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Training Considerations for Master Athletes with Joe Friel
2 Playsin 3 hours
Steve House talks with legendary coach and author Joe Friel, now 82, about the newly released second edition of Fast After 50. Friel reflects on how a serious 2014 cycling crash reshaped his own training, and explains why the book's focus shifted from encouraging older athletes to add intensity (2012) to now urging them to build a much larger aerobic base, since he's observed most masters athletes over-doing high intensity and under-doing low intensity work. The conversation covers his "5+2" and "9-day" training patterns, how strength training is periodized across a season, the concept of durability (maintaining output late in long events) and how it's trained through fatigue-then-specificity workouts, muscular/strength endurance versus durability, adapting training around perimenopause, and the two key metrics Friel prioritizes with athletes: efficiency factor (EF) in base training and heart-rate/power decoupling in build periods. The episode closes on themes of patience, lifestyle identity, coaching athletes toward self-sufficiency, and Friel's core message: build the aerobic base first.
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Transcript
Misconceptions About Speed and Aerobic Base
00:00:00
Speaker
What I usually hear is I'm really good at going slow already. want to get good at going fast. So they want to go out do fast workouts to become faster. It's hard to explain to them that that's not the way it works. You don't become faster by just doing fast workouts.
00:00:14
Speaker
You actually become slower by doing that.
00:00:25
Speaker
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00:00:42
Speaker
It's a great way to get a feel for how we train our athletes for big mountain goals. Check it out at uphillathlete.com slash let's go. uphillathlete.com slash L-E-T-S-G-O.
00:00:57
Speaker
A lot of coaching books tend to age out of usefulness within just a few years of publication, but Joe Friel's books are one of the exceptions. The Cyclist Training Bible is in its fifth edition. The Triathlete's Training Bible has trained generations athletes, many of whom never met a coach. And his book that he's been working on recently, and what we're going to be talking about today, Fast After 50, first published in 2015 and fifteen and by the time you hear this, will have just been released in its second
Joe Friel's Insights and Personal Journey
00:01:27
Speaker
edition.
00:01:27
Speaker
A second edition is, in a way, the last 10 years of Joe's homework. He's still training, still coaching, still revising his own thinking kind of in real time, like real coaches often do. And He went back as he's done before and looked honestly at what he got right, what he didn't, what the science has settled in between as as sometimes happens.
00:01:51
Speaker
And what I want our listeners to know before we start is that Joe, I think for me, is one of the few people in endurance coaching who stayed genuinely curious for an entire long and fruitful career. And he's one that has always been careful with his words, just as he is careful with his athletes. He thinks before he speaks, he cares about getting it right.
00:02:12
Speaker
He's a passionate educator, writer, and who I've learned so much from him ah through his books and and vicariously through all the work that that he's done. And I think a lot of what good endurance coaching looks like today in 2026 traces back one way or another to Joe Friel's work. Welcome, Joe, to the Updowocity Podcast.
00:02:32
Speaker
Very kind of you, Steve. I don't usually get such such flowering introductions. Very kind. Well, you should. a So how, I get to start with the obvious question. How old are you now?
00:02:45
Speaker
And you're writing 50. Yeah, I'm 82. Yeah. fifty yeah i'm eighty two You're 82 and you're just published a second edition of fast after 50. What has changed for you personally with how you, i don't know if we call it at our, you know, I'm not 82, but I'm, I'm 55. What is, training I don't call, it almost don't call it training anymore.
00:03:07
Speaker
ah what is, what is the difference between what you, how you train now and how you trained 2015? in twenty fifteen um Well, but we talking about 10 plus years ago, um things have really changed dramatically. it's so It's really hard to draw a line and say, you know, when did this thing happen because these things have been going on for decades.
00:03:30
Speaker
changing a little bit over the many, many, many years. So it's, they're not like sudden changes that take place, who but there have been some sudden changes. A couple of them if you go back to 20, actually this book was written in 2012. Okay. And it hit the first, the first edition came out in 2013. Um,
00:03:50
Speaker
Then they published a second second version or second publishing, which was 2015. So it's been it's been around for a while. And I suppose the thing that really marks my life during that period of time was a crash I had on my bike. And in 2013, January 24th, 2014, actually,
00:04:12
Speaker
um i am had a crash which was life changing And ah i haven't raced since then. I still train.
Base Training's Role in Fitness
00:04:20
Speaker
i i don't think of training as much anymore as I do it' just lifestyle stuff.
00:04:24
Speaker
But that that dramatically changed um things I could do and could not do. i broke seven bones, concussion, blood clots in both legs. was in the ICU for six days.
00:04:37
Speaker
um I had more problems. Frozen shoulder lasted for nine months. and It was just a horrendous experience. So that one thing changed my life dramatically.
00:04:48
Speaker
Other than that, things have been rather calm in my life going back when I was, ah you know, a kid, when I was teenager. So, um, um, really it's been, it's been a long haul, but, um, it's all been a lot of fun for me anyway.
00:05:06
Speaker
So what have you learned from being your own subject for the last 10 plus years? Yeah, I've learned a lot. um You know, I've learned I'm slower to adapt to training.
00:05:20
Speaker
I recall when I was much younger, could feel the changes coming about in my training. i I'd go for a workout or a run or a bike or a swim or whatever it may be. And if I'd been through ah a week or so of focused training, could tell it, I could feel it.
00:05:36
Speaker
That doesn't happen anymore. I never have any sensations that, yeah, i'm I'm experiencing changes right now that and indicate that I'm adapting to the fit to the to the training. And that's probably because I don't really do things or that are as, as, uh, uh,
00:05:56
Speaker
extreme anymore who not I've calmed down in my training, which I think is something we all do as we get older, is I spend a lot more time doing base training than I did before and a lot less time doing high intensity training, which I did a lot So a lot of things have changed. You know, we we can go down this long, long list.
00:06:17
Speaker
Body weight has changed. um You know, more more body fat, that's which has become an issue for me, just trying to make sure I keep it under control, which I've done pretty well so far, but it's no way but ah what I was 20, 30 years ago as far as body weight.
00:06:35
Speaker
ah Power has changed. You know, my numbers are not what they used to be. Sure. ah Range of motion has changed. Flexibility has changed. Balance has changed.
00:06:46
Speaker
My life, everything is, everything changes. It's amazing when you get to be this age, how so many things in your life are different than they were 20 years ago. look back at those as thinking those are, you know, at the time I thought of an old guy when I was 20 years ago.
00:07:03
Speaker
60 years old. Now I look back at it and say, man, all the things I could do back then that I can't do now, there's been a gigantic change take place in these last 20 years. so So the list of things that have gone on in my churning over the over the decades are are gigantic, quite honestly. It's hard to explain all them. I'm not going through this whole hour of all the problems issued. What was the moment when you decided that this particular book needed another edition?
