What coaches can do to help athlete longevity

More and more athletes are competing at the highest level well into that 30’s, some into their 40’s. Longevity has become a huge consideration for athlete’s as they decide what training they do, what supplements they take or how they recovery from games. So what specifically can coaches do to help athlete longevity? We asked Exercise Physiologist, Jessica Piasecki six questions on this topic to find out more.

Competitive athletes are attaining high levels of performance at older ages, in a range of sports and after prolonged periods away from training. What are we learning about the workings of “training age” from such athletes?

Training age refers to the numbers of years at which the athlete has been training and competing consistently at a highly competitive level. For example, someone who has the biological age of 40 years old but only started training and competing at age 25, and has not had any long periods of interruptions since they started, would have a training age of 15 years ^[12].

We are now seeing a number of athletes who are competing and improving their PRs at much later ages than we previously saw within high level sports. Some good examples are in track & field, where both endurance and sprint/power based athletes are competing well into their late 30s and early 40s, are still delivering sporting excellence and improving their own best performances.

From athletes like them, we are able to decipher the importance of training age. In a number of circumstances, athletes who continue competing and improving into middle age tend to be those who have had “breaks” within their previous training years. This may have been due to injury or pregnancy, or simply having time away from the sport and then returning at a later date. After these breaks, the body seems able to recoup those years later on, in training terms, regardless of the athlete’s chronological age.

A good number of those athletes who reach high – perhaps their highest – levels of performance at older chronological ages than we are used to seeing began training at a highly competitive level much later than traditionally expected, perhaps taking up sport after college or after starting their families, thus giving their body the ability to adapt to training into later chronological years.

In addition to athletes who have paused or interrupted their training age, we’re seeing more pro athletes over age 35 maintain levels of performance on par with their “prime years.” How should practitioners approach a competitive athlete who is around the range of their age-dependent peak, plateau or decline?

Generally, due to better health care services, worldwide we have an aging population, with people living for much longer. Much like the advances we see within medical research, sports research has also progressed, further supporting the athletes to continue bettering themselves much later in their career than perhaps we have seen before. In particular, the understanding of exercise, training and load management throughout the lifespan has advanced to where we consider the athlete more holistically and not just with reference to day-to-day or even season-to-season performance requirements ^[3].

Females appear particularly able to maintain higher levels of competition into their mid to late 30s. The majority of these later performers do come from endurance sports, although this is certainly not always the case. But this is unsurprising, given the research indicating that females are able to sustain fatigue resistance for a lot longer than males ^[7,8], and studies indicate that into older ages the male-female performance gap narrows ^[6].

From a practitioner viewpoint, it is important to consider both the athlete’s chronological age and training age. The training age may indicate that the athlete can still consistently maintain high levels of activity, bettering performances and accomplishing big goals. However, chronological age may mean you have to adjust the approach to training, increasing recovery time between hard work outs, taking strict nutritional approaches to maintain lean muscle mass and support adaptability between training, and perhaps emphasizing training quality over quantity – more so than you would with chronologically younger athletes. That’s because all of the desired adaptations coincide with the inevitable musculoskeletal changes that take place beyond the age of 35 ^[9,13,14].

Practitioners should take into account who the athletes are at that time in their lives. Consider whether they are maintaining a high level job or have family demands, and sometimes simply ensure their goals are realistic. The big increments in performances one might associate with someone taking up sport for the first time may not be as common in older ages. Those improvements are certainly achievable, but practitioners need to align the athlete’s motivations with realistic targets that consistent with the athlete’s training history and their current circumstances.

Communication is key to understanding the athlete, how they are feeling in response to the training loads, ensuring they can still progress and responding to training stimuli.

What are some of the factors driving the extension of competitive careers and high performance levels, and how can we apply them to athletes of any age?

There is now a greater understanding of the use of nutrition for recovery ^[1,10]. The advancements in metabolic testing can allow practitioners and athletes to recognize the nutrition they need a lot more precisely, according to their body shape, event and training load. We also have an understanding of how metabolism may vary between sexes ^[4,2], which, of course, we can use to tailor training and nutrition accordingly. Such advancements certainly allow better and quicker recovery between training and competition bouts, allowing athletes to continue their careers for longer than previously thought.

These advancements can also be seen in the nutritional products. If we take Maurten as an example, a hydrogel improves carbohydrate uptake within the digestive tract by providing a protective covering for the carbohydrate ^[15]. That’s something we had not seen before, so if athletes can fuel more appropriately to absorb more carbohydrates, supported by appropriate training, it will lead to improvements in performance, no matter the training or chronological age.

Additionally, from advancements in our understanding of training and training load, we more frequently see athletes and coaches utilizing “weekly” training cycles that are greater than seven days to allow increased recovery time between harder work outs.

