Aging as an Endurance Athlete: Body Composition, Performance and Training for Longevity

But any thought, I mean, what, what are your thoughts, like, do you, have you personally...

I mean, I know, I know body weight, I wanna make sure people understand that body weight and body composition are different.

Like, body composition is, like, muscle mass versus fat mass, right?

Mm-hmm.

So, like, typically what happens or what people experience as they age is they start to lose a little bit of muscle and gain a little bit of fat.

And so I hear a lot of complaints, especially from women, but also from men that, you know, es- especially around the middle, midsection, like, they're not as lean.

They start to get more rolls or fat, you know, accumulating in the midsection.

And, um, I think that's a, a very frustrating thing for many, especially women, but I think it happens with men, too.

Yep.

So I don't know, what is your experience with body composition or working with athletes? Uh, have you kind of run into this with your athletes? Just curious kind of what your thoughts are on body comp.

I, I can say I haven't had too many conversations with my athletes in terms of, of body composition.

Mm-hmm.

Um, I am, I, I'm a little bit...

I, I try to be a little bit more on the sensitive side when it come, when it comes to weight.

And it, it's probably because of my own thing, because I'm pretty sensitive to it.

So I really don't talk to my athletes a whole lot about it, uh, but I do talk about, uh, I will talk about, like, body composition.

So if I say, you know, if some- if an athlete comes to me and says, you know, "I've got this race coming up.

I, I need to make race weight," you know, this whole meth- So what I try to stress with them is that, look, you know, race weight is just a, just a number that you think that you can perform well at.

Now, who's to say that if we actually build strength and build muscular endurance, that you can't perform as well, if not better, than the way that you would perform if you were lighter? I'm seeing that today.

I mean, my performance has increased while at the same time, like, the number on the scale is higher, and it's not going down.

I mean, unfortunately, I was dumb enough to step on the weight, on the scale this morning before I went for my ride, for my workout, and, you know, the number, the number is what it is.

And it's taken me a really long time to accept that number.

But what I have seen is I've seen a significant increase in strength and muscular endurance.

So I know that I'm stronger, and I've seen it.

I've seen the evidence of it by the increase in performance and, you know, my, my abilities to climb hills now on the bike with less effort, and actually a- achieve speeds that I thought were not sustainable or achievable at the way, at the level that I weigh now.