Coachinginterview

HOW TO BEAT 99% BY GETTING FASTER WITH AGE | DR DAVID LIPMAN

with Dr David Lipman

1:09:20·19 February 2024

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DR DAVID LIPMAN

Dr David Lipman is one of the more useful voices in the masters-cyclist conversation: an Australian sports physician whose central claim is that age-related decline is driven by training gaps — parenthood, career stress, injury — rather than biology itself. His framing of 'floor matters more than ceiling' and 'injury-free time is the best predictor of performance' gives amateurs a structural way to think about decade-long consistency rather than chasing peak FTP cycles separated by extended breaks.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Dr David Lipman's central argument: age-related decline in athletes is driven by training gaps (parenthood, career stress, injury), not biology. Most people feel physically the same at 40 as at 30 — if they kept moving.
"Your floor matters more than your ceiling." Best training blocks count less than worst ones across decades. Set a floor you don't drop below — even when travelling, even when busy.
Best predictor of athletic performance is injury-free time. Best predictor of injury is previous injury. A 5-year Australian track and field study showed performance correlated best with injury-free accumulation, not training intensity peaks.
Replace short-term goals with non-negotiable standards. "Always ready to accept a long ride or run invitation today" is a better target than peak fitness cycles separated by extended breaks.
98% of the population reportedly never sprints again past age 25. Sprinting (real maximum effort) is a use-it-or-lose-it skill. Add short, full-effort sprints back into the routine.

TOPICS

Turning 40 doesn't mean you have to slow down—in fact, most people feel the same at 40 as they did at 30. The real issue is that gaps in training (from injury, illness, or life stress) are almost impossible to recover from, and the athletes who thrive as they age aren't chasing marginal gains; they're obsessively avoiding the multi-week breaks that derail progress. This conversation explores why your floor matters more than your ceiling, how identity shapes your long-term health, and what actually predicts performance over years, not weeks.

Key Takeaways

The best predictor of performance is injury-free time; avoid illness and injury at whatever cost, even if it means leaving a few percentage points on the table short-term—those gains compound over years.
Set a low threshold for action when building habits: finding your shoes and heart rate strap battery should be the entire goal on day one, not a 10k run—the win itself drives future commitment.
You don't lose endurance as you age, but you lose fast-twitch muscle fibers and speed quickly; strength training year-round (not just during racing blocks) is non-negotiable to offset age-related decline.
Identity is subjective and functional—you need to cast enough votes as 'an athlete' through small daily actions that your identity shifts before biology catches up; this identity matters more than any single workout.
Multi-week training gaps are the single biggest predictor of missed goals across a season, not altitude camps or ketones; optimizing for consistency matters far more than optimizing for marginal performance gains.
Community and meaning are harder to build than fitness but are equally critical; the loneliness epidemic is predicted to be the biggest health killer this decade, and sport/activity provides the scaffolding for modern community.

Expert Quotes

"You don't stop playing sport because you get old; you get old because you stopped doing sport."

"The standard you walk by is the standard you accept—so if you think it's okay to just jog to the bus, that's probably where you'll end up."

"Your floor is much more important than your ceiling. Your best training weeks mean much less than your worst ones, because the best predictor of performance is injury-free time."

CLAIMS FROM THIS EPISODE

Each tagged with the strength of evidence behind it.

EXPERT
Dr David Lipman, sports physician and endurance coach, argues that most age-related decline in athletes is caused by training gaps from life events rather than primary biological aging.
Source: Dr David Lipman, interviewed on the Roadman Cycling podcast
STUDY
Lipman cites a 5-year Australian track and field study showing that injury-free time was the strongest single predictor of athletic performance — a stronger correlate than training peak intensity.
Source: Australian Institute of Sport track-and-field research, summarised by Dr Lipman on the Roadman Cycling podcast
EXPERT
Lipman's framing: "your floor matters more than your ceiling" — best training blocks count less than worst ones across the long arc, so protecting baseline training continuity beats optimising individual peak phases.
Source: Dr David Lipman, Roadman Cycling podcast
EXPERT
Lipman recommends replacing short-term performance goals with non-negotiable readiness standards — e.g. always being ready to accept a long ride or run invitation on any given day.
Source: Dr David Lipman, Roadman Cycling podcast
STUDY
Anthony cites the (widely circulated) figure that approximately 98% of adults never sprint maximally again after age 25 — used to argue for explicitly adding short-duration full- effort sprints back into the masters athlete programme.
Source: Population activity data, summarised on the Roadman Cycling podcast

KEY QUOTES

“The best predictor of performance is injury free time one of the only things that tracks so the best predictor of injury is previous injury and one of the things that tracks best with performance is injury free time there's there's I think it was a 5 year study in Australian track and field and the thing that correlated best with performance was injury free time.”
Dr David Lipman — Performance coach and doctor