00:07:30
Speaker
Yeah. um Well, i was i was i I've been around aging athletes for a long time. 50 plus athletes. i'm I'm around them almost daily.
00:07:42
Speaker
um Sometimes I train with them. I talk with them frequently. I've coached them. And one thing I noticed that was taking place that was different from when I first wrote this book, back in 2012, what I saw was lots and lots of older athletes doing long, slow distance training. That was their their focus was long, slow distance.
00:08:02
Speaker
So I wrote that book. sort try to promote the idea they need to do some high-intensity training also to maintain this this um this broader range of what we call fitness.
00:08:14
Speaker
who Now I'm seeing just the opposite. In the last several years, what I've seen is athletes are doing lots more high-intensity, including the older athletes, 50-plus. And there's too many them doing – there are many athletes who are doing way too much high-intensity and not nearly enough low-intensity.
00:08:31
Speaker
So this book is more focused on that way of looking at training as opposed to what I did with the original book back in 2012. and with And that was just sort of a slow dawning of like observation of noticing what people were talking about and how they were showing up to to train or work out or what the questions they're asking you.
00:08:53
Speaker
Yes, that's exactly right. um You know, I i've i often train with athletes who are older athletes, and I get feedback from them on how their training is going and what they're doing and so forth. And I get email questions from clients all the time.
00:09:11
Speaker
People contact me who I don't know anything at all about, who has questions also. And all this stuff is leading me in the same direction. If they were doing way too much high intensity and putting too much too much emphasis on it and were not spending enough time working on their low intensity training, their base training, yeah that was that was lacking. So this book became very highly focused on on that topic.
00:09:35
Speaker
Yeah. And youre so you're making the case for older athletes to do sufficient or more, whatever however we want to frame that, base training. and Much more base churning.
00:09:47
Speaker
um i think what comes but it comes down to is people don't really grasp the importance of base churning, what all it does for them physiologically. Yes. Well, I always get the same same thing when I say to somebody, you know, you'd be putting more long, slow distance.
00:10:04
Speaker
What I usually hear is I'm really good at going slow already. i'm I want get good at going fast. So they want to go out and do fast workouts to become faster. It's hard to explain to them that that's not the way it works. You don't become fast but just by doing fast workouts.
00:10:19
Speaker
You actually become slower by doing that. You've got to build this aerobic base as your platform to put all this high-intensity training on top of. So ah that's become kind of my mantra for the last though three or four years, I guess. I find myself talking more about that subject and than probably any other subject I deal with
Holistic Approach to Athlete Lifestyle
00:10:39
Speaker
with athletes. So that became the focus of the book also.
00:10:43
Speaker
I'm curious what your go-to analogy or teaching the paradigm are. How do you communicate that? you know i'm I'm in the same boat. like This is you know going back to training for the new Alpinism, which is 15 years old, and that was the same thing. The whole premise of that book was, in in many ways, talking about what you're just talking about.
00:11:09
Speaker
what is What is the story you tell? ah Do you tell it through physiology? you tell it through, yeah, what you what butcher what's your pitch? My usual way of explaining this is to start with an athlete, an example, as I did in the book.
00:11:24
Speaker
Okay. I yeah take examples of athletes and how they train, you know, age-wise, world-class athletes. ah people who own world's records in their age groups and what they do in training.
00:11:39
Speaker
They just don't go out and hammer themselves every day. They do lots of base training. They build this aerobic base. So i tried to I try to start off by using examples. here Here are people who are very much like you in some ways, age-wise, very much like you, and here's how they train.
00:11:56
Speaker
this is This is what makes them as good as they are. or up Then I go back. If that doesn't get me far enough, and I go to physiology. This is what happens to your physiology um when you do a lot of base-type training, lower-intestine training. What happens?
00:12:13
Speaker
And ah sometimes you just cannot make your point. Sometimes people are just so resistant to this concept that there's no use even trying. You kind of give up after a while. But for the most part, I can i can get people to understand that it's important.
00:12:25
Speaker
The question is, will they continue after've after they've tried it for a few days? They might say, okay, Joe said, well, go out and do some you know some long, easy workouts to build this aerobic base.
00:12:38
Speaker
And they do that for three or four days, and they say, oh, I'm bored, so I need to get some high intensity in. So they start doing high intensity. Or they say, I don't have time. You know, I'm saying, i'm david you know, you need to put in a ah huge chunk of your time.
00:12:51
Speaker
to working on your base fitness. yeah And what they'd say is, well, I've only got four days a week I can train. I can only train for an hour to an hour and a half a day. so what does that mean? What do I do? Do I just do four days of an hour and a half a day, long, slow distance all the time?
00:13:07
Speaker
Never do high intensity? Or, you know, how do I balance this out? And so they start bringing up all their issues, which time is usually the most common issue, Let's go ahead talk about that with them. what you know How can we take advantage of your situation to make you more fit by getting it more long, slow distance, more will low intensity?
00:13:26
Speaker
u You know, you think after you'd written enough books, Joe, that they would but actually just take you for your word, right? It doesn't work that easily. ah Is there some areas where You know, as as we've talked about this on this podcast a lot where the the practice of training and coaching and racing typically leads the science. We we we figure out through just sort of iteration
00:13:57
Speaker
um at at scale what worked. And like you said, we've we've we've pretty much exhausted all the different different ways that you can you can train for endurance and we've all landed in the same place. as This is the the way to you know be graded as an endurance athlete. Yeah.
00:14:17
Speaker
And then the science comes around and starts to explain more more and more pieces of it. Is there anything in that piece part of the story that has moved since you wrote the first version of this book 2012? Well, things are always changing, fish but especially when it comes to training.
00:14:35
Speaker
um You know, we can look back at things that or we were talking about back then, some of those days things remain constant, like world-be-capacitate. yeah You know, we still talk about aerobic capacity the same as we did, of you know, 10, 15 years ago.
00:14:51
Speaker
those those That concept has not changed at all. that That's pretty much what we still accept. What I think has changed a little bit about this is that there's more emphasis on how you can maintain or even improve aerobic capacity with long, slow distance.
00:15:08
Speaker
Low-intensity training can improve it. doesn't just have to be high-intensity. So that's usually the the debate a topic I get involved with ah with athletes is, well, how do you improve VO2 max? But the concept itself is still there, and athletes and pretty much understand what it's all about as far as how do we measure it and what does it mean to have a high VO2 max and what happens to it over time, what happens to it as we age.
00:15:32
Speaker
um That's pretty much understood. But there are new things coming around which are always kind of exciting. of Right now, one of the biggest topics is durability. yeah um How can we continue to put out at ah at a relatively high output very, very late in an athletic event?
00:15:50
Speaker
You know like at two or three hours into an event, how can you still be ah putting out at very high at a high intensity, high effort? And that's a very interesting topic, which I'm reading a lot about right now because there's new stuff coming out on it every few months or something new that comes out and in the research. And it's just a fascinating topic.
