused on weight because then the next the next phase would be maintenance of muscle mass and then maybe making some dietary changes that would sort of decrease fat mass a little bit, so you have an improve your body composition a little more.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_02: So it comes in phases.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_02: You can't really necessarily do both at the same time.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_02: So it would be sort of a strategic thought-out thing you would probably have to do, and you might have to take a little break from intense uh aerobic training for a little while, but you could do it, and it and it's there, and it's still possible like to do and and see those changes as we age.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's not like I think a lot of people think that because now we're older, it's harder to gain muscle that you know they kind of give up on that.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_02: But I it's absolutely not true.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: You can still gain muscle, you can still improve body composition, it just takes a little bit more time, maybe a little bit more effort.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um that's my thoughts on that.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: So then the question becomes is it worth is it worth the trade-off?
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so it's just like, okay, I'm an endurance athlete, I'm an endurance athlete, I'm not a weightlifter.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I I lift so that I can swim, bike, and run.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I I don't know if I'm willing to sacrifice the the aerobic conditioning in order to bring about the the possibility of observing an an increase in muscle mass and eventually a decrease in in fat mass.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I don't know if it's worth it for for me.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, but it may be worth it for somebody else.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you already have a lot of quite a bit of muscle, but you're quite strong already.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_02: I'm thinking this might be worth it for somebody who's sort of um coming to the realization that their muscle mass is not optimal, you know, like somebody that's they hit their master's level and they're they haven't done much strength training and they're listening to us and they're like, oh my gosh, you know, I don't have a whole lot of muscle.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_02: And they're thinking longevity, which we'll talk a little bit about, because that's one of the things I think about is the more muscle mass we can have as we're younger, you know, and the more we can carry on with us as we get older, the better off we're going to be, regardless of if we're endurance athletes or not.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_02: So if you're realizing this now and you get your body composition checked and you're like, oh, I feel like I more have more fat body fat percentage than I should, like getting it checked, first of all, getting a measurement might be wise just to see where you're at.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, if you feel like your muscle mass, like you actually don't have enough muscle, then you might want to do that.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_02: Because I think then it becomes a more of a longevity piece.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's a longevity thing.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe in the short term you have to compromise training and performance for something that you want to continue doing when you're older.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_02: Because if you don't do that now, I'm just gonna tell you if you don't have enough muscle mass now and you think you're gonna still be able to run when you're in your 80s, it And you don't do anything to change the muscle mass or even start strength training.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I mean, very I I'm sure there are probably examples of people who are running in their 80s who didn't strength train.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, but I'm thinking it's that's probably more of a more of a factor of genetics than it is anything.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_02: Genetics, and maybe like a lot of times it may be somebody that started running later in life, you know, that it that maybe they didn't actually I hear a lot of stories of people who started running in their 40s and 50s, but because they don't have all of that wear and tear from earlier, that sort of muscular um thing doesn't maybe affect them as much as it would for somebody who's been doing it for a long time.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_02: But um, I do think as now we're seeing so many more endurance athletes aging because I mean if you think about it, the history of the sport, a lot of people would stop running, like you know, back in the early 1900s.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know, like there's a lot of people that would kind of stop running, and now we have this whole generation of people who are running and wanting to continue running until they're old.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's just changing the the mindset on it.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_02: So I think we're just gonna see a lot more people, a lot more of these uh even like uh masters um records and like records of people in their hundred, like or a hundred or ninety running a marathon.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_02: I think we're just gonna see that a little bit more often because more and more people are kind of aging.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_02: But if you want to be that person, I just argue you really need to make sure you're strength training because you you know, you just are if you lose muscle mass, you know what I mean?
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_02: You're not gonna be able to keep up.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_02: So anyway, just let's move this.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_02: Let's move this.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: Let's move this over now since since we have been talking about the strength training and longevity.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about how how we can uh change the composition of the training plan in order to support these uh these different scenarios that that we're starting to observe.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_02: So well, I think we talked a little bit offline is that I think this is kind of where I started to have these thoughts when I was 40, when I turned 40, was okay, like I want to keep being active into my old age.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like, is there a compromise I'm making now trying to hit these performance goals of running marathons, continuing to try to run marathons at a fast pace?
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_02: And is that gonna compromise my ability to run or continue running when I'm in my 80s, if I make it there?
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_02: So um that's kind of where I think this question comes in is should we start shifting our thought process to more longevity?
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_02: And does that mean that we have to focus less on performance, or is there a way we can do both?
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_02: Can we both have good performance in our 40s and 50s and 60s, or you know, uh whatever that means for us, and still be able to have longevity, or do we have to kind of focus on one or the other?
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that's I think a question I was kind of posing, I guess.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_02: Or I don't know if you have any thoughts on longevity versus performance, or is it you know, is it possible to do both?
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_02: I that's what I'm trying to figure out.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it it it is an interesting question.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think do I think it's possible to have both both longevity and performance?