“Your floor is much more important than your ceiling so your best training weeks and your best training blocks mean much less in my mind than your worst ones across whatever period you're looking at so trying to set an appropriate floor and not go below that even with travel or whatever else is so crucial in my opinion.”
Dr David Lipman — Performance coach and doctor

“I've seen a quote I think it was like on a meme or something but a shocking amount of the population I think it said 98% of the population will never Sprint when they're past the age of 25 or something ridiculous like this.”
Anthony Walsh — Roadman Cycling podcast host

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT10 SECTIONS

The Gap That Ages Athletes

Dr David Litman welcome back to the ran podcast thanks very much for having me again it's uh cool to see we were just talking off fire it's I was just saying it's cool to see how much you've evolved in I think it was October 2022 I was on so you know call out 14 15 month long I think so maybe a little bit later but I mean the point being uh the Evolution's been cool to seeing so congratulations it's uh it's awesome stuff I had a milestone birthday recently I was 40 and as a 40 Milestone birthday kind of has you reflecting I was no different and and I actually honestly don't feel that much different at 40 than I did at 30 and I wish someone had have told me when I was 30 that you would feel the exact same a 40 and I maybe would have calibrated my you know my look as Pac in a Time TR I wouldn't have sprinted it at the start I would have had a more even distribution of speed across the last 10 years because I definitely haven't slowed down but I was looking at friends and you know flicking under Instagram some friends have lost touch with some who are still in my life and I was looking at those who dropped away from sport endurance sport specifically and it seems to follow a template that there's a gap and the Gap can be for many reasons they have a kid they lose a job stress is high and then they don't come back from the Gap so that's what I want to chat a little bit about today I want to explore this Gap the break in sport is almost always a precursor to a huge decline in health I've noticed with those have you noticed this type of Gap in friend of your or athletes you're observing yeah for sure I think there's there's so much to unpack there sometimes they say uh you don't stop playing sport or or doing sport because you get old you get old because you stopped doing Sport and that's probably the way to frame it and I mean there's so much to talk about because there when do you stop and you and probably me for to some degree are talking about people who did sport into their adult years beyond the end of college so to speak or university but there's a huge problem with people stopping sport at school or before they finish school or just after school there are some huge step offs you know particularly in the in the female population where you know around the teenage years maybe 16 17 is a real problem and then definitely once they finish school and there's no more compulsory sport maybe they go to the gym a bit or something like that and then it's about what are they doing there are they doing enough strength work or is it all you know I'm I'm uncomfortable in the gym situation I don't know what to do I'm just going to go and like ride on the bike or jog on the treadmill or something like that so I think there's a huge role for better physical education and by that I mean truly educating people on physical culture uh so teaching them how to lift weights teaching them how to live a healthy life rather than go play some sport so a true curriculum to enable them to be successful as they age and then as you say now there's a huge step off again because of whatever gets in the way for ex-athletes or people who thought of themselves as athletic I think there's a huge Delta there as well that we need to work on as a society I remember sitting an interview for a job once and they asked me what my greatest success in coaching was and my answer was really Crystal Clear it's a kid I worked with his mother was an Eastern block gymnast uh and he had this insane work ethic he started seeing me when he was 11 or 12 and