00:16:11
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. That has been really interesting. And it seems like it's been becoming more and more frequent. The last, I don't know, I think I first noticed it only a year or so ago. And now it seems like it's just like, it's just on it the words on everybody's lips these days. It is. Yeah.
00:16:27
Speaker
What, you know, for a lot of our athletes are running a race to win. frankly, most of us are. so How do you think about that? how What is the training work actually for?
00:16:43
Speaker
Yeah, the training is to make us a better person, a better athlete and a better person. um You know, it's it's a lifestyle is what it is. And the older you become, the more important that that idea also becomes.
00:16:56
Speaker
When you're young, um we tend to see training and sport as being a part of our lifestyle, but it's not entirely our lifestyle.
00:17:07
Speaker
As we get older, they begin to they they merge more and they become one. you know i I'm not doing this. I'm not going out and riding my bike.
00:17:18
Speaker
on a daily basis, just so I can do a race. I'm doing this because this is what I do for my, this is my life. This is what I do. It's part of, it's part of being a person is to, is to move.
00:17:29
Speaker
I like to do that. And my wife and I, we go for, you know, an hour or more walk every morning. It's the same thing. It's not, it's not exercise. it's not a workout. It's just life.
00:17:41
Speaker
That's what I do. And there um I think that's, I like to see athletes take more of that kind of way of seeing the world. It's a lifestyle matter. It's not strictly a ah ah competition matter. It's not or just being able to win races or place well or i have a good a good performance.
00:18:00
Speaker
It's also just who I am. And this is what I but what i enjoy doing. And because of that, it's it's it's actually very healthy for us. It's very good for our not only for our lifespan, but also for our health span.
00:18:13
Speaker
Right. How long we can we can remain healthy into our um older years. Yeah, right.
Exercise as a Family and Community Influence
00:18:20
Speaker
You know, and what everything you're saying touches on identity, too. Like it's, you know, like you said, it's it's how you are as as a person and how you show up. It's who who you're who you spend time with, which actually is who you become your friends or are your friends.
00:18:37
Speaker
It's what's on your calendar. Yeah. And also it turns out to trickle down to your physiology and what your physiology looks like as well. So it's it's it's quite the vertically integrated ah way of looking at it. I like that a lot.
00:18:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah and and I think it's it's also good for for those who are younger to to be able to put it to to give a yeah an example of how life should be lived as we get older.
00:19:04
Speaker
yeah um we're We're no longer teenagers, you know. We may work out like teenagers do, at least in terms of our our enthusiasm about it. We're not not teenagers anymore.
00:19:17
Speaker
um But there's we can see this this change that takes place in life. And how important that is to our family, our children. You know being a good example for your children of of how to live your life is one of the most important things you can do.
00:19:34
Speaker
yeah And extra exercise is part of that. yeah Children who grew up in ah in a family where the the parents are very who who work out a lot as a part of their lifestyle, exercise, if you want to call it that, um makes the children think in terms of the same sort of thing for them. for for them yeah You know, this this is what people do. is where the way the child sees it. My parents go out and they do a run every morning or a bike ride or a swim or whatever it may be.
00:20:01
Speaker
They do something every day like that. That's just what people do. So they grow up with an idea that this is what being a human means is movement. um And a lot of families don't have that.
00:20:14
Speaker
yeah I didn't grow up with that at all. My my parents were from a different age group altogether, you know, from a different way of seeing the world from back in the 1920s, And they had no, there was no way they were ever going to do anything i had to do with with exercise or even just movement.
00:20:33
Speaker
um they tended to avoid any kind of thing at all like that. And it kind of showed up in their lives, how their later lives became because of that way of seeing the world.
00:20:44
Speaker
So this there's a lot we can do is as parents, as ah examples for anybody really in our in our community, people we know about how to live live a life which is ah meaningful and been beneficial.
00:21:01
Speaker
And this is one way of doing that.
Autonomy and Self-Coaching for Athletes
00:21:03
Speaker
This is what we all should be doing. Yeah. What do you say to that listener, to that an athlete who just had their first, look, I can't keep up anymore moment?
00:21:18
Speaker
How do you talk them through that? What's the what's the right reframe for that person? Well, the starting place is to find out why. Maybe there may be a kind of reason why they can't keep up. You know, that's not really has to do with fitness, perhaps. Maybe it has something to do with the lifestyle.
00:21:33
Speaker
You know, you getting enough sleep? What's nutrition like? have you had any Are you injured? um is there yeah I coached one guy many, many years ago.
00:21:45
Speaker
who's, he wanted to do marathon. That was his focus. He wanted to do a marathon and his wife thought it was silly. um And she would give him a hard time every time he talked about running.
00:21:57
Speaker
So he went wound up changing his lifestyle. What he would do is he would get up very early on a Sunday morning, like at 4 o'clock in the morning before she woke up, and go out and get his run in.
00:22:07
Speaker
So he'd come back and spend the morning with her in a normal, what she saw as being a normal way of living. And that, for me, was like really eye-opening that there are people out there who are who can make it really difficult for you to be um focused on on what you're trying to do, which is which is a part of who you are.
00:22:24
Speaker
This guy, as much as he wanted to do as well, his primary focus was trying to qualify for Boston. He did not qualify. and I think the reason why is because he just did not have enough support.
00:22:37
Speaker
His wife was not supportive of him. And that really held him back. it's And it wasn't physiologically holding him back. It was psychologically holding him back. oh And then and that's that's a part of you know of having a good life is making sure you're not only is your your body ah coming into shape, but also your mind is coming into shape. Your way of seeing the world is coming into shape.
00:23:02
Speaker
And I think that's very, very important for us, for all of us as we age up is ah is to make sure we're doing things that that wind up but making us ah model models for for other people.
00:23:12
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I think that, you know, this harkens to so many conversations we have as a coaching team about coaching the whole athlete, which is exactly what you're talking about. Like what, what, not just what is your training volume or your intensity distribution, but what is your sleep like? What is your family support like? That's, that can be a ah huge one. Yeah, absolutely. And are you enjoying it? Are you enjoying doing this? You know, if you're not enjoying it, there's something wrong we need to figure out. If you are enjoying great. You know,
00:23:42
Speaker
kind of spread the word yeah i think that joy is an interesting concept i've thought about that quite a bit in terms of an athlete's training week you know and how how to as a coach myself how to include joy in the athlete's week like do and how is that a Is that especially with certain athletes? Maybe there's some that are so focused on being the best at what they're doing. They don't, that's, that's, they don't, they almost don't want that. But for a lot of athlete athletes, i I feel like that's something important.
Training Patterns and Strength Integration
00:24:21
Speaker
Is that something you feel like is becomes more important with athletes over 50? Or how do you think about that idea?