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um but the the human body never ceases to amaze us, and you know, the uniqueness of of each athlete and how they respond to stimulus and how they're able to absorb and recover from from training stress really plays a significant role on whether you're going to continue to observe performance or at least uh performance will decline at a declining rate, right?
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: So it it it means that it's going to decline, but it's not going to decline at an increasing rate.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just a slower decline.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um whereas I can have the exact same athlete at the exact same age and have completely different results, and you know, the degradation in their performance may be more more steep, and they're just not able to recover, they're not able to absorb, they need different stimulus.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um this this uh cookie cutter approach, so it's just like, you know, hey, this this is what you do if you're aging.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: Do it this way.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, as as we've said hundreds of times, you know, every we're it's unique.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's no such thing as one way to accomplish uh what you're doing.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think that there's you just have to find find the route that that works for that particular athlete.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: Some people like are can handle the volume, you know.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: If I if I'm working with an ath an athlete who's in their 50s, maybe early 60s, and they're just they can absorb a high volume week.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're talking, let's say uh a 14 hour, 14, 15 hour uh triathlon training plan, and they can absorb it well and perform well.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then I I give that same that same training plan to another athlete that would be the exact same age, under the exact same conditions, and they they look they look the same, but that that's that's the thing.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you know, there's nothing like structurally and obviously different that that makes them look uh like they can't absorb it.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: But the way that their body respond responds to stimulus is going to be different.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: So my approach to them would be different.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the the composition and the sequencing of their workouts may be uh you know uh unique.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, for instance, one of the approaches that I that I would use with an aging athlete who is finding it hard to recover is moving away from this seven-day, the typical seven-day training plan, and spread that volume out over, let's say, a 10-day training plan, um, just to allow them to have the additional time to recover and give them more days to where it's like, okay, this this can truly now be a zone two, uh, but you know, a couple days from now, we're gonna we are going to have some intensity.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's important to keep the intensity component in there.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_00: You just have to dial into the right distribution of intensity and the right prescription levels.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I I don't they're not all the same.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, if if you're a master's athlete and you're relying on Chat GPT to kind of give you a training plan to, you know, observe a particular performance, uh, buyer beware, you know.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I I think that there are just different methods that that you have to you have to swap in and out, and you have to be willing to experiment.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_00: You have to say, okay, how how does it how did how did this work?
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_00: That didn't really work.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so we know that that's off the table.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: So let's let's tweak it a little bit and let's find something that we we now form a new hypothesis.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, what what kind of stimulus do you need?
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: Do you need more zone two and and less intensity in order to become more durable?
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: Or do you want less zone two and higher intensity, but fewer training sessions in order to generate a higher performance?
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's an experiment.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_02: I would say it's probably no different than everyone, even younger athletes respond different to different stimulus, right?
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_02: Like some people are responding really well to speed, and others it takes a while.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, they'll do the speed session and it they have to kind of continuously do that for a while before they see improvement.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_02: Others kind of see that improvement right away, and some people respond better to zone two, you know, longer, more volume than others.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I think, but I think as we age, I think that you can kind of pull from past.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, like a little bit with your training.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_02: Like if you've always been responder to volume or always been a good responder to intensity, that's probably not going to change much.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_02: It just me, but it might be that the volume you were able to do in your 20s and 30s, you're not able to do anymore.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_02: So you have to make that adjustment, or the speed, you know, sessions you have to recover a little bit longer from.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_02: So you do maybe still do speed, but you have to give yourself another extra day in between, you know, like so two or three days of recovery in between um speed or intensity.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that that is something you can still pull from.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's not like we hit our 40s and 50s and beyond, and everything changes.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_02: But I I also agree that unfortunately there is probably a genetic piece that we have no control over of like how quickly our performance will decline or how some of those other things, like even arthritis or degenerative diseases that, you know, I don't think it's necessarily that running causes arthritis or some of these other, I think sometimes it's just more genetic.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's just kind of unfortunately luck of the draw.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_02: So you just have to do what you can to prevent that.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I I I think you still pull from what worked for you, you're just going to have to adjust it as you age to be able be able to recover from it.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_02: And it's all about what we can recover from.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_02: So if you're still trying to do what you used to do, you're just gonna throw yourself into a hole.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_02: And the other thing we want to keep in mind when we age is that if you have an injury or some a setback, um, especially if it's a major one, it's going to be much harder for you to come back from that.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_02: So anytime an athlete, an aging or master's athlete has some sort of setback in which they have to take a significant time off of training, that they may never get back to where, depending on how old they are, they may never get back to where they were before that setback.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because consistency in training is so important as a master's athlete, like being able to get out there and train on a consistent basis.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_02: So that's kind of where this longevity piece comes in, is especially and performance is trying to find that balance because if you're always chasing performance, but then you have an injury because you're pushing too hard, trying to do what you did in your 20s and you can't recover from it or whatever, and then you have like a major setback, your performance is may never be, you know, you can chase it and chase it and try to come back, but because of just the facts of aging and and how hard it is when you're older to kind of regain that fitness, you may not be able to.