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Six Principles of Triathlon Training for Seniors

Terry VanderWert on November 14, 2019

Triathlon training must change as we age to reflect the changes in our bodies. The consequences of improper training can be career-ending. Following an approach that recognizes six principles of triathlon training for seniors age 50 and over will ensure strong performance.

Meanwhile, many of the questions I receive indicate that most triathlon training programs do not consider the changes that occur with aging. This post is the beginning of an effort to address age-related needs for the senior triathlete.

Introduction

Academic research has shown that decreased performance with age is not a given. Often, decreases have more to do with reduced energy, lower intensity in training, and less time spent training.

In one study, researchers measured VO₂ max, an indicator of the size of one’s athletic engine, of elite athletes of various ages. The study showed a linear decline with age for athletes from age 18 to 103. However, they did not observe a ‘cliff ‘, or abrupt change, in performance.

On the flip-side, triathlon training following the six principles outlined here will help senior triathletes continue strong and with minimal injury.

How Should Triathlon Training Change for Seniors?

Consistent exercise can slow aging. However, being consistent can be easier said than done. For some, lower energy with age makes it difficult to find the motivation for regular exercise. For others, jam-packed schedules make consistent exercise a challenge.

Also, the physiological changes that occur with age are the ingredients for more injuries. Never in our lives has the adage “working smarter, not harder” been more appropriate.

Physiological Changes with Age

King David understood what researchers today confirm – the human body is awesome. David wrote in Psalm 139:14 “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. “

Included in this wonderful design of the human body is the capability for self-repair of many types of tissue, including those of the muscles, tendons, and bones. Through repair, muscles become stronger during strength and endurance training. This same process promotes recovery from injuries.

However, in the typical aging process, our bodies become less efficient in making these repairs. Recovery from normal exercise and especially from injury takes longer. Tissues become stiffer. Taken together, these ultimately affect our athletic performance.

We need not give up, however. Recent research cited in Masters Athletes: A Model for Healthy Aging has shown that our ‘old’ cells can be re-programmed through physical exercise to behave like younger cells.

According to a report published in Preventive Medicine, people who did the equivalent of 30-40 minutes of jogging per day, five days a week showed biological markers of a person seven years younger.

The Aging Musculoskeletal System

Beginning at around age 50, our skeletal muscles lose cells and become smaller and stiffer according to Dr. Vonda Wright in Masters Athletes: A Model for Healthy Aging. Accompanying this decrease in muscle mass is a reduction in strength and the power they are able to generate.

More frequent muscle strains and joint pain also result from reduced muscle mass and strength and increased stiffness. For example, knee pain, sometimes incorrectly attributed to osteoarthritis, often highlights weak quadriceps. Shoulder pain in swimming is often a consequence of ignoring the smaller muscles responsible for joint stability. Finally, hip injuries are often rooted in stiffness and weakness of the core and gluteal muscles.

Tendons stiffen with age, in part, because of decreases in water content, hormonal changes, and thickening of elastin fibril tissue. On top of this, overuse which produces micro tears in the tissue leads to further stiffening of connective tissues .

Overuse injuries, those caused by continuing to exercise fatigued and/or tight muscles, are the most common among senior athletes. So here’s the dilemma: We need to keep moving to be strong and flexible, but moving more can lead to injury. Hint: strength training and stretching are two of the six pillars of triathlon training for seniors.

Nothing good happens in running, or in most sports, when you get tight. Tight muscles never outperform loose muscles simply because their range of motion is restricted, meaning they can’t move the full length for optimal power.

Ryan Hall from Run the Mile You’re In

Our Cardiovascular System and Aging

The lower mass and stiffening of tissue observed in older muscles and tendons is also seen in the cardiovascular system. According to Dr. Wright, “a 70-year old heart has 30% fewer cells than the heart of a 20 year-old.”

With the stiffening comes less efficient delivery of much-needed oxygen to cells. With less oxygen, performance, metabolism, and energy levels suffer.

The good news is that through endurance training, oxygen consumption increases. Dr. Wright reports that “Through endurance conditioning, one is capable of modifying maximum oxygen consumption, diastolic filling, relaxation, and arterial stiffness.”

Aging and Nutrition

How do the changes in our bodies affect our needs for fueling before, during, and after training?

As reported in “What Masters Athletes Need To Know About Nutrition“, the physiological changes that take place with age mean that we need “fewer (net of exercise) calories, higher amounts of protein, and greater amounts of key nutrients”. We also need to pay close attention to staying hydrated which can be accomplished through choices of food and drink.

Principles of Training for Senior Triathletes

More stretching
Proper strength training
Leveraging high-intensity interval training
Getting enough rest
Staying hydrated
Nutrition – eating enough of the right food

More Stretching

Proper warm-up and stretching before vigorous exercise with additional stretching during cool down prevents the gradual shortening of tendons and cartilage. From my experience, I can say the same for muscles.

stretching before and after workout prevents injuries - one of the principles of triathlon training for seniors — Pre- and post-workout stretching is a fundamental of triathlon training for seniors.
Photo by Abigail Keenan on Unsplash

Stretching the entire body prevents imbalances. For example, in my early days of running, I was religious about stretching my hamstrings after running. However, I was not as diligent about stretching my quadriceps.