I worked with him till he was 19 and by the time he was 19 he could write his own programs do all of his own strength programming all his own endurance programming and I was there to basically just talk to him and supervise a little bit and my success is I look at him now and he's I think nearing on it's probably in his mid to late 20s and he just lives a really active lifestyle does yoga climbs rocks runs lifts weights super healthy Super Active and I'm like that's success you know he's he almost made it he always made it pro to be honest but he didn't but he's kept being active and like that's the real success there I mean if he got in one contract and lost it then who cares yeah it needs to be a lifetime Pursuit there's no Nike used to have a slogan before just do it and it was there is no Finish Line I remember I actually think in a lot of ways that's a better slogan yeah I love that I mean again sometimes I I've been asked a lot of times in my life because I've never been particularly good in athletics is like you know what are you training for and my extented answer is life and if you think about it that way you know there's all sorts of people branding things you cenar deons whatever like however you need to brand it up it just has to work for you whatever you have to do needs to align with your why in life so that you can keep going because motivation is very fleeting but a true sense of why and understanding that helps you stay committed and disciplined but it's almost standards isn't it if you think about goals and standards for me are very different people set goals all the time in New Year my goal is I'm going to drop 10 pound and I've seen this so many times with friends who are maybe on the bread line with earning cash their goal is okay I want to make a little bit of extra cash and sometimes it happens but most of the time it doesn't happen or it does happen for a short period of time but their standard is they just get by they just pay the bills but something unexpected will come in like a a new tax hike or a new Levy a new housing tax for it comes in and all of a sudden they need to pay an extra 1500 or 2,000 a month and they still find a way to almost get by because their standard is they almost get by and when I sort of transpose that into the athletic realm I think for me that's the most important thing it's not a short-term goal to win a race it's well I have a standard that I want to be healthy I want to be able to respond to a text message from a friend whether it's do you want to go for a 100 mile bike ride or do you want to run a half Martin tomorrow and it's like boom I'm ready and that's the standard I try and keep but I think so often we don't set a standard for ourselves and that's what leads to you know this massive complication in health problems longtail down the line yeah couldn't agree more there something that came to mind while you said that Ben Ryan I don't know if you're familiar but I think he's now director of performance or something similar at brenford but previously was with the Fiji rugby sens and won a gold medal and his famous statement is the standard you walk by is the standard you accept and I wonder how that applies in the situation is like the standard you're happy to accept in your life or whatever the one that you're happy to uh accept is is where you'll end up it's that's the capacity you'll end up at so if you think that it's okay to just be able to sort of J to the bus if you need to it's probably where you'll end up but if you think the standard is being able to say yes to your friends then that's the standard you'll be you know you you'll uh fall to I've seen a quote on it like look this isn't any sort of solid reference but I seen a quote I think it was like on a meme or something but a shocking amount of the population I think it said 98% of the population will never Sprint when they're past the age of 25 or something ridiculous like this that was a jarring enough statistic yeah it makes a ton of sense to me there's a couple of guys that I I follow that I think have been popularizing this think Max Shimano comes to mind and um somebody else I can't remember but yeah it's actually something I've been reflecting on because I do a ton of endurance running but I'm like I