Within training, athletes generally use the recovery days as intended, well exemplified by Eliud Kipchoge, as described here. In the past we would see a number of athletes hitting every day very hard, but now it seems more likely that we can use the recovery days for what they are, enabling the athlete to, simply, go harder on those big training days.

Similarly, we have a better understanding of how to implement cross training modalities to support the volumes of training but also reduce the load. This allows athletes to still gain aerobic fitness but can reduce the impact on the body and lessens the likelihood of injury. A number of high level athletes have openly shared the benefits of cross training, enabling them to remain consistent.

Finally, particularly in endurance sports, we cannot ignore the latest shoe technology advancements. While it seems there is still a lot of varying evidence precluding firm conclusions that they improve everyone’s performance ^[5], the new technologies do seem to somewhat relieve the impact from running long distances, again enhancing recovery and allowing athletes to adapt to training more consistently.

Gone are the days where runners pop on a pair of plimsoles every evening, go out and run 10 miles as hard as they can, following it up with a Mars bar, a beer and a burger!

Masters athletes are a unique population: competitive but not professional, elite in relative, age-dependent terms but not absolute terms. What has your research into masters athletes found regarding each individual’s “performance ceiling?”

Masters athletes are a very interesting cohort in regards to aging research. They represent a model aging population and portray a healthy older physiological model, demonstrating some of the benefits of exercise to improve the aging process.

Our research group has utilized masters athletes on a number of occasions. Our research has continually demonstrated that masters athletes live with an improved health into older age. However, this research does not show exercise preventing any of the physiological changes we associate with aging, such as loss of muscle mass, strength and declines in bone health. However, it can slow these changes down and delay the onset.

One interesting concept we have highlighted is that even if people take up their sporting activities much later in life, and reach highly competitive levels, they are still able to gain benefits such as increased lean mass and reduced fat mass, which support the aging process. We compared a cohort of athletes who started sport at 50 years old with those who had been competing for their entire adulthood. There was no difference between groups in the muscle and fat mass measurements, indicating it is very beneficial to begin training, even at a later age ^[12].

Furthermore, when investigating neuromuscular changes in masters athlete cohorts, exercise in older age is able to arrest the loss of motor units that takes place with increasing age. Exercise seems to enable the remodeling of motor units, causing those motor units that have not been lost to branch and expand and “rescue” nearby muscle fibres that have lost their innervating motor unit. Without exercise, it seems the remodeling process does not occur regularly and there is an enhanced reduction in the loss of muscle strength ^[13,14].

With regards to performance ceiling, this indicates that there are still age associated declines in performance, regardless of the starting age of the activity, but exercise certainly delays the onset of reaching this ceiling and supports a healthy aging process.

What are some potential implications of your work for the general population, i.e., outside of a performance-oriented sporting context?

Our research demonstrates some of the benefits of exercise training in older age from a musculoskeletal and neuromuscular standpoint ^[11,13].

The neuromuscular adaptations do not indicate that there is a preferred modality of activity, with both power and endurance activities demonstrating remodeling of motor units ^[14]. But when we have investigated parameters of bone health, those partaking in endurance activities only do not show any additional benefits in bone health compared to those who take part in sprint and power based performances. In fact, those who undertook solely endurance based activities had no benefits to their bone health compared to those who were not participating in any physical activity ^[11].

The explanation for this is somewhat difficult to identify, but we hypothesize that during endurance activities at an older age, ages at which we necessarily run slower, the strains from the muscle to the bone are not great enough to elicit a response in the bone forming cells. Additionally, due to the repeated action of endurance activities, the bone has very little time to adapt within loading, unlike in sprint based activities that utilize powerful movements over a short duration, but with incorporated rest between bouts.

Thus, when applying this to the general population, we would recommend supporting endurance based activities with resistance training to ensure bone health is also well supported.

What are the biggest mistakes you see young practitioners/clinicians make, and what advice would you give them to help?

Particularly in relation to this topic, one of the mistakes I have come across is practitioners being quite rigid with their training structure. Perhaps it’s a seven day training cycle they have used with good results for a number of years, therefore they do not wish to sway from this concept for other athletes. But they should consider the athlete as a whole, not just their conception of training requirements, which means taking on board everything that is going on in the athlete’s environment, as well as their chronological and training age.

Nutritional adaptations should occur frequently as well, and these should be associated with training load and chronological ages. Increases in training should be matched with increases in nutritional intake where appropriate. Additionally, as athletes age, protein metabolism loses its efficiency in combination with the expected loss of muscle mass. Therefore, it is generally recommended to ingest greater amounts of protein in older age to support these losses. If practitioners are able to ensure their athletes are meeting these requirements, then it is more likely to result in longevity within the sport and reduced likelihood of injuries.

Overall, I think constant communication between athlete and practitioner is paramount to providing the appropriate support for the athlete, considering training age, environments and chronological ages.