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so my biggest um thing at the thing I can I can't push or recommend enough is doing what you need to do, and that includes strength training, um, includes just adjusting your plan, um, and it and it includes like thinking a little bit more about longevity because you want to be able to be consistent in your training.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_02: And if that means you have to go from 60 miles a week, you know, of running down to 40, because that's what you can maintain.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_02: And then can that's much better to be consistently doing that mileage than to be trying to shoot for 60 or more miles a week and then have a huge setback because you're not you may never get you know back to where you were.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_02: So I think if I had to if I just say one thing was probably really important, it would be just putting in the training and being consistent.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so whatever that is that you need to do to be able to basically remain injury free as much as you can, the better off you're gonna be, uh, you know, able to perform or continue to perform and likely continue to perform well or just continue to run or or even perform at all or do this sport, you know, into your older age, whatever that looks like.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_02: So that's my that's my two cents.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if I have a lot of things.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that that I do uh prescribe to is when dealing with it with a master's athlete.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of the times it's the stuff that resides outside of the training plan.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's the little things that you don't even think about.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's stuff like, you know, hey, let's say that I go to bed at nine o'clock and I get up at, you know, four thirty, five o'clock in the morning.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_00: I get you know, I get enough hours for for me as an individual.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_00: So one thing that I don't prescribe to is, you know, everybody needs the seven to eight hours.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think that we are all different enough to where the body I I don't even know how I would perform on seven or eight hours because I don't think I've ever gotten seven or eight hours of sleep.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_02: Would be surprised what happens if you try to.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, maybe that's what I'm missing.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_00: But but what I'm trying to get at is that let's say that you kept the the number of hours of sleep constant, but the quality of the sleep that you do get is declining as you age.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_00: What I found is that sometimes, you know, I I I get overly sore or I have some issues that are going on, and so I toss and turn a little bit, trying to find find comfort, and I'll stay in one position, and then all of a sudden it'll it'll start to you know irritate me, and I'll wake up and then I'll have to change position.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's all those little shifts throughout the night that even though you're still getting the same number of hours of sleep, the quality of those hours are declining.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_00: And we can see that as a direct correlation to declining performance within the training plan.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_00: The body is not able to recover and absorb what it is that it needs to in order to generate the performance that you're looking for, and it has nothing to do with your training.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_00: It has everything to do with the sleep routine that you have, or just the changing of of your eating habits.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as we get as we get older, maybe you start to find that you actually do have an increase in stress in your life as you start to progress in your career.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: You start to, you know, climbing corporate ladders and that kind of things, and you're you're taking on more and more responsibilities, which can you know go home with you and may not lead to very optimal eating patterns or stress levels and cortisol levels.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so it again, it has nothing to do with the training, it's all the the other stuff.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that's one of the things that I have to remind my athletes a lot is that they'll come to me as like, oh, you know, this this run felt really hard and it shouldn't have felt this hard.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then all I have to do is just ask a few simple questions.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, okay, what was your day like at work?
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how how did you sleep last night?
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_00: How did you sleep the night before last?
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_00: How how are you eating?
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_00: What time are you eating?
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: Are you taking in any additional caffeine because you feel tired?
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's those sort of questions.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_00: Then they start to say, Oh, oh yeah, that that's what it is.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_00: And we we dig into it, but the first thing that they want to do is they want to change the training plan.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_02: They're like, something's wrong.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not yeah, that's true.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_02: I was thinking even today, I'm like, I don't my run felt hard, and I'm like, oh yeah, I was stressful yesterday, I didn't sleep that well.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um and you, you know, I know that enough to add to kind of go run through those questions of myself, but that's true.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I think, you know, kind of going back to that recovery piece, like I think those little things make or more become a little bit more important, you know, as we get older.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_02: Those little things may impact us a little bit more.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_02: The poor sleep, the bad eating, the poor eating, the um the stress.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_02: I think it just impacts us a little bit more because maybe we're not quite as resilient as we were in our 20s.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's things we can do to help that, but I just think unfortunately that's just what happens.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_02: And so then we have to be a little bit more aware of it or diligent about protecting our time.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, having ways to de-stress before we go to sleep, um, making sure we um plan ahead for eating so we don't get into a situation where we don't have anything to eat all day and then we're like overeating at night, you know, because we forgot we didn't plan.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_02: So I think those are just become a lot more important.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_02: And again, those fundamentals that we need to kind of come back to a little more that we've talked about so much um as we age.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I think this another topic I just thought of, kind of, but it's like along with it, longevity.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_02: Unfortunately, sometimes comorbid conditions, diseases are more prevalent as we age.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, even if we're doing everything right.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_02: I remember when I was working in the diabetes clinic, I remember working with a gentleman who was like an Iron Man triathlete, very lean, not um not your not someone you would think would develop type 2 diabetes.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_02: And because of the genetic propensity from his, you know, his parents, they both had type 2.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_02: I think his grandparents did.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_02: It was very genetic.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_02: He had type 2 diabetes, not someone you would, you know, and that's people that again, that's where I think people are like, oh, you're thin, you must be healthy.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's like this gentleman, he did everything right, it's just that he developed that, and it happened because also age, you know, 40s.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_02: I think he was like 40 or 50, and he was very upset, understandably.
