What We Know About Coaching Athletes After 50

By Jim Rutberg,
CTS Pro Coach, co-author of “Ride Inside“,
“The Time-Crunched Cyclist”, and
“Training Essentials for Ultrarunning”

Athletes over 50 years old know they face different physical challenges compared to younger athletes. As perhaps the largest endurance coaching company that works one-on-one with athletes, CTS has extensive experience coaching athletes between the ages of 50 and 90+. It’s not just the training plans, intensities, and recovery durations that change for older athletes. Here are some of the key differences we address when coaching 50+, 60+, and 70+ age group athletes.

Genetic Predispositions Emerge

By the time a person reaches their 50s and beyond, genetic predispositions for cardiovascular disease, some cancers, and other ailments start expressing themselves. Many times, leading an athletic lifestyle offers some level of protection, reduces risk factors, or perhaps lessens the medical complications from treatment. But we can’t always out-exercise our genetics or eat our way to perfect health. One example is familial hypercholesterolemia, which is an inherited condition caused by a gene mutation that results in higher-than-normal levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol. High levels of LDL cholesterol can increase risks for developing cardiovascular disease. Diet (either in low saturated fat and/or lower in carbohydrate to increase insulin sensitivity) and exercise can mitigate risk factors, but perhaps to varying degrees.

Similarly, genetic predispositions to certain cancers start expressing themselves in athletes over 50. Anecdotally, CTS Coaches have noted that sudden, significant, and otherwise inexplicable drop-offs in exercise performance sometimes precede cancer diagnoses by several weeks or months. Several of my colleagues have seen this progression occur enough times that they consider it a warning sign to advise athletes to see their doctors.

Lifestyle Choices Catch Up With You

Many athletes in their 50s, 60s, and 70s live with the consequences of lifestyle choices they made in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. Some are developing osteoarthritis after years spent in high-impact sports (football, basketball, hockey, mogul skiing) as younger adults. Others have elevated cardiovascular disease risk factors from high-pressure jobs, poor diets, and obesity earlier in life. Although learning to manage stress, changing dietary habits, and using exercise to improve health and manage body composition help, as an older adult you are still a cumulative product of your past behaviors.

Part of the process of coaching athletes over 50 is considering their entire healthspan, not just the past few months or years since they started training for a specific sport. That shoulder injury you never quite rehabbed after a skiing accident in your 40s might impact your range of motion of strength training in your 60s. The arthritis in your knees or hips is something we must take into consideration when planning either endurance or strength training.

Key point: Regular physicals and health screenings are important for athletes over 50, even if you appear to the be a paragon of excellent health. Part of the reason that the performance drop preceding cancer diagnoses has been notable to CTS Coaches is that the athletes were often very fit for their age, with no obvious risk factors for cancer (e.g., tobacco or alcohol use, obesity, high stress, etc.).

Work:Life Balances Shift and Athletes Retire

Older athletes often have a different relationship with their careers compared to younger (i.e., 20s-40s) athletes. Younger athletes are in the ‘grind and growth’ phase of their careers, often while starting a family and raising young children at the same time. The personal, professional, and financial stresses can be massive. Although it is not a universal truth, many athletes over 50 have reached a career stage where they have more financial resources and more autonomy. Their children are older and/or out of the house. Their adult relationships are more established (or they’re single again following divorces). This allows some athletes in their 50s to create more sustainable, consistent behaviors around training, sleep, and nutrition.

As athletes reach retirement age – which varies widely – they often go from being Time-Crunched Athletes to Time-Rich Athletes. They have more time available to train than they know what to do with or know how to use effectively. Many throw themselves into high-volume, high-intensity training because they finally have the free time to do everything they’ve wanted to for so long. As coaches, our biggest job is to manage expectations and workloads to keep retirees from overtraining or getting injured. This is especially important in relation to the genetic predispositions and lifestyle consequences mentioned above.

Longevity Becomes The Performance Goal

There are a lot of highly competitive cyclists over the age of 50. Just look at the age-group results of local races and national championships. The biggest age groups are typically 50 and above. However, many more cyclists we work with start shifting their focus more to longevity goals rather than competitive goals. They want to ride their bikes for the rest of their lives and use their bikes (along with other activities) to make their lives last as long as possible.

As we’ve written about in previous posts, maintaining VO2 max, muscle mass, and joint health are all components of extending your healthspan, which may ultimately extend your lifespan. From a coaching perspective, this manifests as a shift toward more generalized fitness and less specialized event-specific fitness. That doesn’t mean we stop training older athletes to be cyclists or bike racers. It just means we incorporate more strength training, shift macronutrient composition to ensure adequate protein consumption, and include more weight-bearing and upper-body sports and movements into everyday exercise.

Changes in Motivating Factors

Younger athletes want to smash their buddies, be the fastest rider on their local scene, win championships, and accomplish impressive physical feats. They are more ego-driven and motivated by external outcomes. This tends to naturally coincide with the ‘grind and growth’ phase of their work life, too. Older athletes can still have big outcome goals (e.g., winning races, smashing buddies) but, for many, their motivating factors shift from winning races and setting records to helping others, achieving personal growth, and experiencing the world.

One of the top goals reported by athletes over 50 is some version of, “I want to be fit and strong enough to do X before it’s too late.” We all know there will come a time when our range on the bike will start to diminish. When we can no longer do the biggest rides, climb the tallest mountains, or handle the roughest single track. As a result, athletes are motivated to extend the time they have left to enjoy the rides they desire most. It’s about staying in the game as long as possible

Changes in Risk Tolerance

An interesting aspect to coaching athletes in their 50s up through their 90s is the gradual decline in risk tolerance. It is completely understandable, as the consequences from crashing – including lengthy recoveries, reduced mobility, and irretrievably lost maximal capacities – get worse with age. It is no surprise that field sizes for criteriums shrink for 60+ age groups as they grow for gran fondos. Similarly, there aren’t many 60+ downhill mountain bike competitors, but the 60+ age groups at endurance mountain bike events (e.g., Leadville 100) and gravel races (e.g., SBT GRVL) are comparatively large.

From a coaching perspective, we must carefully consider an athlete’s risk tolerance, too. Older athletes who feel unsteady on busy roads sometimes shift to training on multi-use bike paths and/or indoor trainers – even if their goal events are on open roads. They key is to maintain consistency in training, using whatever modalities or terrain or equipment we can. This extends to strength training, too, where we prescribe more conservative movements, perhaps use more machines, and often recommend athletes work out with a trainer or training partner rather than alone.

Summary

It is difficult to generalize for an athlete population that spans 40 years, particularly when that population already has a lifetime of good and bad decisions behind them. A few things we do know, though:

• Fitness makes aging better: Fitness reduces many disease risk factors, makes people better prepared to cope with unforeseen illnesses and injuries, and preserves physical function and the ability to physically engage with the world.
• It’s never too late to improve fitness: Maximum capacities (e.g., VO2 max, maximum heart rate, cardiac output, contractile force) may gradually decline, but your body still responds to training. You can still improve and maximize your performance capabilities before reaching your maximum capacities.
• Individualized training is imperative for older athletes: Group programs work great for youth sports and scholastic teams. Static training plans can work well for athletes in their 20s and 30s. But older athletes have decades of accumulated variables and risk factors to account for, making one-size-fits-all training plans even less likely to work.

If you’re in the 50-90+ age group and you’re looking for training, nutrition, and recovery resources that address your unique needs, schedule a Coach Consultation to learn more about what our professional coaches can do to help you live your best life for the rest of your life.