Why Cyclists Break When They Run

Wonder if I could Sprint I mean I've run pretty fast but like pretty fast and sprinting and not the same and I'd be like I'd be I think I'd be comfortable and not too worried about tearing something because I'm not fast enough to really tear something only fast people tear things but uh and I'd be pretty happy with my tendons but yeah I wonder this a lot I mean cycling audience is a great example I say this a lot of the time like cycling's really really good for you except not so much for your bones and tendons your tendons and Bones pretty much do nothing in cycling and I I I'm concerned with people who cycle as they age not because of the cycling but because of what they're not doing it's they're not running or they're not lifting weights or they're not something else and it's just when you go to another activity that you realize like I like a little bit of rock climbing and so I'll go back to the wall but I could have you know six week eight weeks sometimes if I'm in a RAC and block towards the end of the season where I don't climb and then I go back to the wall and there's a very nice grading system on the wall where it's like for ABC 5 ABC and you jump back into what it's called a modest Target for you from previous experience and the Doms the next day it's out of control it feels like you crashed in a bunch Sprint like you can't even brush your teeth it's so bad yeah I mean rock climbing is particularly Niche around the forearms as well it's particularly bad if you want to type the next day it's brutal um yeah I think it's it's so true though I mean interesting there's a ton of cyclist running at the moment and they are machines they run so well it's insane to see it's just their injury resilience is so low in that context because of you know cycling isn't running and the as I said bone and tend and loading is significant so uh yeah I think it's the same reasons that people say it's good when you age are the ones that makes it bad while you're age same with swimming like the reason it's good as you age is the reason it's bad why you age as well I looked across we talked about that Gap in life but I was looking at that Gap from uh annual perspective recently the turn of the year I went back and I looked across behind the podcast we have a a coaching company and that was actually a precursor to the podcast we don't really publicize it anymore because we're kind of always maxed out with clients but we've about a hundred or so clients working with coaches behind the podcast and when I was looking across at all the athletes obviously I have that overview across all the coaches and I was looking across at who achieved their goals and who didn't achieve their goals across the season season and the biggest thing that I could pick out it wasn't people who were using ketones who got away for an altitude block it was the people who had no multi-week blocks off in the middle of the year so that's no sickness no injuries no extended holidays like I need to go away skiing with the with you know the misses and the kids for a week no massive stress and I just wondered like as athletes we spend so much time looking at these marginal gains should we be more optimizing for how do we avoid those prolonged periods yeah and that's maybe where the conversation should be happening more where I hear very few conversations happening around that people are majoring in the minors I suppose is another way to say it yeah you need to listen to me more no jokes aside um my biggest thing like I am so risk averse with injury for this reason exactly the best predictor of performance is injury free time one of the only things that tracks so the best predictor of injury is previous injury and one of the things that tracks best with performance is injury free time there's there's I think it was a 5e study in Australian track and field and the thing that correlated best with performance was injury free time and all that says to me is the thing you need to be doing is avoiding injury and illness at whatever cost that is and it also says to me that your floor is much more important than your ceiling so your best training weeks and your best training blocks mean much less in my mind than your worst ones across whatever period you're looking at so trying to set an appropriate Flor and not go below that even with travel or whatever else is so crucial in my opinion so anybody I'm talking do in a coaching capacity or in an advisory capacity I'm always like you just need to be risk averse in that whatever you can do to avoid this stuff even if you leave a couple percentage out there I think the percentages you leave out there this year are going to pay dividends next year and the year after and the year after and that's the biggest challenge with so much of our research or the way we practice is like what does this insert supplement insert program insert whatever do on this day or this week or this month or this block of training not what does it do in the next five years what are the cumulative effect itive benefits if it's one of a% better every day that's going to be inconsequential in any timeline that isn't multiple year that's an absolutely beautiful expression it's more important to have Flor than a ceiling yeah yeah I I mean even if you're thinking about habits and building a healthy lifestyle and James Clear like this is all James clear's work but he talks a lot about setting an un like setting a standard that's uncomfortably low to start with that's too easy to not do so the example he gives is if you want to do 100 push-up in a day or if you want to get to doing 100 push-ups don't do a Max effort today do one push-up a day for a week it's so small you can't not do it and then but next week you have to do two so by the time it gets to a difficult amount or a timec consuming amount that you may have a reason not to do it it's already a habit you've been doing it for months already so by the time it's call it 30 or 40 it's almost a year down the track it's like oh I can do 40 push-ups in a day so all of a sudden you're doing 40 push-ups in a day all of a sudden yeah 100 is that far off it's almost like the threshold of action I think about that as I was talking to a friend recently and he was talking about his goals for the year and his goals are massive for the year but this is someone who's been very inactive for a period of time and he was almost insulted when he was asking me about his goals and I was like like find your shoes like that should be your goal like you should have a minimum like the treshold of action should be so low for you today that it's like oh in an entire day surely find time to get a battery of my heart rate strap and find my shoes that's all I have to do today and now tomorrow we're building on that and now the next day we're building on that people set these huge lofty goals and then the threshold for Action is just too high that it's just like you know what it's just too intimida to get started on 100 push-ups a day yeah 100% you need to and you need to set in those little wins as well they all need to be part of the wins because that will drive success the challenge with healthy habits generally or things that are what most people would consider healthy is they're more like like paying cash you have to earn that up front you pay the cost up front which is I have to do the work before I get the cash whereas unhealthy things generally it's the other way around it's a credit card it's I get to have the fun up front and then I have to pay with a hangover or I have to pay with a insert something else so because of that you have to build in wins into little sub goals so that you can actually do that healthy Behavior right so if it's going instead of going for the 10k run it's like all I going to do is heart rate strap battery shoes and you're like oh and if I get out the door that's a bonus so now you feel like you've done extra which