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like, why is this happening to me?
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_02: And um, things like that do happen more, and that unfortunately, you know, as we age, we're just things don't work as well.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_02: We might the genetics might come back to get us.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, cardiovascular disease is one that's pretty common.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and we don't aren't necessarily protected against necessarily for endurance athletes.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_02: I think a lot of endurance athletes think that because they're running all the time, they must have great heart health.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_02: But genetic, you know, if there's a genetic predisposition and you have plaque in your artery, it it doesn't matter, right?
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_02: So I think these are all things that we want to be thinking about too as we're older.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_02: Is now it becomes not just like fueling and eating per performance, but we have to start thinking about how we're going to maybe eat differently to support lower cholesterol, you know, levels.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_02: And um, how do we do that and still eat like sugary carbs for our workouts?
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_02: Or maybe we need to focus on adding more certain types of fibers and reducing saturated fats and whatever that looks like.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_02: But it's like those are just things that become more prevalent also as we're aging and that you know, we have to think about because we don't want to, we don't want to die early because we didn't think about those health risks.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's just a whole other level that I think a lot of masters athletes are sort of dealing with.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um like autoimmune diseases, maybe are more common, like kind of pop up as we age.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_02: There's just a lot of different, you know, ex examples of that.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_02: But um, that's another kind of thought I'm having too there.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_02: I think that kind of goes along with the longevity piece of, but I think people are kind of now having to think about a little bit more.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so yeah, it does all become much more important to focus on the fundamentals.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_02: And in some cases, especially with nutrition, it's not only thinking about fueling your body, but probably people should probably do this all along.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_02: But how are you going to balance the fueling for your sport while also balance like heart health concerns or diabetes or things like that?
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_02: So it becomes a little bit more complicated, maybe, but just something I want to mention.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_02: I realize there's probably people out there with other diseases that they're dealing with on top of being an athlete.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pose this question real quick.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I know that we tried to maintain a a central focus of a theme of this to be the performance-driven aspect of aging athletes, and we put a heavy emphasis on strength training.
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think that there is a different approach that a master's athlete should take in the weight room compared to what you would see uh a younger athlete executing?
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's a good question.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_02: I do think an older athlete may have to be a little bit careful with heavyweight training just because there may be more risk with tendon and ligament, you know, just this the strength that making sure you're doing it correctly.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_02: But I think the only thing I can think of that would be different would be maybe it may take longer to see results.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe like there's a the amounts of sets and reps and weights scheme may change a little bit to kind of support that.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_02: I still think like lifting heavy weights is important, but I just think maybe the way someone might go about that, they might not be able to do like a one rep max, for instance.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_02: That might be really risky for someone, um, unless they're trying to do like a powerlifting sort of situation.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_02: So like maybe we're just doing it's like three or four sets of something heavy.
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_02: So it maybe like it's still heavy, but it's not like maxing out, you know.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_02: I don't really think I'd recommend like a master's athlete trying to max out their weights to whatever, you know, it's trying to weight lift the heaviest they can possibly lift because I think there's just too much risk.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_02: So that would be my my thing with that.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think my thought process is going along, it's like I'm curious if if if I had if I had an older athlete, a seasoned athlete that came to me and it's like, okay, now I want to incorporate strength training, how how would I build that program for them?
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_00: I would I would almost say that I I want to incorporate movements that build stability and control.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say that you have a flat flat uh bench, barbell bench press, right?
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_00: Would I give that move would I give that exercise to a master's athlete versus a younger athlete?
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm almost willing to say I would probably prescribe it to the younger athlete and then have the older athlete do the flat bar dumbbell bench press.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_00: It requires a lot more control, a lot more stability, and I don't I don't know.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_00: What what do you what do you think about like Those those alternative movements and whether one is better or worse for a particular athlete of an age group.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean I I guess you could the way you kind of create the plan, you could kind of do a little bit of both.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_02: Like I might have somebody do like a hot a heavy barbell bench and then have like the accessories.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_02: So they would do like a slightly lighter, like the dumbbell bench would be slightly lighter, three to five sets of three to four heavy barbell or um bench, you know, press.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_02: And then they would come over and they would do maybe like some slightly light lighter, like maybe three or four sets of you know, eight to ten dumbbell as part of the entire session.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_02: So they're still doing something kind of heavy, but then they're sort of doing an ex what I kind of call like an accessory movement.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_02: So then they're also because they get that heavy piece down because it's really hard to lift very heavy.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you can do it if you can find if you have dumbbells that are like, you know, some people are lifting quite a bit of weight.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_02: So sometimes it's hard to because the barbell is really nice for like putting weight on, but then you can do that accessory movement and have and then yeah, and then you're still working on that control.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_02: And because yeah, you have to kind of it takes a little more to balance it in each individual hand, and so you're kind of getting that more cement it's more symmetrical that way, because you can kind of compensate when you have a barbell, but you can't do that.