A chiropractor who diagnosed my knee pain identified an imbalance of flexibility in these two muscles. After a short time of consistent stretching of my quadriceps, the knee pain disappeared.

Proper Strength Training

Earlier, I highlighted the connection between injury and muscle strength. Weak muscles are more prone to injury and provide less support for joints during activity.

It is important to strengthen the right muscles. While many athletes focus on strengthening cosmetic muscles (biceps, triceps, calves), these may not be the best ones on which to focus.

There are also plenty of personal stories in favor of strength training. One example is from ultrarunner Judy Cole (age 73). Judy ran every day during her early 30s. However, early on, she reported having problems with her knees. Strengthening her quads and hamstrings eliminated the pain allowing her to continue running.

Leveraging High-Intensity Interval Training

High-intensity interval training, or HIIT for short, is an approach to training characterized by short periods, or intervals, of high-intensity exercise followed by periods of recovery.

HIIT first gained notoriety in 1996 through a report published by the Japanese speed-skating coach and professor Izumi Tabata. Tabata’s paper documented the value of HIIT for elite athletes. Another study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology documented the benefits of HIIT over medium-intensity training for increasing VO₂ max, an indicator of aerobic fitness. HIIT continues to be used for athletes of all levels, including cyclists and distance runners, for both endurance and strength training.

I have included HIIT here because it’s used for training in swimming, biking, and running. It also supports strength and fitness while simultaneously reducing the risk of overuse injury compared to long periods of lower intensity training. It also promotes variety and exercising of the entire body.

For more information about HIIT training and its benefits, look at Dr. Joseph Tieri’s book Staying Young with Interval Training. After an introduction to HIIT and its benefits, most of the book shows various HIIT exercises.

Getting Enough Rest

Rest and recovery apply to all ages. As suggested in an earlier post, we ought to make consistent, high-quality sleep a priority.

However, one liability of age can be the ‘ability’ to persevere through pain. If you only take one lesson from this post, it is that we must train smarter, not just harder, with age.

Tired muscles are more prone to injury. Abused cartilage and muscle will get their revenge. It is best to rest or change your training plan to avoid aggravating sore areas.

Staying Hydrated

As we age, our sensation for thirst becomes weaker. At the same time, lower water content of body tissue is one contributor to injury. The message? Stay hydrated.

Nutrition – Eating Enough of the Right Food

Consuming additional protein to ensure that we are producing muscle from strength training is the most significant takeaway. Eating anti-inflammatory foods and a full range of different colored fruits and vegetables is good advice for all ages. See the related post below for more detailed advice.

What Is Your Experience?

Please share your questions and comments below.

We would love to hear what you have learned from your experiences? Your reading? From your coaches or training partners?

How have you adjusted your training with age?

“Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,” Hebrews 12:1

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You May Be Interested in Reading . . .

Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook, 6th Edition

Staying Young with Interval Training: The Revolutionary HIIT Approach to Being Fit, Strong and Healthy at Any Age by Dr. Joseph Tieri

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Rest and Recovery: Why It’s Important for Senior Triathletes

Terry VanderWert on April 19, 2016

Overload and recovery by nutrition and rest lead to improvement

How do senior triathletes rest while working to become more competitive? Or show our kids that we really are not old? How do we train efficiently when we have a much lower tolerance for training errors?

“Successful runners are those who have recovered the best.”¹

Rest – A Main Pillar of Senior Triathlete Training

The advice I repeatedly hear from senior triathletes and those who coach them is that we need to make rest an important part of our training plan. A podcast on training for endurance sports for those over age 50 listed ‘Rest’ as one of four major elements in training for those over 50.

Those committed to improving their performance ‘at all cost’ will ignore this advice or interpret it to fit their plan. Those less committed or motivated can use this advice to hit the snooze button a few more times or to take a few more days away from training.

Meanwhile, those of us somewhere in between can be left scratching our heads, wondering how to apply this all-important advice.

Where Does Rest Fit Into Training for the Senior Triathlete?

According to the Furman Institute¹, “train hard and become fatigued, then rest and recover while your body adapts to an increased workload. Repeating this cycle of overload, fatigue, recovery, and adaptation makes you fitter and faster. However, there is a limit to one’s capacity to endure and adapt. The progressive overload must be done gradually.”

We can picture this process through a circular flow diagram (below).

picture of the circular relationship between overload, refueling, and rest in an effective triathlon training program — Circular relationship between training overload, refueling, and rest

Overload includes the effects of training exercise. However, overload has other sources, including those that come with living, such as our physical environment (for example, altitude, humidity, temperature extremes), colds and allergies, dietary choices, travel, stress at work, and personal relationships).