Casting Votes for Your Identity

Is then perpetuating and I think you mentioned James cla's book Atomic habits which is a great book but one of the ideas he has on the kind of Builds on this as well is this idea of a vote for the type of person we want to become so if we find our battery for our heart rate strap and our runners okay that's one vote in the yes I'm now a runner camp and the more ballots we can cast to say yes I'm a runner that changes their identity and an identity shift is super powerful if I think back to periods in my life when I've been the least healthy and the least fit I went on this kind of Serial entrepreneur route where I was setting up so many businesses I balancing five or six different things and managing venture capital and stuff and I totally lost sight of my health goals because I thought I'm no longer a pro athlete I'm no longer chasing Pro contracts I'm retired and I was just not cycling and I was done on this entrepreneurial thing and the only thing that eventually pulled me over when I cut myself on and like I'm putting on weight I'm actually pretty unhealthy even though I by any metric whether it's FTP body fat I'm a very unhealthy dude I hadn't changed that identity because I historically cast enough votes where I was like no I'm an athlete I'm an athlete that's in bad shape I'm in like a extended winter but I'm an athlete so I put myself in the situation straight away where I was like ringing back up the national team Anders like hey I want to get back on the track you know what can I do can I get involved in the on the tandem or something like that and I'm going over to these camps grossly overweight but that was getting me back into the environment which was the Catalyst of me getting back fit again but that was all because of how I see myself and that identity yeah and you also engineered your environment right you intentionally put yourself in a position where people are going to be supportive around you the standards back to what we said before are very high when you turn up to that camp they're like they would have looked at you and you would have thought gez I'm below the standard here I have to pick this up right versus if you went by yourself you be like okay I got to do a little bit better so I mean part of what you did was a level of self awareness which is I know that I can COPE in here and I this will be good for me but the other thing is you know you set really high standards and and held excuse the short Interruption as you can see from the background I'm over in beautiful sunny Jona but this isn't my reality normally I'm time crunched in Dublin need to make the most of every single error that's why I heavily rely on my w bike I love it and I recommend it to you because it just works there's no 10-minute setup no unfolding legs banging my shins off stuff or wrestling to take a back greasy wheel off just jump on and it works it's also compatible with all the major egaming platforms connects instantly if you're looking for an indoor trainer I couldn't recommend it any higher it's the last indoor trainer you're ever going to need head on over to W bike.com and use the code roadman 10 that's roadman teen and that's going to knock you 10% off your W bike today I reckon identity is I'm not sure if James CLA talks about this I reckon identity is a subjective measure rather than an objective measure yeah it's completely subjective it's how you see yourself it's completely different to how someone else sees you because at that point when you you still belied you're a cyclist if you walk down the street and said to somebody do you think I'm a professional cyclist I'm not sure they would have said yes yeah so but so it's completely subjective and even how you see yourself if you ask somebody like you know I'm sitting here on the podcast with you I see you as a successful podcaster you may or may not feel that you may or may not have somebody else who disagrees with you right Joe Rogan may look at you and maybe think yes maybe think no it's hard to know but it's completely subjective so you need a degree of like to create a term here like functional delusion ISM yeah well you have to believe I I once had a tutor at University I'll never forget this this is my first year of University which is dating me a little bit but you know a good 20 years ago and he said to me I I remember saying to him I hate the self assessments you used to have to give ourselves a grade out of 10 and he said if you don't give yourself a 10 I am absolutely not giving you a 10 I was like but hate doing that I don't feel like it's like well if you don't think it's your best work how am I going to tell you what's the best thing you could do and I remember thinking this is so uncomfortable but he had a really good point here which is you kind of if you don't think it's if you don't believe it then no one else is going to believe it so there's definitely a component of having to build that and build around and and living into that expectation right so if we have to live into the expectation of being an athlete what does an athlete do behave that way until you are that until it it becomes your your habits become that and eventually your identity changes we talked about those gaps looking at a training season and you want to avoid those multi-week gaps obviously injury is one of the ways and we can come back and touch on that but illness is another one you know a typical person I've seen a study recently I think it was two to six illness events per year in the general population which is massive and when I reflect back on my health and happiness and I kind of view them in tandem there seems to be quite a big correlation at least anecdotally for me between health and happiness at the times I've been happiest I've had the least frequent instances of illness is there a correlation between the two 100% I couldn't agree more there's Eric Brockman was an editor of a book and he had this website I can't remember exactly but he had a forum and basically the thesis was each year he'd release a book and the book was a series of essays but some of the world's best Minds were talking Neil Neil degrass Tyson Fineman like these sort of people and he would have one question and ask it to a bunch of scientists and they would answer from their field and one of them was this idea must die it's like what what's one idea that has to die and then he produced a book that year that was you know all of these essays and I can't remember who it was but they wrote and they basically said this the The Germ theory model of disease needs to die because before germ Theory we had this thought of myms aasm was you know Anthony got sick because he's done something bad in his life you've done You' had some ill or you've done something bad right you a bad person or you did whatever there was this Global appreciation of something bad then we found out germs caused diseases and we found antibiotics and now it's like sort of single bullet single kill thing which is you have a distinct pathology we can diagnose it with a single test and we can treat it with a single cause so you became very unilateral and we stop looking at the greater sort of whole body system and the psychology of it all right and there's this huge divide in medicine between the mind and and the Brain between neurology and psychology or Psychiatry rather so we're starting to get to a stage of medicine where there's more appreciation of the Mind Body Connection and moving back towards this whole body sort of idea so yes you're 100% correct mood all those things will impact immune system all of it so you couldn't be more correct in that uh the two are very much linked and that but bidirectionally as well you're going to be less happy if you're more sick more often so they're kind of B directional so breaking that is very difficult right breaking that cycle of and and athletes would attest to this with injury is like injury unhappy more injury can't get back trying to get back you know and it's a cycle of downward spiral it's really hard to break and what do