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_02: You can almost see too one arm might be stronger than the other.
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's sort of stuff I tend to do in my own training, but that's something I would recommend maybe is just thinking about using both and kind of incorporating both.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um and really that heavy set stuff should be um not a ton of uh sets and not a ton of reps.
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_02: You're just kind of doing heavy and it's you shouldn't be like maxing out to the point where you you're you know, you're like shaking to lift.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it should be hard and you're like pushing, but it shouldn't be so hard that you're about maybe you won still want to spotter, but you shouldn't be like about to like drop so it's some something like that.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's a percentage of the one rep max that you can kind of do for that and you're and it's challenging.
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, same with like back squats or deadlifts if you're going to use a barbell.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_02: And then I would do like an accessory, so I would do like a back squat heavy, you know, if you can.
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_02: And then I would do like a Bulgarian split squat or some sort of split squat as like an accessory movement to that, and I would have weights with it, but it would be less and it would be more reps, so like eight to ten reps, you know, on each side.
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm doing like this one heavy, but then I do try to kind of hit the each leg, like to kind of make sure we're balancing out the strength in each.
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_02: And that was, but it's not as h heavy because you don't want to overdo it.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_02: So you're kind of being strategic about it.
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that would I wouldn't do maybe both deadlift and um back squats in the same exact day, but with that kind of thing, because you then I would do that, and then I do a couple other, like maybe calf raises or other things like step-ups or some kind of other accessory strength training that's gonna help maybe with balance and strength, uh, some more symmetrical strength, but it would it would be like that heavy set would be just the one exercise.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_02: So I might do like heavy back squats one day, heavy, and then accessories and then heavy deadlift one day, and then some accessory strength training around that, and then the arms, and then sometimes I'll do I'll also do um heavy press if you can, if you don't have shoulder issues, yeah, and do something that might be like a separate day if I'm really going for it.
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_02: But sometimes I'll just I'll just do like barb, I'll just do dumbbell press because the shoulder stuff is a little touchy, you know.
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of people have shoulder issues, so that's how I structure it.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know, like that's just me.
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_02: That's just how I structure my strength training um generally.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_02: But a lot of people don't have barbells, so a lot of people are uncomfortable with barbells.
• 1:09:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's scary.
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_02: So if you can't work with someone, I work with a lot of people who don't even have access to them and they have just dumbbells, and then that's all I do with them.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_02: I just do dumbbells, and maybe we're just lifting as heavy as we can with what they have because they don't have the access to it, and that's okay.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm always just working with people with what they have access to in their comfort level.
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_02: And unfortunately, in most cases, I can't actually go to their house and like watch them lift.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_02: I wish maybe I can do that.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe I can figure out a way to do that better remotely, but it's hard.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_02: You almost really need to be like spotting people and like be able to like touch, you know, like but not touch them like awkwardly, but be like, okay, your back needs to be flat.
• 1:10:30
  SPEAKER_02: You you know, like those little cues that you can't really do from a remote sort of situation.
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm really uncomfortable if someone's never done barbells to be like I'm usually referring them to go somewhere to work with someone who's can teach them that because that's a yeah, that's a way to get injured, that's for sure.
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_02: Sue.
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_02: So that's I don't know, that's me.
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_02: That's how I do it.
• 1:10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um what do you what do you think the the role of speed of speed work like higher cadence, whether whether that is we'll use running since running is your specialty.
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um do you think that there is a a reasonable place within the training plan for a track Tuesday for an athlete who is in the in the masters division?
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sure.
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_02: I think so.
• 1:11:17
  SPEAKER_02: But I think the expectation, um like for instance, the other day we have this Tuesday night track that we were that they do, and they were doing 200s, you know, speeds fast, speedy two hundreds was the workout for that day.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I think I think that can be done, but I was kind of what I was kind of watching what some of the other people were doing, and there was an older gentleman and there were 12 of them, and he opted to only do like six or eight.
• 1:11:43
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
• 1:11:44
  SPEAKER_02: So I think yes, but I think we need to be a little bit careful because some of that top end speed, that really speedy stuff, obviously we're not gonna be as fast as maybe we are we were young when we were younger, but that high end speed I think is important, but it's risky.
• 1:11:59
  SPEAKER_02: So I think if there's a couple ways to do it, you know, we do track workouts, and maybe you um, you know, if you're going to do that sort of speed, just keep it let just be careful about the amount you're doing or do some strides, you know, maybe incorporate some strides, but you may, but you just have to be careful.
• 1:12:19
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know how to I think track Tuesday can still be okay.
• 1:12:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I think when we're going really, really fast or we're trying to train and and and really push the pace, and and that's where things are risky.
• 1:12:30
  SPEAKER_02: So we just don't want to overdo it and we don't want to maybe do it too um tracked, you know, Thursday and Tuesday, or you know what I mean?
• 1:12:39
  SPEAKER_02: So that's I I think it's still important.
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I just think we need to be careful about how we go about it and um don't push yourself beyond your limit.