00:24:28
Speaker
Yeah, I'd like to see athletes, especially those who have experience, learn how to coach themselves. I think that's important. And because of that, they become not only better athletes, but better people.
00:24:40
Speaker
Because then they can help other people. I know one coach who's got an interesting way of coaching. What he does, he doesn't lay out a turning plan for the for the athlete on a weekly basis. What he does is give the athlete a list of workouts to do that week.
00:24:54
Speaker
And the athlete decides when they're going to do them. So now what what happens is the athlete has ownership of the training plan. of course, what the coach did was gives some guidelines on best ways to to manipulate training.
00:25:08
Speaker
But that's that's kind of early on. And once we've got this this athlete understanding how we can how we can balance training, let them take a part of ownership of of what they do.
00:25:19
Speaker
I've always thought that was a cool idea, what he was doing. i never i never did that. i don't really coach people on one-on-one coaching like that anymore. But if I did, i would try that with some athletes to see if they could actually coach themselves, which I think is what would be really good if they wind up in a place where an athlete can coach themselves. They're not dependent on somebody else to tell them how and when and where and why.
00:25:42
Speaker
They can do a lot of that for themselves, which takes it beyond your coaching to them becoming a better person. Yeah. That becomes the coaching, right? Is them being able to, knowing enough to be able to make all the decisions themselves. And I also get that, like, crack a smile. i have one athlete right now who's training for an old trend, actually, like 10 days. And you know, half the time he answers his own question. He knows exactly what to do or like, you know, and I'm like, yep.
00:26:11
Speaker
You know, it's like, you're, you really, you know, like, and encouraging that, like you really are getting this figured out. You're really understanding this. This is, and this is the underlying thought and this is the right way you're, you're thinking about this correctly. And I think that's, that's super, he, he's, he's about done with me, right? Like he's not going to to be much longer, but that's, that's a good progression. That's the natural way of these things. That's great. Yeah, it's kind of like graduation. agree. peterre You're kind of there as instructor, teacher, want a role model, a coach.
00:26:42
Speaker
And the athlete, because that winds up learning a lot about that not only themselves, but what training is all about. how How do you, how does somebody go about training? And ah that's one of the most valuable things we can do for for athletes as a coach.
00:26:57
Speaker
Hmm. So we you touched earlier on intensity and the amount of low-intensity, long-slow-distance-based building-type work versus higher intensity.
00:27:12
Speaker
And if we're talking about sort of the that 50-plus old age athlete, What is your kind of, I know there's probably not a one size fits all answer to this, but how do you frame that discussion when you're, once people have bought in and they're going to follow your advice, how do you talk about that and how do you have it change or do you have it change as they age?
00:27:37
Speaker
Yeah. What I tell them about is doing something I call a five plus two training pattern. um Five days a week, you train easy. and And one of those days may be a day off or even two of those days may be a day off.
00:27:52
Speaker
But five days a week are easy and only two weeks are hard a week are hard. Two days a week are hard. And those two days a week that are hard are separated by at least two days. could be three days between them.
00:28:05
Speaker
So we wind up with this pattern where it's hard, easy, easy, hard, easy, easy, easy, hard, easy, easy, hard. We keep this pattern going. And I think it it it gives the athlete some time to to recover.
00:28:19
Speaker
Uh, it takes the pressure off of them to, to, uh, do hard training, uh, at a, you know, back to back, especially. and it gives them this kind of sense of this is, ah this is a way that I can, uh, build this low, ah low intestinal training platform, this, this aerobic base that we were talking about, because now I can focus on it for at least five days a week.
00:28:43
Speaker
for And I think that's very valuable. So that's that's kind of pattern I use. once Once I've got the person who admits we can do this, that's where we go next is five plus two. Okay. it Is one of those, where does strength training play into that?
00:28:57
Speaker
Yeah, strength training is going to be built in around the schedule. So let's say the athlete is doing four days a week easy, two days a week hard, and one day a week is a day off.
00:29:09
Speaker
That's a fairly typical plan. well So and this strength training depends a bit on what time the season we're in. if it's If it's like preseason, like we're talking about but before the base period even begins,
00:29:23
Speaker
if we're talking about that period of time, which is going to be probably like October, maybe November for athletes, ah just like in terms of a calendar, um what they're going to be doing at that point is we're going to put a little more emphasis on strength training.
00:29:38
Speaker
So we're going to do some some workouts that um develop, and we're going to start developing workouts strength in a very gradual progression. so we're going to start off with low weights, high reps, ah two, three times a week.
00:29:52
Speaker
And we're gradually going to increase the loads and decrease the the reps. um And that's going to occur over this very early period of time before we even start doing serious aerobic training.
00:30:03
Speaker
The aerobic training will come later. That's going be more like a December, January sort of thing, if you just think in terms of a calendar. so we're going to start off by by building ah some base strength, and then we're going to go to the very end of that. we're going to move into something I call max strength period, where the athlete eventually is wind up doing heavier loads, and lighter, fewer reps, and that becomes the focus of the training.
00:30:30
Speaker
Everything else is kind of like minor at this time. And then we start to transition into more of the base road with more endurance training. And so we cut back on strength training. Strength training becomes less important.
00:30:41
Speaker
We go into more of a maintenance mode now. And because of this, now we can we can hold on to some of the strength that has been gained as we're building the aerobic platform for the for ah for the base.
00:30:53
Speaker
And so that becomes the next stage of this this whole idea. so we go through this process where we gradually cut back on strength training. And we gradually increase the aerobic training so we don't wind up the wind up trying to do both of those at the same time.
00:31:10
Speaker
We wind up with a the ability to have accomplished something and then maintain it as we go into more of the low-intensity type training becomes the part of the the base period.
00:31:21
Speaker
Then we go into what where I call um a um ah maintenance phase, strictly maintenance, and what I call the build period, which is the specific period. ah So now the athlete is doing very high, what lots of high intensity, lots always at least let's call it race intensity workouts.
00:31:39
Speaker
There's still only two a week. And now strength training is moving back to the to a very minor role. Now we're only just doing it like once a week. And we're using like two two sets ah for per for workout.
00:31:54
Speaker
And we're just trying to maintain strength for a matter just a few more weeks before we get into this peaking period for a couple of weeks and then do the cut the competition, the race, if you will. And then we're depending on where the athlete is in their season, we may start all all over again.
00:32:09
Speaker
go right back to the very beginning or we take some time off. At that point, everything becomes very much up in the air as far as what's what's going to happen next. Yeah, yeah. I mean, here's your just system, if you want to call it that, um you know, maps very well to, you know, kind of the uphill athlete sort of standard thing. But we also recognize, you know, as you do, like different people may need different things. But one of the things I'm hearing, and I want you to say that this is is true or false, is that
00:32:43
Speaker
It's been the one way I've thought about it with these with older athletes, including myself, is really getting them more comfortable with the idea that they can progress one capacity at a time and not to try to, you know, when we're young, we can get better at lots of, you know, we can get fitter and in multiple different sort of.
