You’re a cyclist in your 50s and older. Your goals are to be a good cyclist, healthy and fit for many years to come. To reach your goals, knowing what not to do is as important as knowing what to do.
1. Ignoring the training paradigm
Training stress (physiological overload) + rest = success (improvement). As you adapt to your riding or other workload you’ll plateau unless you increase the workload. And if you don’t allow sufficient recovery you won’t improve. See #6 below.
2. Mindset
Riders often believe they should ride a certain number of miles a week, set a goal of riding at least 30 minutes every day of the week, etc. Physiologically riding a lot of miles won’t hurt you as I explain in this column Anti-Aging Can You Ride too Much? However, riding X miles a week or Y days every week may have unintended consequences. You get fitter by stressing your body to do more than it’s accustomed to doing and then allowing it to recover. Riding stress is only one of many kinds of stress in your life. The various stresses may compound to create physical and/or psychological problems as I explain in this column Anti-Aging Too Much Stress Can Shorten Your Life. The unexpected happens in life! And you need to be flexible to accommodate these events.
3. Doing too much
My new clients come with preconceptions about training. Most of them think they should train more than they need to in order to improve. Beyond a certain volume doing more riding doesn’t make you better, although it isn’t harmful as explained above. How much exercise is too much is very individual. Basically if you’ve stopped improving then doing more won’t make you any better. However, you enjoy riding and it’s fine to ride more – just don’t expect improvement.
4. Riding the same way all the time
The first part of the training paradigm is physiological overload. If you faithfully ride 50 miles every week you’ll be proficient at riding 50 miles but won’t improve. If you always ride at 14 mph you’ll comfortable cruising at 14 mph but you won’t get any faster. To improve your endurance you need to ride more than 50 miles some weeks (but not every week). To get faster you need to ride faster some of the time. Not most of the time — 10 to 20% of your riding time is sufficient. More fast riding won’t make you faster and may result in overtraining. I wrote this column Six Kinds of Intensity Training and explain how to decide which kind(s) of intensity are right for you.
5. Neglecting non-cycling activities
As you age your body deteriorates in various ways unless you take corrective action in all of these areas:
- Muscle strength
- Flexibility
- Balance
- Strong bones
#2 and #3 above often don’t leave you enough time also to work out in these important areas. My eBook Anti-Aging 12 Ways You Can Slow the Aging Process includes programs to improve your endurance, enhance your power and speed, develop your muscle strength, increase your flexibility, improve your balance and strengthen your bones.
6. Insufficient recovery
Your body only rebuilds and gets stronger during recovery, not while you’re exercising. I wrote this column on Anti-Aging The Importance of Recovery in Your 50s, 60s and Beyond. In the column I give you nine recovery tips.
7. Fads
You read about the benefits High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) and it doesn’t take much time. Your buddy recommends a phenomenal spinning class. You find an 8-week plan to cycling fitness. We’re each an experiment of one. Rather than immediately adopting a program – even one I recommend – think about whether the program is optimal for the unique you. Then try it out and see if it helps. And if it doesn’t help or worsens your performance then stop! Some discomfort is part of getting fitter but if you hate a specific activity then it’s not the right one for you.
8. Nutrition before, during and after
When you exercise you burn a combination of fat — we all have enough — and glucose. Your body stores glucose as glycogen, which comes from carbs. We have limited stores of glycogen and can run out of fuel (glucose) during a multi-hour ride. Before you exercise eat a snack of about 100 calories of carbohydrates. If you’re exercising more than an hour the American College of Sports Medicine recommends consuming 100 to 200 calories of carbs per hour depending on your body size and how hard you’re exercising. After exercising eat another snack of at least 100 calories of carbs. If you’ve gone for a multi-hour ride eat more after the ride.
The bottom line is to listen to your unique body.
Resources
Anti-Aging 12 Ways You Can Slow the Aging Process The 107-page eBook explains the physiology of aging and how to assess your current fitness. It includes exercise programs for cardiovascular health and endurance, training with intensity, addressing muscle atrophy, getting more flexible, improving your balance and slowing bone loss. It includes a dozen stories about their personal experiences by riders aged 54 to 82.
Cycling Past 50, 60 and Beyond: Training with IntensityThe 27-page eArticle describes five progressively harder levels of training and gives three to five examples each of structured and unstructured workouts for each level of training, a total of almost 40 workouts.
Training with Intensity Using Perceived Exertion, Heart Rate and Power The 41-page eArticle explains why training with intensity is important, how to gauge intensity and how to do intensity workouts. It includes 73 workouts explained by perceived exertion, heart rate or power.
Cycling Past 50, 60 and Beyond 3 Article Bundle The 105-page bundle includes 1) Fit for Life, #2 Peak Fitness and #3 Training with Intensity.
Healthy Nutrition Past 50 The 28-page eArticle explains the key role of carbohydrates, how much protein you need, the importance of fat and healthy food choices. It reviews what to consume while exercising, including the key roles of carbohydrates, fluid and electrolytes.
Cycling Past 50 4 Article Bundle The 100-page bundle includes 1) Healthy Cycling Past 50; 2) Healthy Nutrition Past 50; 3) Performance Cycling Past 50 and 4) Off-Season Conditioning Past 50.
Eating and Drinking Like the Pros The 15-page article explains why the pros eat both sports nutrition and real food during a race and also what they consume for breakfast, post-race recovery and dinner. The eArticle includes recipes for you to make your own sports drinks, gels, bars and other foods to put in your jersey pocket.
Optimal Recovery for Improved Performance The 16-page eArticle explains the importance of recovery gives you 10 different techniques to improve your recovery and riding.
Coach John Hughes earned coaching certifications from USA Cycling and the National Strength and Conditioning Association. John’s cycling career includes course records in the Boston-Montreal-Boston 1200-km randonnée and the Furnace Creek 508, a Race Across AMerica (RAAM) qualifier. He has ridden solo RAAM twice and is a 5-time finisher of the 1200-km Paris-Brest-Paris. He has written over 40 eBooks and eArticles on cycling training and nutrition, available in RBR’s eBookstore at Coach John Hughes. Click to read John’s full bio.
Why do you need to eat carbs after riding / exercising?
Thanks, John.
At the aged of 71, I am ecstatic if I can keep from declining. Improving is not a goal, but enjoying riding is. I’ve been following the same routine for decades which appears to have served me well as I can still sort of keep up with the Friday fast ride (20+ mph) but am definitely seeing the inevitable age declines. As I tell anyone who will listen, my goals for this year are to ride my bike 🙂
To answer NJgreyhead, you need carbs after riding because exercise depletes your carbohydrate stores and they need to be replenished if you wish to exercise again tomorrow. Starving to lose weight is a poor strategy. If you exercise lightly, immediate, carb intake is not much of an issue.
I see the need “if you wish to exercise again tomorrow.” But if tomorrow is a recovery day?