Defining Happiness and Daily Habits

We mean when we say happy because I have a vision of what happy Means for me but is there an objective what happy actually means is it low cortisol levels or is there some other objective measure for What happiness is I don't I mean I'm I'm not well versed in in the research but there's nothing I've seen that suggests it's anything other than how do you feel and you know are you happy enough dayto day I mean there's some interesting to use the inverse of that there's some interesting stuff that's happening around being able to predict uh unhappiness depression these sort of things with uh changes in Gate like walking gate and those sort of things so there's some real interesting changes there and it the the high level Cliff Notes is kind of the more metronomic Things become the worse they are in physiology so you want a high heart rate variability not a metronomic heart rate you want a high variability in Step rates not a metronomic sort of Step rate so that's my read on it it's again I prefess no level of true Mastery over the literature but that's kind of the high level read I've gotten from it and it makes some sense and it's really interesting and like insert companies here you know's coming to tell you you're depressed at some point I'm sure or be able to predict it but uh yeah defining happiness is hard but I think yeah I mean I'm sure you've done a bunch of work on this I'm doing a bunch of work on this myself is what is happy and how does happy look and how can I be happy I guess have you read Michael Esther's Comfort crisis I haven't but I I'm I'm sure I will like it and it's going to feed all my biases given the the name of it yeah interesting book definitely worth reading and for me yeah I don't know what happiness is but I have a little bit of a prescription that I know makes me happy and I leave out one of those things I need to be training I need to be whether that's running cycling I need to be just active and breaking a sweat and that needs to be a combination of long slow stuff and some full gas stuff I know if I Adit one of those and I have a period where I'm like okay I'm not going to race so then I typically default to not doing anything hard and just do cruy coffee spins with friends I know that doesn't make me happy I know I need to lift some stuff I know I need exposure to extreme cold and extreme heat not every day but I need little bits of it I know I need to spend time connected with my girlfriend with family and I know I need to be progressing in something I need to be have something I'm chasing like I'll read a lot about blockchain and I need to do something that makes smoke come out my ears and when I have that sort of formula I'm happy when I start thinking I can admit one of those things I'll I won't focus on training or I won't bother doing any cold work it's like uh oh hello darkness my old friend yeah I think that's it's really harder to find happiness but it's easier to talk about the ingredients that lead to it I think you're spot on and I think you've touched on most of them I mean the other things I'd say sleep you need to be sleeping properly uh you need to have yes a good diet as well diet high and processed and and sort of fast foods is never going to help anybody achieve anything except for maybe some weight gain um so yeah I'd say those are the other missing there you definitely need to have a sense of meaning and maybe that's what you're talking about your learning maybe that's where you derive your meaning from as well but I think you touched on community and that's a huge part of it as well I think it's the bit that we don't really talk about because it's the hardest to quantify and develop like if I told you to start exercising you can do that tomorrow if I said go find Community like how do you even start that it's the hardest bit it's the hardest bit and the World Health Organization have identified loneliness as the likely biggest killer over the next decade and the antidote to loneliness for me is community so we need to be working on that and like you're saying it's not easy when you're not 14 years old it's hard to kind of walk up to somebody be like hey you want to be my friend you want to go hiking together let's go rock climbing it's like what's this guy's angle yeah exactly and I think that's but you just mentioned a couple of activities and I think that's how we're finding Community right so whatever you believe about religion good bad or indifferent and however religious you want to be is is irrelevant but religion provided people a level of community and we are increasingly seeing that in other activities so we can see that in sporting activities we're seeing a lot of and if you look at straa Stats and all those things they'll all say you know communities are growing in that space um amongst different Generations as well and then you're seeing Community whether you like it or not around diet people are starting to use diet as an ideology you're seeing the same around politics and all those things I think that's replacing some of what the sort of slow death of religion in our society is causing and again I'm not necessarily Pro anti- religion it's just what I'm observing yeah you know what just looking on some of the happiest people in our religious people I kind of had anyone that grew up in Ireland in 80s and '90s kind of had religion Force down their throat a little bit so I was you know every week into mass and then you push back on it in your 20s like this is a lot of [ __ ] but now I'm looking at it's like most of the happiest people I know have some sense of spirituality about them and even if you zoom out and you look at religion not specifically Catholicism any religion it's a pretty good set of rules to live by and in the absence of another user instr stru manual for how we live our lives it's not a bad set of rules you know be nice to your neighbor don't cover his stuff like it's pretty Common Sense stuff yeah I think the evolution of it was probably out of um things that were observed to be good so like hey this seems to create problems in society let's make this a rule in our organization that we don't do that right like that's kind of probably how it came about like without again don't want to understand anyone's religion please don't come at me but like the reality reality the situation is however these things evolve they seem to evolve for a reason you say I say this in the sporting context a lot of the time is Success leaves Clues if everybody's doing something or not doing it it might be a reason for that because they have a vested interest in this getting this stuff right it's the same with religion like if you're organizing a society and you're using religion to do it you're probably going to make a bunch of rules that probably help like don't eat this at this time because it could cause disease don't do this because it's going to cause social disharmony in the society right don't steal your neighbor stuff because yeah it's probably going to be a problem you know there's it's it's that sort of stuff right zooming back into my recent birthday and feeding in my paranoia about how my whole body's about to start atrophying at the moment from a biological perspective what's the mechanisms I play as athletes start to get older what's the lightly impact on speed and endurance so endurance seems to actually be pretty robust uh we seem to maintain that better I mean you have to stimulate it there's no question um but it seems to be a little bit better maintained we tend to lose our faster twitch muscle fibers earlier so that'll mean we get slower and less strong per se uh for the same sort of given output so those need more work they Decay quickest they're the hardest to develop you know you're generally born with that stuff right there's no one who was developed as a sprinter everyone was kind of born fast and then developed further so they certainly Decay quickest hardest to develop uh and that's an acute and chronic timelines so if you're a sprinter and you take some time off your speed will Decay quick more than anything else so speed and strength certainly or power speed strength certainly Decay

