Joe Friel is approaching his 80th birthday. He still rides 12 to 13 hours a week. His VO2max sits at a level the longitudinal research describes as exceptional for his age. He lifts twice a week in a garage gym he built because he was tired of waiting for the bench press at his old gym.
Most cyclists in their forties are doing none of these things and wondering why the weekend group ride keeps getting harder.
Listen to the full conversation on the Roadman Cycling Podcast →
I sat down with Joe Friel — author of The Cyclist's Training Bible and Fast After 50, co-founder of TrainingPeaks, and coach to elite endurance athletes for over forty years — to ask the question every masters rider eventually asks. What actually works once you cross 40.
The answer is more specific than the internet would have you believe. And more disciplined than most amateurs are prepared to be.
The Bit Nobody Tells You About Masters Training
Here is the thing nobody tells you about getting older as a cyclist. The decline is real. The rate of decline is not.
VO2max starts dropping somewhere in your mid-to-late 30s. That is just biology. But the difference between a cyclist who loses ten percent per decade and one who loses closer to five percent is not luck. It is a single short, hard session per week, defended like a religion.
Muscle atrophy in the upper body is the second thing. Cyclists almost never feel this in the legs because they are still being asked to push pedals. The chest, shoulders, arms and core get thinner year on year unless you do something about it. By 70, the rider who never lifted a weight looks fragile. The one who did, does not.
Body fat creeps up while muscle mass drops. Bodyweight on the scale stays the same. The number lies. The mirror tells the truth.
Friel has lived through every one of these and coached thousands of people through them. The whole conversation is built around what he has actually done about it. Not theory. Practice.
The Garage Gym
If there is one thing in this episode that summarises Friel's approach, it is the garage.
He got tired of waiting for the squat rack at his old gym. So he turned his garage into a weight room. He bought a house with a three-car garage even though he only owns two cars, specifically to get a bay for his strength setup. Every year he adds a piece of kit. He calls the commute a 10-second walk.
He lifts twice a week. Twenty to thirty minutes per session. He does not negotiate with himself about it. Quote — "It's like brushing my teeth. I just go do it."
That sentence is the entire psychology of getting through your forties on the bike.
The strength session is not an event. It is not a heroic effort. It is not a 90-minute production. It is a quiet, repeated input that adds up over decades. Bench presses, curls, pull-ups, planks, the abdominals — anything from the waist up. The upper body is the part the bike never trains, so the gym has to.
There is a second benefit Friel keeps pointing out. Lifting also makes the bones stronger. Bones matter more once you start crashing in your sixties.
Why The Bone Density Conversation Matters
This is the bit of the episode that quietly shifts the stakes.
Friel describes a fall he took on a French hotel staircase three years ago. Hurt his knee. Three years later he still feels it. At 25, that fall would have healed and disappeared. At his age, it lingers.
Then he talks about his mother. Active her whole life. Walked every evening after supper. At 87 she slipped on ice outside a shopping centre and broke her hip. Two years later she was blind. The complications cascaded. She did not recover.
A hip fracture in your seventies or eighties is one of the leading predictors of mortality. The injury itself is rarely what kills you. The deconditioning that follows is.
Strength training is not vanity gym work. It is bone density. It is fall resistance. It is the difference between a crash you bounce back from and a crash that ends your time on the bike. If you are over 40 and you are not lifting twice a week, this is the conversation that should change that. The practical programme is in our strength training for cyclists guide.
The VO2max Prescription, Exactly
Most prescriptions for VO2max work in the cycling internet are vague. Friel's is not.
He gives the workout. Five times three minutes at 90 to 100 percent of your all-out five-minute power, with three minutes recovery between efforts. Twice a week maximum. Once a week if that is what your recovery can hold.
The reference point is critical. He does not want you guessing your zones. He wants you to do an all-out five-minute test, take the average power, and use that number as your target. Heart rate is useless for three-minute efforts — by the time your heart rate catches up, the interval is over. A power meter is the tool. TrainingPeaks is where most of his athletes log it.
The other piece almost everyone gets wrong — periodise it. Run the VO2max block for six to eight weeks. Then stop. After eight weeks the gains plateau and the injury risk starts rising. Switch to threshold work. Come back to VO2max when the next build phase needs it.