00:33:04
Speaker
aspects of our fitness concurrently. And as we as we age, it's like, no, let's work on strength and let's like put that into maintenance, let's
Adapting Training for Aging Athletes
00:33:12
Speaker
work on base. and That sounds like a little bit like what what you're talking about. Is that tracking?
00:33:18
Speaker
Exactly right. That's exactly what I'm trying to do with the athlete is take them one step at a time. We're not going to take two steps at a time. We're going to take one step at a time. make Get some accomplishments in one area like strength.
00:33:30
Speaker
before we move into trying to get one more thing added on, which is aerobic fitness, aerobic base. And then we wind up doing more ah density of training, more high intensity, which culminates with an event.
00:33:45
Speaker
So there's this long progression that we go through to get to this point. um that can be very difficult for athletes to accept. They want to get to the hard stuff right away.
00:33:57
Speaker
I had to make that point in this in this book that um patience is is part of training. You've you've got to be patient. Yes, absolutely. Yes. I think that's an important mental shift as well that's actually can be framed in the positive is i I've often talked to these people that are in their 50s, especially where they they're so crestfallen.
00:34:22
Speaker
They think that it's all over. And it's like well, no, we just have to we just have to do things a little differently now. You need to have like a little longer time frame. i be a little more patient, as you put it. We're going to work on one thing at a time. We're not going to work on two things. We're just going to...
00:34:40
Speaker
we're just going to shift some of these things and and you can still get better and you can still get faster and still have more fun and still be, you know, out there with your friends and and part of the community and doing these, these things. And yeah, like the, the personal record days might, might be over and that might be okay too. And there's other, other reasons we still do this so that I like that, that framing a lot.
00:35:02
Speaker
Yeah, very good point. You you make some good points there about but the idea of of growing as an athlete ah by doing things that in a way that it's not done before and coming to accept that we're not the same person we were 20 years ago. We're a different person now in many, many ways. And patience is a big part of that. You can't you can't be impatient when you're 55 years old. You've got to...
00:35:29
Speaker
You've got to be able to accept that things don't happen immediately anymore, that it's going to take time. Yeah, 100%. If you've been wondering whether one-on-one coaching is the right next step for your training, this is the month to find out.
00:35:43
Speaker
Sign up for coaching and receive a free 30-minute call with one of our specialists. Visit uphillathlete.com to learn more. Now, back to that show.
00:35:56
Speaker
A lot of your work has been with cyclists and triathletes and runners. And what I'm curious to know is what translates cleanly to someone in this age bracket who's training for an 8,000 meter peak or 100 kilometer trail race.
00:36:10
Speaker
Where's the, and and frankly, what doesn't what doesn't translate between your experiences with with cyclists, triathletes and runners versus what's called the mountain athletes?
00:36:22
Speaker
Okay. um Well, I've never coached a 100K athlete before. That's usually marathon is about as far as I've ever gone with athletes, with a few exceptions. I've, interestingly enough, coached – it was called endurance horse racers,
00:36:39
Speaker
one ah which is an interesting sport. And um there you're dealing with people who are going to be on on a horse or off the horse in some cases. for several hours during the event, six, seven hours.
00:36:53
Speaker
So that was an ultra event, but it's not all on their own legs. Sometimes they're on the horse's legs. They get off at various times. And ah that was an eye opener for me to think in terms of long, very long events that take multiple hours How do you train an athlete for something like that?
00:37:10
Speaker
Well, I'd never trained a runner for for an ultra run. ah The longest I've probably had trained an athlete is for Ironman distance triathlon, which in some cases were taking 15 or 16 hours.
00:37:22
Speaker
That's one guy who took almost 17 hours, which is the cutoff. And, you know, it's it's a different it's a different game. It's altogether different than coaching athletes who are doing much shorter events that can be done, you know, like 5K or 10K running event.
00:37:38
Speaker
that's That's really quite easy by comparison to trying to coach somebody for a 16-hour event or whatever the event may be. When you get you know you get beyond about, i don't know, five hours or so, it starts becoming rather long.
00:37:52
Speaker
um And that's I've never had that experience except with the horse racers, of course, with the Ironman people. Yeah. And I found it very fun to to work with them because I had to learn something new about when I first started coaching Ironman athletes.
00:38:07
Speaker
That was a whole new world for me because I'd been coaching much shorter events up until that time. Olympic distance triathlons and sprint triathlons and 5Ks and 10Ks, maybe occasional marathon.
00:38:19
Speaker
We know all these events were under four hours. And now we're talking about two or three times that many hours for a for an athlete And um ah I never really became extremely comfortable with that whole idea. it's it's still I never compete in those type of events. It's still, for me, kind of a distant concept that I have to kind of wrap my mind around every time I talk with an athlete about doing something which is going to take...
00:38:44
Speaker
15 or more hours. um I've never done that. So I don't have this experience that I can lean on to say, this is, this is what I found works because I have to rely on what I learned from the athlete about what worked, what worked and what did not work. But,
00:39:01
Speaker
I also enjoy that about coaching. I enjoy the idea of occasionally taking on something which is unusual, like horse racers, endurance horse racers. That was brand new for me. i didn't know anything at all about it, and I had to learn what the sport was all about. So that that was, for me, that was enjoyable.
00:39:18
Speaker
I coached a rower once in my life, oh and I'd never coached rowing before at all. And so I had to learn again what what you do in that sport.
00:39:29
Speaker
yeah So these things to me as a coach have been lots of fun. They're challenges ah because I didn't grow up with any of these things. I didn't ride horses. I didn't row. I didn't 15-hour events. Yeah.
00:39:42
Speaker
So I had to had to learn, which for me is is part of being a coach, I guess, is figuring out how do I do this with this type of athlete. So I find those things very intriguing, but I still don't consider myself to be anywhere near being ah somebody who knows what's going on when you start talking about ultra events.
00:40:00
Speaker
yeah The word ultra scares me. Right. had a really interesting one come through ah about 18 months ago. is There's a race out there called the Yukon 2000 where you paddle a canoe for 2,000 miles through the Yukon. Ooh.
00:40:16
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And he worked with one of our coaches and was super successful. You know, so like you could, you could take these concepts and, you know, understanding of physiology and kind of like reconstruct it for, you know, kind of deconstruct it and then reconstruct it against the new objective, which in this case was, you know, a multi-day. It's a little bit like a stage race for cycling, I would suppose, right? Because you're not carrying the weight, the weight's in the, in the boat. Mm-hmm.
00:40:47
Speaker
excuse me, ah the weights in the boat, but you're, you're, you're, and you're have to stop a certain number of hours every day and and so on. But fascinating, fascinating fit to think about.