Muscle Loss and Anabolic Resistance

Quickest um and then you'll lose muscle mass of course but the endurance seems to be maintained and maybe that's because our lives are more endurance-based but it certainly does seem to be maintained there's some really cool research by Bas furin I think is his name is a Dutch researcher looking at some of these Elite world champion ex- world champions in their like 70s and ' 80s looking at their V2 Maxes and they pretty pretty high like in the 50s 60s I think from memory please don't quote me on that but you know that's high if you're 70 something years old so yeah interesting these guys both say they don't they don't miss days of training and they're very risk adverse in their injuries but I digress so I mean what happens so those things happen you lose fast switch muscle fiber definitely function and probably some fibers as well so you need to maintain that you get a level of what they call anabolic resistance which means it's harder to put on muscle mass now I'll categorically say I think in my opinion this is a really normal distribution thing which is if if you've achieved a certain level of muscle mass in your life it's going to be harder to put more on hence anabolic steroids for bodybuilders Etc and I think that that that level changes as we age but I think that exists because my dad at 70 something years old put on like kilograms and kilograms of muscle mass because he went from doing no strength working his whole life to a bunch of gym work all of a sudden got yeah that's what I was curious about it's like how much can we so if we have this offset from I don't know in testosterone starts to client say age of 35 and we have this annual offset but can we work against that because if our Baseline up to that point I'm thinking of a lot of us as endurance athletes especially my generation because it wasn't entirely clear or at least it was a guarded secret whether you should do strength training or not I remember you know even working with World Tour physiologists and they're like I'm not sure how much it should be in the gym and that's totally changed in the last decade there was almost unilateral agreement that you need to be having some element of strand training year round but for someone who's been in endurance ATL for a long time and neglected strength training and then they get into the gym is adding in two three gym sessions a week going to more than offset that natural decline I think you can I mean the research would say you definitely decline at a slower rate so it's worthwhile anyway but my personal opinion and from what I've seen is if you've gone from very little to doing quite a bit especially if you're training properly with intensity and commitment I think you could see an increase the question is how long is that increase going to um be sustained or is it going to be the short period And I think you probably see a level of increase and then sort of normal out I think biology is pretty much undefeated and it's inefficient to build muscle and all those things so I think you'll see a level of hypertrophy if that's what you're after I definitely you'll see strength gain but strength is mostly neurological and we're starting to see this more and more in a mixture of Blood Flow Restriction Training research and strength training research we starting to really understand probably what we understood you know I I certainly understood this or thought this to be true in the early 2000s when I was doing some some stuff where if you look at the biggest body in the world they are not the strongest athletes and you look at the weightlifters the two polar ends of the spectrum and there seems to be a huge degression or a huge decoupling of size and strength whereas in most people it's pretty well coupled and I think we're starting to see this so what I'm getting out there is you can certainly as you age maintain strength now whether you maintain muscle size probably is not going to be the case you'll probably atrophy a little bit but if you know if Arnold sweger still looks big today like he's not a small man so there's certainly a level of plastic change and then certainly an ount of Maintenance you can do yeah because I've definitely observed there a an element of old man strength which physical manual laborers Curry like I look at my dad who's just you know a different generation where he just lifted stuff his whole life but never really been to the gym yeah and at 70 years old like even squeezing your toe with his hands like he'll crush your femur it's painful yeah I I remember I'll never forget meeting a guy who was a Dairy Farmer and he was in his maybe even 80s and he had almost complete carpal tunnel syndrome which meant basically the flexes of like his grip strength was completely impaired by this neurological problem he had all this muscle atrophy in his hands and yet this gu had a vice grip he almost crushed my hands in a way that most people would have zero strength and I was like this guy it's just because he's done so much work in all these compensatory muscles so what I'm getting at is Dad strength is a real thing and it's mostly neurological there's obviously muscular components to it there's no question but yeah that's a real thing and you don't get that in the gym I I think it's dying outside of the people who are you know manually laboring but yeah there is a ton of Neurology to strength um if anyone's interested in it like pavl teline is a really good one to read on this he basically brought the kettle bell to America uh really interesting Russian guy and he's got a book called he's got a bunch of books anyway one of them is about strength training and it's it's all about the Neurology of developing it and uh his whole concept is grease the groove which is a neurological phenomenon of like Get in that movement do the movement often and uh and you'll get stronger so the manual laborers are an interesting one to observe because it seems like we've taken a evolutionary misstep with the amount of time we spend on screens on phones when I look at people who are farmers their Builders into their 50s into their 60s they have a level of health and fitness which is totally different to what our friends who are you know Bankers coders they're they're almost like they're not even the same species yeah I mean the research on this stuff is interesting because heavy manual labor seems to actually decrease lifespan a little bit I think it probably improves function compared to completely being sedentary but I think if you're moderately active someone like yourself if you lift enough weights do enough if you maintain your cardio you'll probably be better off in the long term because of probably not acquiring so much wear and tear injury type stuff because most of us know the man like friends of manual laborers they're forever you know maybe not their 20s and 30s but by the time they're 50 there's something that's a bit funny they got a shoulder that'sit fall off scaffolding or something like that exactly 100% And like it's a high risk in that respect or they're in a funny position and they got a back that's not 100% so I do think there probably it's probably like most things it's like a a normal distribution if you're highly active as a result of your job or as a result of your training it's probably not quite as good as being moderately active or something like that recovery is the one thing everyone's hammering down my throat saying you're going to really Notice Recovery they're saying like the first thing that you'll have to cut out is multi-stage races you know five six day events you're going to find recovery bad on those honestly maybe my training Lo's not high enough at 12 hours 13 hours a week to notice this recovery yet but I haven't really started feeling the pinch on recovery yet what's the the variables in your experience to determine when people start feeling uh compromised recovery yeah it's a really good question I think look no 100% of coaches would tell you that young people recover better than older people do right but we're tending to think of it binary things we're talking about the 20-y old versus the 40-year old it's pretty gradual slope and I think you definitely have less us to call there's this concept of adaptive Reserve that Electro once brought up to me which is kind of like your ability to adapt and I think that's probably speaks to recovery Reserve as well I think that's part of it but I also think the life stress that

