Why I’m getting faster as I get older

I keep getting told that at my age I’m going to get slower, thing is, I haven’t, I’m actually getting faster.

Yup, at the age of 49 I still have the ability to rip peoples legs off in a bunch, climb fast and smash out the odd KOM (actually a few last week).

So, how am I doing this?

With specific training, focusing on my nutrition and recovery.

What I’m not doing is wasting my time riding Z2 everywhere or racing on Zwift every chance I can get. If you want to be fast you have to train smarter than that!

Being Specific Is What Keeps You Fast, Strong and Dropping Your Mates

While base aerobic training is an important foundation of your fitness you have to consider that as an older athlete you have already built a huge pool to draw from.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t include this in your training. You should, but with a mindset that it’s to maintain that reservoir.

Where you need to focus your attention is strength, power and speed training.

This is where training programs with a clear purpose win hands down over random training. It gives you the direct tools to build meaningful fitness.

The trick is putting the training modalities in to focused blocks that develop these areas and place recovery at the right times to drive the adaptions.

The bigger trick is convincing older cyclists that less volume and more intensity works! 

Protein and Carbohydrate For The Win

Protein is not just a macronutrient for building muscle. Among other things, It’s also used by the body to produce hormones repair tendons, ligaments, Increases mitochondrial capacity (by increasing aerobic enzymes) and helps create antibodies to drive a stronger immune function.

Importantly for older age athletes it protects us from age related muscle protein resistance (Sarcopenia, starts at age 30+).

Sarcopenia is now considered to be driven by aging muscles being less sensitive to lower doses of Amino Acids, AKA Protein. 

For older athletes this has important ramifications in driving lean muscle mass, mitochondrial content, reducing Delayed Onset Of Muscle Soreness and improving recovery times.

Basically we need to make sure we eat a higher protein diet that has a high quality of Essential and Branch Chain Amino Acids to stimulate muscle protein synthesis, mitochondrial health and content.

With the trend toward vegan diets, fat adaption and ketogenic diets which limits protein and its quality you could surmise these diets are not optimal for health and performance for older athletes. 

Carbohydrates For Performance and Fat Loss (Yes I said fat loss) 

Carbohydrates provide almost instant energy and are required for MAXIMAL muscle contractions.

For every liter of oxygen consumed, carbohydrates produce 5.1 calories of energy compared to fat which produces 4.7 calories of energy. That doesn’t sound like much but trust me it makes a big difference when you push hard.

The more oxygen needed to convert fats into fuel means there is an oxygen cost to the muscles and that means your Vo2 Max is affected - a factor that will affect speed and power sessions in training.

Carbohydrates are also an important macronutrient to combine with protein to drive stronger muscle protein synthesis. Protein on its own is less effective.

Carbohydrates are often demonised for being inherently fattening and unhealthy. Its utter nonsense of course!  

Calorie balance is KEY for weight maintenance not carbohydrate, protein or fat ratios.

This is why people think carbohydrates are fattening!

For every one 1g of glycogen 3 grams of water are stored alongside. When dropping carbohydrates you often seen as sudden weight loss but should be attributed to water weight loss NOT fat loss The same goes for sudden weight gain after a large carbohydrate meal.

Interestingly in over feeding studies it has been shown that protein caused little fat gain, whereas over feeding carbohydrate’s resulted in 75% - 85%  of excess energy being stored compared to 90% -95% of fat being stored as fat.  

That interesting information aside. I’ll say it simply. Calories dictate your body fatness macronutrients drive performance and recovery.

As an older athlete If you want to get the best from your performance, recover faster having higher carbohydrate and protein diet should be your focus.

Strength Training In The Gym

Cyclists don’t like to give up a ride for hitting the gym and the ones that do are often performing pointless high rep workouts.

If you want to get fast and powerful you have to get strong and that means lifting heavy shit!  

Effective lifting is 3 - 5 reps with long recovery times focusing on lifts such as squat, deadlift, framers walks, push, pull and throws.

Basically, lift heavy, get strong and you’ll start killing climbs, punch out power and have a great kick to a sign post 

Will I see my performance drop as I age?  

Let’s be realistic it’s going to happen. I don’t know when, let’s not put a limiting age to it, but one things for sure. While I have the knowledge and continue to train with purpose I will keep working at it because it’s fun to smash things up and prove people wrong. You can still be fast and powerful in your 50’s!

Over feeding Study Link:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7598063/

All my best, Simon 

Performance & Nutrition Director
2 X Winner of Gym Based PT, and founder of VPCC