00:40:59
Speaker
It is. That would be, that would be quite a challenge to take that on. A lot of my climbing career was spent doing things that were in that, you know,
00:41:11
Speaker
The sing longest single push event I did climb I did was 60 hours and The the typical like climbs we did where we would actually bivouac and get some kind of rest or sleep most nights was around a week, six to eight days was probably pretty, pretty typical. Um, and I used to look at things like the Tour de France or Race Across America or these kinds of things trying to find, like, again, they like, when i was trying to figure out how to coach myself and was going to all these different sources and reading, you know, peer-reviewed research and reading race accounts from people and all these different things and trying to piece it together.
00:41:58
Speaker
um so it, you know, it, it, I think that not so much of it is different from the physiology point of view, where there's a where I think things start to diverge in nutrition, fueling, recovery during during the race. And it goes to this topic of durability. You talk about like being strong after four hours, how to be strong after four days. um yeah And I think that that those concepts were were very, very, very... yeah nascent at the time, but were very relevant. Yeah, I read a book, spent some time now, read few years ago.
00:42:37
Speaker
I forgot the author's name, wish I could remember it, ah but he talks about how he decided to become go from running marathons to ultras. He wanted to qualify for UTMB um in in in France, Chamonix.
00:42:54
Speaker
And ah so he he goes through the whole story. You know, the first ultra he does and how it went and all so forth. He goes through all these events. He's trying to qualify in one year to get into UTMB.
00:43:08
Speaker
And he does it. He pulls it off. But it was it was quite an experience. But just watch this, listen to what he had to say about You know, the the events and the food and sleep and what's going on in your head and other people around you and all the the weather and all these things are happening ah through all these events. it was It was really an interesting book to read, but quite honestly, it's something I would not want to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, fair, fair.
00:43:37
Speaker
Do you have ah specific thoughts on kind of the back a little bit to intensity questions, strength training questions,
00:43:48
Speaker
With the frequent, with master's athletes, how do you adapt frequency of high, andtensity either high intensity or high strength load ah workouts with them? Do you always stick with this sort of of five, two framework? you sometimes stretch the stretch out further as we age we need longer to recover in between in between bouts of of training how do you think about that and is there a floor is there a minimum that a Masters athlete shouldn't drop below what are your thoughts there
00:44:25
Speaker
yeah Every athlete is different every athlete is unique. So it's it's hard to trot come up with a way of churning that's going to fit for most all athletes. But, you know, I stick with the 5-2 pretty much all the time, except with some athletes, what I found works better for them ah is what I call a nine-day churning week.
00:44:46
Speaker
seven, seven day week at the nine day week. And so it's, you know, it's hard, hard workout, easy, easy, hard, easy, easy, hard, easy, easy. So get nine days in that way.
00:44:57
Speaker
and then we take a few days more to to recover and we start over again. That works really well for athletes who are in need of a more frequent rest. Um, um,
00:45:09
Speaker
And it also makes it a little bit easier um to to bounce back from workouts when they always when they always know they're going to have two days after harder session, a longer session, whatever you want to call it, to recover.
00:45:25
Speaker
But the the challenge is that doesn't work it works best for people who are who are retired. Yeah. You've got an eight to five job. Yeah. And you've got to be at work at, you know, eight o'clock in the morning.
00:45:39
Speaker
And that's the same day you're supposed to do a three-hour run. ah It's not going to work out. You're just not going to be able to get a three-hour run and also make it to work on time. So it it works best for people who are retired who can have have great control over their what they do on a daily basis.
00:45:56
Speaker
But it's also very difficult for anybody to do, I've found, because it just doesn't fit in with our lifestyles. where Our lifestyles tend to revolve around seven days. But I found it works with some people.
00:46:06
Speaker
And for those people, it really works really well. they they They get by on this extremely well. But you've got to be kind of careful on who you put into that kind of a plan. Yeah. ah One of our coaches, Martin Zor, just ah did this recently last winter. He was telling our coaching group about an athlete that he had set up on a 10-day cycle instead of a 10. There was an older athlete and he just needed to sort of spread the load over a greater microcycle rather of 10 days rather than than seven. So so similar similar conclusion. you know this But I agree, the seven-day cycle
00:46:45
Speaker
ah for For almost everybody works the best just because it there's ah there's a routine to it, right? Like Monday's always the rest day or whatever it is. And Saturday's always a long day and and it stays the same. And when you change things to these other wonky cycles that don't line up with a normal calendar, it gets it gets crazy.
00:47:06
Speaker
Yeah. So how do you talk about when you mentioned durability and I wanted to dig in on that a little bit. How are you thinking about durability and specifically how is How are programming with that idea of building durability in master's athletes, particularly in mind? What are you doing differently?
Enhancing Durability and Addressing Specific Needs
00:47:29
Speaker
If anything, how are you thinking about it as a coach?
00:47:32
Speaker
Yeah, the workouts change primarily because you the the workouts are this the focus of these workouts is is longer sessions. And whatever that means for the athlete.
00:47:43
Speaker
longer Longer session for some athletes means an hour and a half. For other athletes, it means six hours. So it depends on who we're talking about here, what long means. But the idea is that we start off in the first, let's say, hour of the workout, and we're going to create some fatigue.
00:48:00
Speaker
So I may have the athlete do an hour in zone two just to create some fatigue. Or I may have the athlete burn, ah I don't know, 800 calories or 1,200 calories, depending on who the athlete is and what their performance is typically like.
00:48:21
Speaker
So we're going to create some fatigue, and then we're going to go into a phase where we're going to work on um event-specific intensity. And this is going to take place now in the and in the specific training period, the build period, I call it, not in the base period. Base period, we're just building endurance, which is the foundation for duration.
00:48:40
Speaker
If you don't have good endurance, there's really no reason to be doing and durability workouts. That's a waste of time. You've got to have good endurance first. So we get that established first. Now we're in the build period, specific training, and now we're training for an event that I want to have good.
00:48:56
Speaker
I'm training for a marathon. I want to have good, um in the last 10K, I still want to be able to run at a fairly decent pace. In the past, I've i've fallen way back in that last 10K.
00:49:10
Speaker
So we start talking about, you know, how are we going to do that? what's What's the plan we're going to come up with for that for that last 10K? How are we going to get to that point? And then we're going to replicate that in training by building fatigue and then going into race-specific workouts.
00:49:28
Speaker
That race-specific workout could be done in many different ways. could be steady state, like a marathoner might do wind up doing lots of training, lots of running in, let's say, zone three.
00:49:39
Speaker
um It could be intervals. could be like zone four for somebody who is ah doing ah a shorter event than a marathon, perhaps. It could be um could be intervals. It could be for an athlete like who's doing a cycling event, for example.