• 1:12:50
  SPEAKER_02: You know, don't try to keep up with the 30-year-old doing the 200s, and you know what I mean?
• 1:12:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'm more inclined to rather than prescribe like track work.
• 1:12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm more inclined to prescribe faster, faster pace stuff within like a normal run.
• 1:13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um for some reason, I don't I don't know what it is, but it's that my experience with being on a track, it just says, Oh, I'm going all out.
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_00: To me, it's just like the environment of of the big oval, and it's just like, oh, this is like Olympic kind of stuff.
• 1:13:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm just supposed to sprint and go as hard as I can for for the distance that I need to go, rather than using the time like during a normal run, where say, okay, we're gonna do a 10-minute of of easy warm-up, and then we're going to do some some fart lick style.
• 1:13:40
  SPEAKER_00: So let's go, let's go two minutes at at a zone two, then we're gonna do uh three minutes at zone three, two minutes at zone four, and then back down to two.
• 1:13:51
  SPEAKER_00: So it you're changing the cadence and you're changing the stride, and you are getting that faster turnover, but it's controlled.
• 1:13:59
  SPEAKER_02: If you I feel like if you are that type of person that's like, I'm on the track, I gotta like just go all out, like and you can't control that, like maybe that is a danger.
• 1:14:09
  SPEAKER_02: But I think like the track, I just think it's a nice, soft, like it's a springy surface.
• 1:14:14
  SPEAKER_02: It isn't oval, so you know, if you keep going around the same circle all the time, I I try to switch it up sometimes.
• 1:14:21
  SPEAKER_02: If I'm not there with other people, I'll just go the other opposite direction and and um feels a little awkward, but I'll do that just to kind of even it out.
• 1:14:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I usually have a prescribed effort that I'm doing.
• 1:14:34
  SPEAKER_02: So the 200s were at like mile pace, um, although I might have pushed those a little harder than I should have.
• 1:14:41
  SPEAKER_02: So I I do feel like sometimes when it comes to speed, I do tend to want to, but I love running fast.
• 1:14:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I think like a lot of times it's like 400s at a certain pace.
• 1:14:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so this is where maybe paying a little bit of attention to your pace so you don't overdo it is important.
• 1:14:57
  SPEAKER_02: But typically it's like done in that way, and it's just a nice flash, flat, kind of bouncy surface, and it's it's measured.
• 1:15:04
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, if you're trying to hit a certain pace or a certain split, it can be really helpful to be like, okay, I want you to hit 5k pace for 800 meters, and you kind of it's not like your watch telling you you're at half a mile on a run, and you know it could be a little bit off, that's pretty spot on, right?
• 1:15:21
  SPEAKER_02: Because it's a measured distance.
• 1:15:23
  SPEAKER_02: So I think it can be really beneficial, and I think it can still be beneficial for older athletes.
• 1:15:28
  SPEAKER_02: I think we just have to be a little bit careful when it comes to like the the really high-end speed sessions where you are going like all out, um, to just not overdo it and just keep it um, you know, maybe once a week if you're gonna go do 200s and just rip it, you know.
• 1:15:48
  SPEAKER_02: But it unless you really have some sort of weird relationship with the track where you just can't slow yourself down and you're just gonna go as fast as possible, and you just that might be dangerous.
• 1:15:58
  SPEAKER_02: But I think the track is a perfectly fine thing to use.
• 1:16:01
  SPEAKER_02: I just don't think I would recommend it every day, and I don't think I'd recommend it more than once a week.
• 1:16:06
  SPEAKER_02: But um, yeah, I think it can be a tool, but it's a good thing.
• 1:16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because the curiosity, yeah.
• 1:16:11
  SPEAKER_00: The curiosity that I have is that for for masters athletes, we know that there is declining strength.
• 1:16:18
  SPEAKER_00: We know that there is some loss of muscle.
• 1:16:21
  SPEAKER_00: So do they have the the strength that is needed to support that kind of training is my concern.
• 1:16:28
  SPEAKER_02: That's why I think when the strength is important, but I think you still have if I think you can still have the strength to support that if you're doing strength training.
• 1:16:36
  SPEAKER_02: Again, your pace is probably gonna be slower as you age, just naturally, anyways.
• 1:16:42
  SPEAKER_02: But um, I don't think I would not recommend speed work to maybe if someone was in their like really old, like in their 80s, I might be like, their speed work is gonna look a little different, maybe, but it's like for someone in their 40s and 50s, like absolutely I think speed work's important.
• 1:16:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's just um we have to be a little bit, I think, more cautious with it, not overdoing it.
• 1:17:06
  SPEAKER_02: And um, I think that's where like just all throughout the year doing things like strides and um that's why I like hill sprints so much because or any kind of speed work uphill, because the the um pounding, the the the impact on your legs is less as you're going uphill, so you're not getting that same maybe level of risk.
