Masters' athletes make up a significant number of the people we coach at CycleCoach, and it’s fair to say that a few things happen as you approach your late 40’s and beyond, whether you’re a male or female athlete, and in the case of the latter, whether you’re (peri)menopausal or not.  
 
The biggest difference that older athletes start to notice is that their recovery is impaired from training that they’ve previously done. Additionally, they may note that performance gains from physiological changes are slower to occur, and for both male and female athletes there are hormonal changes. All in, if you have been training for a long period of time you may find it harder to gain fitness and maintain (or lose) weight.  
 
Recovery 
Recovery is impaired for a variety of reasons, including, but not limited to hormonal changes and ageing related changes. For many it’s a gradual change and it can feel harder to recover from intense sessions as well as endurance-based sessions. 
 
With this in mind, there are two ways to help boost your fitness. Nutrition and sleep. These are both lengthy topics to cover and we’ll go through nutrition in a later blog. However, the important aspects to consider are making sure you get sufficient sleep, which is likely to be at least 8 hours in duration, and also to ensure that you obtain sufficient protein in your diet. For most adults who take part in cycling or triathlon you’ll probably be wanting to consume somewhere between 100 and 150 grams of protein per day (specific requirements will be mentioned in a subsequent blog post).  
 
Weight maintenance 
Older athletes often find it harder to maintain (or lose weight), and this is due to several factors. Firstly, recovery can be impaired so training volume tends to decrease (and therefore less energy is burnt) and as you age there’s often a decrease in fitness (and therefore less energy is being burnt as you’re exercising at a lower power output). Additionally, there may be a decrease in muscle mass as a natural consequence of ageing, and therefore your “basal metabolic rate” will decrease. However, with the correct amount of training intensity and volume, fitness can be maintained (or increased depending on your starting point) and muscle mass can be gained into later life which will all help offset the decrease in BMR (and perhaps more importantly help prevent age related decreases in health).  
 
Intensity 
Is a crucial aspect of training, otherwise your ability to ride (or run/swim) hard (or easy) is impaired. Older athletes lose their high-end power at a faster rate than younger athletes and are slower to build it back (as recovery rears its head!). However, too much intensity will see you burning out and going backwards and can mean that you’re not at the right level when you want to be. It’s a much harder tightrope to walk compared to younger athletes. How much intensity you should include in your training will depend on the time of the year and when your goals are, but even in the off-season, some intensity should be included (with efforts that last from a few seconds to efforts that last a few minutes). Your off-season intensity should be less volume than your in-season intensity. 

 
Nutrition 
As we age our basal metabolic rate tends to decrease (as mentioned above) and we need less energy to maintain our weight. However, it’s also important to realize that protein requirements are going to remain high and (depending on your training volume) are very likely to be greater than the average person of your age (who doesn’t exercise). By upping your protein intake it’s possible that you can help your recovery and continue to gain some muscle (which is important to offset the decrease in basal metabolic rate that would otherwise occur) and maintain or lose weight.  
 
Strength training 
Is an important aspect of masters training regimes for both males and females. Not only can it help prevent or reverse age-related declines in bone mineral density (which would lead to osteoporosis) it can help keep muscles ‘firing’ into later life so your health is better maintained, and, importantly, can help increase your power output for cycling and running. As an example I've been able to add 10 W to my best FTP of the last 20 years and added ~130 W to my best ever 5-sec spring power (which I previously recorded in my 20s, around 30 years ago). 
 
A good coaching plan will cover all these aspects of training and recovery so that you can perform well for your goals. If you’d like a hand getting fit so that you’re smashing it, or not getting dropped on every hill, then please just send me a message here