Most masters cyclists try to live in VO2max all year and wonder why they are constantly half-injured.
Protein, Carbs, And The Easy Weight Intervention
Friel's nutrition advice for older athletes is shorter than the internet would suggest. Two changes.
Cut high-glycemic carbohydrates — starches and sugars. Not eliminate them. Cut them. He is not asking you to become a Buddhist monk. He is asking you to stop eating like a 25-year-old.
Then increase protein. Around 1.5 grams per kg of bodyweight a day, spread across three meals. For most masters cyclists in the 70 to 80 kg range, that is 100 to 120 grams a day. Roughly 30 to 40 grams per meal.
The maths does the rest. If you are seriously hitting the protein target, there is not much room left in your daily calorie budget for the bag of sweets at 9pm. Body composition shifts without anyone counting calories.
Friel cited a recent study — researchers added 800 calories of pure protein per day to a group of athletes for eight weeks. Their bodyweight did not change. The same 800 calories from sugar would have caused significant weight gain. The macronutrient matters as much as the calorie. This is the easiest weight intervention masters cyclists never make.
The A-Race Ceiling
Friel is brutally clear on this. Two A-races a year. Three is the absolute ceiling. Beyond three is, in his words, almost a joke.
The reason is the taper, the peak, and the rebuild. Each A-race needs a build phase, a sharpening phase, the race itself, and a recovery period before the next build can start. The arithmetic does not allow for four or five proper peaks in a year.
He goes further. One A-race a year produces the highest peak of all. Two lowers each one slightly. Three lowers them more. Above three, the peaks flatten so much that the rider is essentially racing through the season without ever being properly sharpened.
Pair the A-races with B and C events you are willing to ride with residual fatigue. The rider who tries to be fresh for everything ends up sharp for nothing. The Not Done Yet coaching system is structured around exactly this kind of peaking calendar.
Healthspan Over Lifespan
The last twenty minutes of the conversation are the part I keep coming back to.
Friel talks about a friend, 13 years older than him, who died two months before we recorded — at age 92. The morning of his death, his friend rode the indoor trainer in his garage and ran on the treadmill. He died that afternoon.
Friel calls it a one-second loss of health. Most people in Western society have a thirty-year loss — the slow decline through the sixties, seventies and eighties, the chair, the medications, the loss of independence.
The whole point of the strength work, the VO2max session, the protein, the sleep, the consistency — it is not really about Sunday's group ride. That is the surface goal. The deeper one is healthspan. The version of your life where you are still throwing your leg over a top tube at 79.
Friel is the proof. He is not a freak. He is a coach who took his own advice for fifty years.
What Amateur Cyclists Can Actually Take From This
You are not training for a Cat 1 license at 79. Neither is most of our audience. But every principle Friel laid out is fixable, this week.
1. Lift twice a week. No exceptions. Twenty to thirty minutes. Upper body, core, and a heavy compound movement. Treat it like brushing your teeth — not a debate. Friel built a garage gym for this exact reason. Your version might be a corner of the spare room.
2. Run a six-to-eight-week VO2max block, then stop. Five times three minutes at 90 to 100 percent of your five-minute power, twice a week. After eight weeks, switch to threshold. Living in VO2max all year is how masters riders end up overtrained.
3. Get to 1.5g of protein per kg a day. Three meals, roughly 30 to 40 grams each. Cut high-glycemic carbs to make space. The bodyweight question takes care of itself.
4. Cap your season at two A-races. Build to them, taper for them, treat everything else as a training day. The rider who tries to be sharp for every event is never sharp for any.
5. Defend the seven hours of sleep. Melatonin drops with age. The thing that used to be automatic now has to be engineered. Dark room, consistent bedtime, no scrolling at midnight.
For the wider masters context — recovery windows, polarised distribution, strength periodisation — our masters cycling decision framework is the next read. The cycling over 40 evergreen guide is the foundation.
Listen To The Full Conversation
The full episode with Joe Friel is on the podcast and on YouTube. It is one of the most useful conversations we have had on the channel for any rider crossing — or already living on the other side of — 40.
If you want a 12-week plan that applies these principles to your week, the Roadman coaching system is built around exactly this brief. For a fast answer to a specific question about your own training, ask the Roadman AI coach.