00:49:56
Speaker
We've got a long cycling event, and and we always know this is going to finish with a lot of peaks and valleys in the journey. It's not going to be a steady state. We'll do lots of intervals, like zone four, zone five intervals in the last...
00:50:10
Speaker
hour, half hour, whatever may be. So the idea is you build, first of all, you build fatigue and then you go into very specific training for what we're trying to accomplish for this work, for this particular race.
00:50:23
Speaker
But it's got to be specific. It can't be just happenstance. We need to have a plan for exactly what the athlete's going to do. Then there are all things, kind of things we can do along the way that have to do with building endurance that aren't necessarily just training.
00:50:37
Speaker
For example, there's a new study just came out recently that showed that caffeine taken the last hour before an event ends is one way to improve durability.
00:50:49
Speaker
So maybe we play around with that. Or maybe we play around with nutrition. What's going to happen if we if you've been taking in 60 grams of carbohydrate per hour entering a marathon, or it may be?
00:51:00
Speaker
What if we go to 90? What does happen as we if we do that? And that's going to make some changes also about how the types of fueling we use and and when we take it and all this kind of stuff changes.
00:51:12
Speaker
um So there's lots of things going on here. How much fluid are you taking in? This has a lot to do with your durability. If you're not you're not staying hydrated, you you don't have as much durability. So there's all these little things that all come together to make the athlete more durable.
00:51:28
Speaker
And the idea of churning is to is to mesh all of these things so that they come into their event having ah built their durability through all these various avenues.
00:51:41
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, that's, that's so right. And, you know, like as you started this, every athlete is different. And, and so you're kind of working back, but that, that all makes sense. How are you thinking about muscular endurance or strength endurance in contrast with durability?
00:51:59
Speaker
How are you defining that or how are you, how are you talking about that these days? Yeah, strength endurance is ah is a little bit different. That involves, you've built strength in the gym, for example, once you've built strength, now we need to we need to um transform it into something which is sport-specific.
00:52:18
Speaker
So, um for example, what we might do if the person is ah is a cyclist, we might wind up doing the lots of lots of high gear, um ah low low rev low low RPM pedaling to build some strength also to to make it more sport specific.
00:52:38
Speaker
We might wind up putting hills into the act and into their workouts long times. Not high, not extremely high, not like five zone sort of intensity, but more like zone four sort of intensity. Bring them to the threshold and then hold it for a long time. So we can we can find ways to do this to take the the strength that we built in the gym into strength. We can transfer over to the sports specific activity itself.
00:53:03
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And I think that that's, that all tracks so cleanly to, you know, what we talk about with uphill athlete all the time.
00:53:14
Speaker
Here's a ah slightly different question related to strength. How are you with, with the with this age group of athletes, how are you talking or how are you changing the strength prescription for perimenopausal or postmenopausal athletes?
00:53:31
Speaker
Or are you?
00:53:33
Speaker
It stays pretty much the same. huh There are some changes that may take place just because ah female at one of those times in her period just doesn't feel right.
00:53:45
Speaker
So we may need to be able to say, okay, we're going to we're going to move this back two or three days, which is quite all right. We can shift things around a little bit to make to make the attorney more um a accompanied to what their situation is at at the current time.
00:54:00
Speaker
But I don't think we need to make big changes. We don't need to like move things two or three weeks because of this what's going on. We can make small changes to to adapt and still ah get through the training and still accomplish what we're trying to accomplish. It may not be on the same day we'd like to accomplish it.
00:54:17
Speaker
But we need to think of this as being long-term anyway. It's not just a one one and done sort of thing. It's the sort of thing that's going – this doesn't take days. It takes weeks, if not months, to achieve what we're trying to achieve.
00:54:31
Speaker
So if we have to miss a workout, that's quite all right because we can make up for that later on and in training. We'll get back to it again. Or if we you need to move it back a couple of days, not a problem. We can do that.
00:54:44
Speaker
These things the athlete needs to be able to accept and say, you know, I understand. and And this will make me feel better with the training. So is it's as much probably being just being aware of the athlete's situation as it is ah trying to make gigantic changes. We're not going to make jig big changes. It's going to small changes.
Tracking Progress with Key Data Points
00:55:04
Speaker
Yeah. For female athletes through paramenopause and beyond, is there something that you're thinking about or watching for now that you wouldn't have watched for or noticed, I don't know, 10, 15 years ago?
00:55:19
Speaker
Yeah, 10, 15 years ago, we never talked about this topic. butho this was This was a a taboo topic for for a male coach to talk about with an athlete.
00:55:29
Speaker
We didn't really get involved in this discussion whatsoever. And since I don't coach full-time anymore, I don't have those conversations with anybody. So quite honestly, this is outside of my realm of expertise or experience especially.
00:55:41
Speaker
So i'd I'd be interested in learning how to go about this from your perspective as opposed to mine, because you probably deal with this much more frequently than I do. Yeah, I mean, we we do ah manage this a lot. And I think that there is just, I think one of the first things, as you pointed out, the first thing also for me as a coach, as a male coach, has been to learn to work through that feeling that it's a taboo and, you know, have amazing ah colleagues who are are women, ah female coaches, and, you know, they've been leading the the charge on that and been feeding us. There's been a lot of new,
00:56:21
Speaker
ah evidence and science, you know a lot of published peer-reviewed science has been coming out in the last years around this. And, you know, it's ah it's a deep topic. One of the ways we're trying to approach it as a coaching team, however, is we're trying to not silo that information about like, let's have a podcast just about training for, you know,
00:56:45
Speaker
postmenopausal women are trying to more like say like, hey, let's like these women are part of people that are just athletes at this stage of life that as you mentioned multiple times, it's part of our our lifestyle. it's part of our community. And it's just there as we go through life, each one of us is we go through being different people.
00:57:08
Speaker
in ah occupying different bodies in a way, being different people in some level. And it's just, just part of that. And I think it's more of of taking that, ah that frame that that you laid out earlier and just applying it.
00:57:20
Speaker
um But i I think that there's been a lot of really interesting ah information out ah in the last few years. And I think the best thing is just where we get to talk, but we're talking about it now, right? Like you said, it's on the table. And I think that's a relief for everyone. Yeah.
00:57:35
Speaker
It is, yeah. It is. I my first wrote this book, the the first edition of The Fast After 50. I wanted to include something on this topic. And i found it very difficult to talk with ah women about this subject. What can you what can you tell me about this yeah as as an athlete?
00:57:55
Speaker
What can you tell me? how What can I learn from you? And I found women very reluctant to to talk about it, which made me reluctant to ask about it. But I had ah an assistant coach who I know had just gone through menopause.
00:58:08
Speaker
And so um I asked her to write something from but that for that first edition of the book. And um she didn't really say a whole lot because she didn't really have much in in the way of any issues or problems, setbacks or matters she had to deal with because of menopause.