• 1:17:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so something I recommend often to athletes and I try to do myself when I'm being good is to do once a week at least of like some hill sprints or um and I try to incorporate strides at least once a week when I can, if I'm not, especially if I'm not doing speed work um all year long, so that when I do get into my speed work stuff, I'm not like putting myself at risk like biomechanically or because my legs aren't used to it or something.
• 1:17:52
  SPEAKER_02: So I do think so.
• 1:17:54
  SPEAKER_02: But if you're risk if it's some people may just be at more risk, so there may be certain individuals that you wouldn't, but I still think it's I think it's super important.
• 1:18:03
  SPEAKER_02: I think I was listening to something, I'd have to try to remember where it was, but it was like the sprint coach.
• 1:18:09
  SPEAKER_02: So he was a sprint coach, McMillan, something McMillan.
• 1:18:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but it wasn't the Mc the running coach McMillan.
• 1:18:16
  SPEAKER_02: It was another famous speed coach, and he was saying, um, not only doing speed, but still kind of incorporating like like this is gonna sound silly, but there's a lot of like truth to it, just like skipping and things that we don't do anymore, and jumping and skipping and things like that are like so important, and that helps if you're doing that, then you you're more easily able to incorporate the speed because you're sort of doing things that kind of help your body be able to have the movement, even to to be able to go out and do like a speed session.
• 1:18:46
  SPEAKER_02: So, like then you know, maybe you go to the track instead of jumping right into your speed session, you warm up a little bit and then you do some A skips, B skips.
• 1:18:55
  SPEAKER_02: Or I just one time just went and skipped the whole way around the oval.
• 1:18:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's like somebody must have thought I was a little nutty, and you know what I mean?
• 1:19:02
  SPEAKER_02: But I was like, actually, this is kind of fun, you know.
• 1:19:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but that type, those types of things maybe would be worth incorporating, you know, to kind of get your body ready for a sprint uh or a speed session so that you can actually warm up.
• 1:19:17
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, I need to do more skipping.
• 1:19:18
  SPEAKER_02: I just I just thought of this.
• 1:19:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh, that's probably it sounds like fun.
• 1:19:22
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds child, like a like a child.
• 1:19:24
  SPEAKER_02: I know, and sometimes like I think if we can just get back a little bit as we age, I think this is hard.
• 1:19:30
  SPEAKER_02: This is like maybe this will be the last thing we say, but I think it's hard.
• 1:19:34
  SPEAKER_02: I think we get so serious sometimes.
• 1:19:37
  SPEAKER_02: And we're I'm trying to get my friend, or um, he's a friend and he's a PT.
• 1:19:43
  SPEAKER_02: He said he would come on the podcast, so just I just think there's a little bit of back and forth trying to figure out when.
• 1:19:48
  SPEAKER_02: And he had a really interesting talk about the right brain, left brain, and how that relates to running.
• 1:19:54
  SPEAKER_02: And it was just kind of like it made me really think like getting curious, like having how can we have fun with the sport?
• 1:20:00
  SPEAKER_02: Because I think when we get too serious and too into the metrics and too into the this and that, you know, it we start to lose the fun in it.
• 1:20:07
  SPEAKER_02: And that's sometimes when injuries prop, you know, become an issue.
• 1:20:11
  SPEAKER_02: So, how as masters athletes can we incorporate fun, like make it like bring the joy back into it a little bit?
• 1:20:19
  SPEAKER_02: So the whole reason we probably started doing it to begin with, does that mean going for a run without a watch on at all and just looking at the butterflies going by or the birds or stopping to take a picture of something cool?
• 1:20:31
  SPEAKER_02: Or does that mean, you know, yeah, skipping down the road and just kind of finding some joy, you know, out of those movements that we probably don't do much anymore?
• 1:20:40
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't know.
• 1:20:41
  SPEAKER_02: I think I would kind of leave it maybe like encourage people to think about that too, is the the whole reason we even got into this sport.
• 1:20:51
  SPEAKER_02: How do we bring that that joy and what makes you what about this sport makes you truly happy, like when you're out running or doing it?
• 1:20:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um and um yeah.
• 1:21:01
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, well I think what Craig will have to say, I'm not gonna talk much about it because I want him to, but it was very interesting.
• 1:21:08
  SPEAKER_02: I think people will find it fascinating.
• 1:21:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a that's a great way to that's a great way to to end the episode.
• 1:21:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I th I think that does it for us today.
• 1:21:18
  SPEAKER_00: Do I do want to tease a future episode?
• 1:21:20
  SPEAKER_00: I I can't guarantee that it's going to be the very next episode that we release, but I do want to talk about the mental side of Masters athletes because sometimes accepting the cards that we've been dealt, whether that be injuries that are just persistent and just really never go away, so you have to manage them, or accepting the degradation in performance as you get older, is mentally and emotionally really hard to accept.
• 1:21:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so I do want to kind of dive into that um topic a little bit more because I I I I I think it's just fascinating.
• 1:21:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think it's important.
• 1:21:57
  SPEAKER_00: All right, I think that does it for us today.
