Includes the eArticles: 1) Cycling Past 60, Part 1: For Health; and 2) Cycling Past 60, Part 2: For Recreation
$8.98 – Scroll down to purchase.
In this 2-article series Coach John Hughes shares his personal insight and the current research into how the human body ages, especially past age 60.
If you exercise correctly, you can slow the effects of aging; if you exercise incorrectly, you can speed up aging. That’s a key point of Cycling Past 60, Part 1: For Health.
Your body isn’t a harmonious whole, but is composed of different parts, each of which ages somewhat separately: the cardiopulmonary system; muscles; the skeletal system. And, as you age into your 60s and beyond, flexibility and balance increasingly are at risk of deterioration.
Cycling only stresses and keeps relatively young the cardiopulmonary system. If all you do is ride, you lose muscle mass, bone density, flexibility and balance in activities of daily living. Coach Hughes describes how your whole body ages and gives you six different health maintenance objectives for different components of your physiology, including comprehensive fitness programs that address these objectives.
Coach Hughes shows you how to measure your “athletic maturity” to assess your relative fitness in terms of each of these aspects of good health. This eArticle includes three balanced, full-body exercise programs for different cyclists of different athletic maturities. The 24-page eArticle also provides nutrition tips for healthy aging as well as advice on the importance of rest, recovery and sleep.
Reader Review:
Mr. Hughes hits a home run with his new articles: Cycling Past 60 and Spring Training. Both are spot on, sensible, and leave room for flexibility. His clear conversational tone makes both easy, understandable reads. Helpful hints are well-mingled with his step-by-step approach. The best two purchases I’ve made from RoadBikeRider. A big thumbs up. — Art Vincent
Cycling Past 60, Part 2: For Recreation builds on the foundation of information for 60+ riders in Part 1and uses the concept of “Athletic Maturity” to design more rigorous programs for more athletically mature riders. It includes six different structured workout programs, three each for Endurance and Performance cyclists, based on levels of athletic maturity.
If you are relatively mature as a cyclist and scored 15 points or more on the Athletic Maturity test in Part 1, then you are ready for the programs in this eArticle. If you scored fewer than 15 points, then start with the appropriate training program in Cycling Past 60, Part 1: For Health and build your overall fitness until you can score at least 15 points.
As we age and our motivation changes from competitiveness when we were younger, we tend to become two somewhat different types of riders:
Endurance cyclists. Endurance riders love cycling so much that they ride more than health and fitness riders during the week, and their long rides range from two or three hours to a century or 200K. Endurance riders are less concerned about speed than having lots of fun on the bike.
Performance cyclists. Unlike endurance cyclists, these riders want to improve their performance and do faster and/or harder rides. They want to know what to do to improve, to keep up with (and drop) other riders, even some club mates who are younger! They are typical performance riders.
This 23-page Cycling Past 60, Part 2: For Recreation includes the six different health maintenance objectives for different components of your physiology, eight basic (and four advanced) training principles, types of rides, cross-training and recovery tips.
Note: these are eArticles. Your purchases will be stored as a PDF file in your customer account on the website for downloading and printing.