00:58:27
Speaker
So I didn't learn a whole lot from her, but it was like the first time I'd ever had that conversation with a woman before besides my wife, which is what's going on with with you right now and how's that affecting your life.
00:58:39
Speaker
Very interesting topic. but or I have a lot to learn there. Yeah. Yeah. i think we all do. For the masters athletes it like data and there are a few of them.
00:58:52
Speaker
What is the, what is kind of the minimum data set that, that you like to have people track that, you know, is that gives, gives the training direction?
00:59:04
Speaker
Yeah. I try to get it down to one thing. what's What's the most important thing for this workout today? What I run into is athletes who think everything is important, equally important, and they get caught in this rabbit hole of going through all this data, like in Churning Peaks. You open Churning Peaks your after your workout.
00:59:22
Speaker
And there's, you know, there's 20 or more data points from an hour and a half workout or whatever it was. There's just a lot of stuff there. And I've known athletes who want to understand all that and what it means.
00:59:36
Speaker
And they wind up, I think, going going in directions they shouldn't go. They don't need to go. They they assume things, you know, if if I change this number, I'm going to get faster.
00:59:47
Speaker
And just making bad decisions. So I try to get them understand there's one thing important every time we do a workout. Here's the thing that's important. Let's see if we can accomplish this thing today. For example, we've talked a lot here today about
01:00:03
Speaker
low intensity training. One the things we're trying to accomplish there is what I call efficiency factor, EF for short. And what that is is just a measure of pace or power, depending on your sport.
01:00:17
Speaker
divided by heart rate. And it tells us essentially what's going on with how you're how you're your heart is responding to the intensity um or how your power is responding to the intensity. But if we put them together, we get a nice number that tells us a lot about what we're accomplishing aerobically.
01:00:39
Speaker
So that's what I wanted to look at. want you to, every time you finish your workout and it's designed to be like a zone two workout, I want you to look at EF and see what that number was. And then I want you to take that number and I want you go back eight weeks prior to to the today, find a very similar workout and see what your EF was then.
01:00:58
Speaker
What we should see happen over time is this EF number ratchets up. it keeps getting higher over time as we work on your aerobic fitness. So that's the one I work work on in the base group with the athletes.
01:01:11
Speaker
um in In the build period, where we're talking about specific training, now I'm more focused with the athlete on something called um ah decoupling.
01:01:23
Speaker
um It has to do with what happens to over a period of time. It's kind of like durability, really. We're measuring durability by doing this. We're looking to see what happens to the relationship between heart rate and power early in the workout versus late in the workout.
01:01:39
Speaker
or pace and power early versus late. And we've got a number we can give the athlete for that. And what I want to see is want to see that number going up gradually over time. That means your durability is improving. That's the most important thing.
01:01:52
Speaker
There could be other things that we'll take a look at that are less important, but they're also good to pay attention to, like what's happening to your to your TSS if you're using training peaks. What's happening to your TSS um over time?
01:02:08
Speaker
is are you putting in – how high is your TSS on a on a weekly basis, on a daily basis? How high is it? We may be getting it too high. You may need to bring that down a little bit. So we're looking at that also. It's not as important as whats what the stuff they just did in the workout is.
01:02:25
Speaker
And there are a few other things like that we could talk about, but the two most important are what I call EF and decoupling. Those are the two that i'm really highly focused on. Other things are going to be interesting. i don't want to see what's going on there also, but that's not the focus of our journey. I don't want the athlete to be involved in thinking about too many things they've got to accomplish today. There's one thing we're trying to accomplish today.
01:02:47
Speaker
Here it is. Let's work on that. Yeah. Yeah. We talk a lot about aerobic threshold and just raising aerobic threshold over time, which you can sort of measure it through proxies of of these things or or directly, but same same idea. But again, like it's ah something that changes in the order of of months, not days. So, yeah.
01:03:12
Speaker
So ah I think also the thing that struck me as you were talking there is what you described is so much the beauty of having a coach because there is just this torrent of data and, you know, the two things that you just singled out were probably not...
01:03:34
Speaker
the first two things most people would say. They would have asked about HRV or time and zone or you know, a million of these, you know, CTL, you know, if we want to go into the Training Peaks language. ah But, you know, you you just like went right in and said, okay, like this is about efficiency factor. This is about building efficiency.
01:03:57
Speaker
And the way we're going to measure that as a proxy is the heart rate decoupling for the a given effort over a given time. um And I take that that's just one of the great powers superpowers of of coaches is they can just take ah take it all, get rid of all the noise and say, here, if this is the thing. like this and And it's not permanent, right? it's not a forever metric. It's like, this is what we're doing.
01:04:20
Speaker
i don't know, this week, this month, this training block, whatever it is. And this is what we should pay attention to. And I think that's really freeing and really valuable to a lot of people.
Prioritizing Low-Intensity Training
01:04:31
Speaker
Good point. And as a coach, I'm going to be looking at lots more data. Sure. I've got a hierarchy in my mind. The problem with an athlete looking at lots of data is they don't have this hierarchy.
01:04:42
Speaker
yeah They don't you fully understand what is what's the most valuable thing that came out of training today. um They tend to see everything as being important. yeah And so that's the difference between what I'm looking at and what the athlete is looking at.
01:04:57
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And how that, yeah, how that hierarchy shifts over time, right? It's, it's a, it's a, it's not a fixed hierarchy. It's, it's, it's changing as, as the athlete develops and depending on, yeah, a myriad of circumstances.
01:05:12
Speaker
So just want to, as we, as we close out, this has been a fascinating conversation. one of the questions going back to your, your new book or your there's third edition of, ah of your book,
01:05:25
Speaker
a fast after 50 book if a 50 year old picks up that new book this week and could act on only one thing in the next month what was that one thing that you would have them do Yeah, one thing is to put in more low-intensity training. You've got to build an aerobic base.
01:05:44
Speaker
that That is the key, and that's the thing I i keep pushing in this book all the way through, giving examples of athletes who are world-class aging athletes and how they do that.
01:05:55
Speaker
This is the most important point. stick it Nothing else away from the book. That would be the most important point. okay Yeah, 100%. I agree. Well, thank you, Joe. It's been really great honor to speak with you and to to have you come to share your great wisdom with the Uplathic community. sure many will appreciate it, and I certainly do. So good luck with the book launch, and if there's anything we can do to help you or get the word out, please don't hesitate to to reach out or at your disposal.
01:06:25
Speaker
Thank you very much, Steve. Enjoyed it. Thank you.
01:06:39
Speaker
Hey, real quick before you go, everything we publish, the articles, new podcast episodes, and the live webinars are announced first in our newsletter. You can elect to receive between one and three newsletters month written by myself and the coaching team. And if you want them, sign up at uphillathlete.com.
01:07:00
Speaker
Thanks for listening and we'll see you in the next one.