As illustrated in the above flow diagram, the combined overload influences our nutrition (refueling) needs and needs for rest and recovery. Balancing the three components of the flow diagram while progressively increasing overload will lead to continuous improvement in fitness and performance.

What Is the Correct Way for the Masters Triathlete to Rest?

Triathlon coaches repeatedly write that rest should be scheduled and structured just as are the workouts. Rest and recovery must be considered part of the overall plan and treated in a disciplined way.

According to the National Sleep Foundation, the initial phase of ‘falling to sleep’ is followed by a state in which our muscles relax. During this phase, blood supply to the muscles increases, tissue growth and repair occurs, and hormones, such as growth hormone, are released. The growth hormone contributes to building muscles stressed by hard workouts.

To achieve quality sleep, these processes must occur uninterrupted. If interrupted, muscle repair, tissue repair, and the release of growth hormones is incomplete.

One way to achieve consistency is to schedule sleep. By ‘schedule’, we mean providing the time and environment for both the optimum quantity of sleep and uninterrupted, quality sleep.

Rest is Sleep and Much More

Sleep is an essential component of rest.

However, rest doesn’t have to mean retiring to the sofa. It can also involve exercising the recovered muscles used in one sport, while giving time for repair and development of specific muscles and joints used in another sport.

“Active, yet low-intensity, exercise such as non-weight-bearing swimming, kayaking, and cycling allows muscles stressed from running to recover. It is during the recovery that the adaptation from the training stimulus (the hard run) occurs. That adaptation, or improvement, helps you run faster.”¹

swimming is a favorite form of rest and recovery for senior triathletes — Cross-training is an important component of rest. By definition, cross-training involves primarily muscles other than those needing rest. Swimming is one of the favorite forms of cross-training used by triathlon coaches.

Proper fueling is important. There are many who report that post-exercise fueling requires protein. However, this is not necessarily true, especially for our day-in, day-out workouts. High quality carbohydrates will also be effective in replacing our glycogen stores. The human body is capable of providing the amino acids for repair of the limited muscle damage.

Advice from Dr. Jeff Sankoff is to avoid alcohol during the recovery phase of exercise. During his December 9, 2019 podcast, Dr. Sankoff reported that “the synthesis of new glycogen is often impaired in the presence of alcohol”.

How Do I Know If I Am Getting Enough Rest?

Rest must be proportional to the amount of overload. An imbalance in either direction (too much or too little rest) will lead to less than optimum results.

The major factors affecting the rate of recovery from training overload are:

Age
Fitness level
Exercise background and experience
Stress from life (work, family)
Health level
Diet – nutrition with respect to the body’s requirements during rest and exercise
Sleep – quantity and quality

Imbalance in the amount of rest will be indicated by:

mood disturbance,
irritability,
sleep disturbance,
increased susceptibility to colds,
appetite changes, and
a struggle to maintain athletic performance.

If an imbalance of rest symptoms persists even if you have taken steps to try to get a good amount of rest, you may have an underlying condition, such as stress or anxiety. You may wish to talk to your doctor about it and they can recommend a treatment such as therapy or CBD oil. Taking care of your mental health is just as important as your physical health.

According to Joe Friel in ‘The Triathlete’s Training Bible’², the importance of a correct balance of training, nutrition, and rest becomes increasingly important with age. Younger people can get away with more impatience or carelessness in training.

However, seniors have a much lower tolerance for training errors. The price of mistakes in rest and recovery among seniors can be much greater than for the younger competitors.

Seniors have a much lower tolerance for training errors.

A Testimonial for Rest

In 2013, I met Jim Chapman at the Rocky Gap Triathon in Maryland.

After the race, Jim described how important rest had become to his training.

“One of the hardest things to learn while training for this sport is knowing when to rest. I was self coached for many years and often found myself going two or more weeks without a day off and then I would collapse.

Since I had a goal last year to compete at the National Championship race in Vermont, I hired a coach, a nationally ranked professional triathlete who lives in the area. She has been adamant in making me take more rest days. It is not uncommon for me to take two rest days in a week now. And as you can see, I am racing better and faster.”

For this 70+ year triathlete, more frequent rest had become part of a strategy for improving his race performance.

Rest for the Senior Triathlete

Senior Triathletes should take advantage of the wisdom that comes with age in their training.

Increase overload slowly. Remember that overload is the sum of training and other stresses. Refuel properly. Rest through sleep and cross-training.

Remember, life is more like a marathon than a sprint. Plan to finish strong.

References

Pierce, Bill, et al., “Runner’s World Run Less, Run Faster: Become a Faster, Stronger Runner with the Revolutionary FIRST Training Program”, 2007.
Friel, Joel, “The Triathlete’s Training Bible, 3^rd Edition”, 2009.

This post was first published on April 19, 2016 and last updated on July 26, 2023.

Category: Rest & Recovery