• 1:21:59
  SPEAKER_00: So this has been episode 114 of the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast, where we talked about uh aging as endurance athletes and how do how does the training change?
• 1:22:11
  SPEAKER_00: What are the things that we have to consider?
• 1:22:13
  SPEAKER_00: Things that used to work may not work so much anymore, or new things that we have to start doing that we never did before.
• 1:22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and then the discussion on on body composition.
• 1:22:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think all of these things just tie in together and is something that we're all going to have to face.
• 1:22:30
  SPEAKER_00: We're all at some point in time going to become a master's athlete unless you just stop being an athlete in general.
• 1:22:37
  SPEAKER_00: But this is something that that is inevitable for for all of us, and so it's good to kind of get ahead of it or give you some context if you're already in the midst of it.
• 1:22:47
  SPEAKER_00: So hopefully this series has been helpful to you.
• 1:22:50
  SPEAKER_00: I do know that uh I want to say uh if this episode and this series has has resonated with you, or if you know that there is somebody else who might be uh helped by this episode, we hope that you will share it.
• 1:23:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh just send them send them the link to the episode or leave a comment and a review.
• 1:23:10
  SPEAKER_00: Those are so incredibly helpful uh in order to broaden the the reach of the podcast and increase the exposure.
• 1:23:19
  SPEAKER_00: We don't uh monetize the podcast, so we don't have sponsors and we don't have ads.
• 1:23:24
  SPEAKER_00: So the growth of this endeavor, this growth of the podcast comes from you.
• 1:23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and we are eternally grateful for any kind of comment and review that that you guys are willing to uh offer up.
• 1:23:38
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much for that.
• 1:23:40
  SPEAKER_00: We also have the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast Group.
• 1:23:43
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a closed group that's on Facebook.
• 1:23:45
  SPEAKER_00: All you have to do is go in and answer one simple question and agree to the group rules, and it lets you right on in.
• 1:23:50
  SPEAKER_00: We created this group on on from episode one, and we really just wanted to build a community that we could interact with and that others that listen to the podcast can interact with each other.
• 1:24:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so I hope that you will go ahead and consider uh signing up into the group and let's grow the community, let's uh carry on the conversation uh offline.
• 1:24:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that would be incredibly helpful.
• 1:24:16
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you for that.
• 1:24:17
  SPEAKER_00: We are both uh active ath uh athletes as well as coaches, so we're bringing on athletes onto our rosters.
• 1:24:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you are interested in coaching, uh if you uh just want a different approach and but you don't know how to implement it, you're tired of trying to find workouts uh to do that are uh reasonable for you and your phase of your journey.
• 1:24:40
  SPEAKER_00: We hope that you'll consider one of us as your coach.
• 1:24:43
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're interested in run coaching or dietetics for any sport, you can reach out to Coach Katie at fuel the number two run.com.
• 1:24:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if you're interested in multi sport uh coaching or single sport, I do both.
• 1:24:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you can co you can reach out to me, Coach Justin at tabularasseracing.com.
• 1:25:04
  SPEAKER_00: Both of our websites webs uh websites have a plethora of of additional content, videos, blog articles, all kinds of other stuff.
• 1:25:12
  SPEAKER_00: So you can check out our coaching philosophy and reach out to us, and we'd love to carry on a conversation with you.
• 1:25:18
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you for that.
• 1:25:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think that does it for us today.
• 1:25:22
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you guys so much for for joining us in episode 114 in our series of aging as an endurance athlete.
• 1:25:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, thank you for the support you continue to show, and we will talk to you all again next time.
• 1:25:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I've been your host, Coach Justin, along with Coach Katie, and we'll see you next time.
• 1:25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Bye-bye.
• 1:25:39
  SPEAKER_02: Bye.
• 1:25:49
  SPEAKER_00: That wraps up today's episode of the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast.
• 1:25:53
  SPEAKER_00: Endurance sports have a way of teaching us patience, humility, and resilience, lessons that carry far beyond the workout.
• 1:26:02
  SPEAKER_00: Progress in endurance sports doesn't come from shortcuts, it comes from consistency, discipline, and doing the work when it's not glamorous.
• 1:26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Wherever you are on your endurance journey, keep trusting the process and honoring the work you put in each day.
• 1:26:17
  SPEAKER_00: If today's episode resonated, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone to help on their endurance journey.
• 1:26:25
  SPEAKER_00: Don't forget to join the conversation on our social sites to help build and foster a community where we all learn and support one another.
• 1:26:32
  SPEAKER_00: We'll be back with more stories and insights from Coach Justin and Katie.
• 1:26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Until then, visit the podcast website at the endurance athlete journey.buzzsprout.com for more episodes from the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast.
• 1:26:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you have questions or comments about the podcast, feel free to send us an email at the endurance athlete journey at gmail.com.
• 1:26:56
  SPEAKER_00: For all things coaching, visit Coach Katie at fuel the number two run dot com and Coach Justin at tabula rasteracing.com.
• 1:27:06
  SPEAKER_00: Again, thank you for listening to the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast and remember to find joy in the journey.