What should the focus of each decade be if you plan on running at your best for your whole life. It’s totally possible to continue to run well into your golden years. The problem that people run into is that they don’t know how or when to transition their training to adapt to the aging process.
Building Patterns & Chronic Load
You can get away with a lot of things in your twenties that you can’t later in life. This is the time where patterns are formed, good or bad. If you run with poor mechanics in your 20s and 30s you may not even notice, because you recover so easily. But, as you get older these bad patterns can come back to haunt you, and they’ll be much harder to change later on. You should spend your early running career cementing the patterns that you want to be able to use through the rest of your life.
<aside> <img src="/icons/bookmark_yellow.svg" alt="/icons/bookmark_yellow.svg" width="40px" /> …bad patterns will come back to haunt you, […] You should spend your early running career cementing the patterns that you want to be able to use through the rest of your life.
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In addition it will be easier to accumulate lifetime mileage and speed in your 20s and 30s. Chronic load is a huge predictor of injury resilience. That means that the more consistently you can put in miles over a long period of time, the more injury resilient you become. On the other hand, acute load increases are a primary predictor for injury risk. In other words, doubling your milage in one week will make you more prone to injuries. However, doubling your milage over a year or two of consistent week after week increases, may make you less prone to injuries. It sounds pretty obvious when I say it like that.
Your muscle plasticity, their ability to change and grow, is at its highest during this period. So, in addition to consistent running, consistent strength training will benefit you. Developing strength and a little bit of muscle mass will make it that much easier to gain and maintain later in life when it becomes much more important. Set yourself up for long term success by building good patterns!
Muscle Mass and Recovery
If you did everything right in your 20s and 30s you're probably still running in your 40s and 50s. At this point, there are a few factors that can make all the difference in maintaining your performances through your 40s and 50s. Nutrition and Sleep become important recovery tools for maintaining performance.
<aside> <img src="/icons/bookmark_yellow.svg" alt="/icons/bookmark_yellow.svg" width="40px" /> …you’ll start to gradually lose muscle mass if you aren’t careful. It’s part of the natural aging process, but can be devastating to your running.
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Your training will change slightly as you age as well. More recovery time between quality workouts and some new things to focus on. In your 40s you’ll start to gradually lose muscle mass if you aren’t careful. It’s part of the natural aging process, but can be devastating to your running. If strength training felt like bonus points in your 20s and 30s, now’s the time to get serious about it.
Some studies suggest that you could lose up to 5% of your muscle mass per decade after 30. That means, by the time you’re a masters athlete you could have lost 10% of the muscle mass you had in your twenties. If you want to keep running into your 60s, you have to focus on maintaining muscle mass and increased recovery.
Mobility, Stability, and Plyometrics
I’ve trained a number of athletes in their 60s and beyond, and there are some very specific training needs for longevity. Of course, all of the consistency and patterns you built in your 20s through 50s is going to be important here. If maybe you weren’t as conscious of these aspects back in the day, it’s not too late to start.
As a baseline, I like to build programs around recovery. I program daily protocol around stability and mobility, which are hugely important for quality of life as well as maintaining your running into your 60s. These are the two most important foundations you can build before focusing on more specific training. If you need benchmarks for mobility and stability, you can take our movement improvement assessment to find out where you might have lost mobility and stability over time. If you don’t use it you lose it!
The more you age the, more resistance and strength training becomes crucial. Now, you shouldn’t go loading up a barbell if that’s something you’ve never done before. Most likely, you’ll be best served by mobility and stability work, and progressing toward more dynamic movements. If you don’t train them, you’ll lose a significant portion of your fast twitch muscle fibers as you age, so this is an area we focus closely on.
<aside> <img src="/icons/bookmark_yellow.svg" alt="/icons/bookmark_yellow.svg" width="40px" /> …The more you age, the more resistance and strength training becomes crucial. …If you don’t train them, you’ll lose a significant portion of your fast twitch muscle fibers as you age.
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A typical training schedule I’ll do with these clients includes two quality days per week. The first day will be with low rep plyometrics and max strength. The second day will start with mobility and finish with VO2 Max training. We can reduce the risk of injury on the higher intensity work by limiting the amount of mechanical loading, that means doing the VO2 Max sessions on sled pushes as opposed to track workouts. As for the plyometrics, you can limit the amount of load by just doing the explosive part of the movement, and then reseting. For example, in box jumps you would just jump on to the box, and then step down off of it, because most of the load comes in that second phase.