Recovery and Cumulative Life Stress

You have because it's your body doesn't respond to training it responds to a cumulative stresses all of the cumulative stresses in your life and nobody's life is more complicated at 20 than it was at 40 like it just isn't so I think that's part of it uh I think you look sleep which is the key to recovery definitely gets worse with age I mean you can try and maintain it and some people still have good sleep in their 40s or 50s but it's not going to be as good as it was in your 20s and if it wasn't quite good in your 20s it's because you were doing something to ruin it which you know most people most people did so I think those it's hard to disentangle those things it's also hard to say you know we talked about anab resistance before which is your ability to put on muscle but there's also like a bit of perhaps your absorption or use of things some nutrients isn't quite as good as we age so it's pretty hard to disentangle I think one thing to consider is what your total load is and then to use stage racing as an example like if you're doing 12 hours a week and then you do say five 12 hour days yeah you're going to struggle to recover but so with a 20-year old maybe they recover a little bit better than you but if your stage is are say 4 hours a day and it's a 3-day stage r you do 12 hours a week normally probably okay probably not going to feel a pinch there because you're kind of conditioned to that where you're going to struggle and you know the best example and kind of back to where we talked about before if I asked you to go play a game that had a bunch of high speed running in it that's where you're going to struggle to recover you're going to maybe pull a hamstring certainly be very sore for a period of time because you're not conditioned to it so I think more so than in our 20s you've really got to prepare for what you're trying to do right and maybe that's I'm trying to be able to say yes to everybody and in that case you have to do something very chaotic like CrossFit I'm not necessarily Pro CrossFit but it's pretty chaotic and I think training in that sort of sense may allow you to deal with the chaotic nature of my kid wants to do this and my mate said to do that and I hang out with a bunch of 20-y olds who want to go play a game to pick up basketball you mentioned changing nutrient yeah levels is there different supplementation regimes that we should be looking at as we age that those needs evolve H I think we're starting to to appreciate better and better like the importance of protein you know if you generally as people age they tend to eat a little bit less protein uh the extreme example being people who are quite elderly often they talk about the tea and toast diet becomes very common uh and so I think you need to get as much protein as maybe not as much as possible but most people are probably underc consuming protein I would say is the the first thing there I'd say again I don't think this is an age specific thing I'm pretty bullish on Creatine and its benefits for athletic performance across the full spectrum of Athletics although it's definitely more beneficial in speed power uh I'd say what are you taking like five grams yeah five grams a day every day pretty much as I can um and then I think I'm very bullish on it in post concussion TBI type of stuff and Tommy Wood's done a bunch of got a bunch of really interesting content around that uh and then I think it's pretty helpful for brain health in terms of both mental health aspects but also just generally you know sort of processing speed especially if you've got a low creatine diet which is basically low animal flesh so vegetarian vegan uh particularly and then I think there's some interesting stuff on bone health which is a bit inconclusive but given the cost of creatine which is almost nothing it's one of the cheapest supplements for soap uh I just I don't see a downside to it like I can't there's not a lot of side effects I mean you retain a bit of water maybe if you have huge doses you get a bit of GI upset maybe but other than that there's not a lot of downside to it so it's just something that I tend to think is is important uh for people and then the rest of it's all pretty much based on sort of individual aspects you might be saying fish oil might be some value for people there might be other things as well but it's kind of hard to know I'm personally big fan of sort of magnesium to help me sleep uh but yeah I think that's all choices What A Catch Roan you know how serious I take my goal setting and I know how serious you take it too so whether you're chasing Fitness or lifestyle goals and you're looking for a powerful like to support you on this journey look no further than heal heel has become my secret weapon for when I don't have time to prepare a balanced me it means I get the nutrition I need without sacrificing time or taste plus it stops me from reaching for the takeaway menu I always throw a bottle of this banana into my backpack when I'm heading into the City and it stops me eating junk convenience foods that don't support my training goals it's handy it's nutritious it's 22 gram of protein it's perfect for athletes that don't have time to cook or prepare food before a training session it's convenient nutritious fuel at your fingertips ensuring you hit your daily fueling needs hu ready to drink has over 26 essential vitamins and minerals in every bottle making sure you get 175 health benefits plus it's made from amazing natural ingredients like sunflower seed coconut and more and the best part eight mouthwatering flavors my favorite's the banana that's what's in my backpack at the moment you can get hu direct to your home by going to hu.com roadman that's hu huel.com roadman are you excited about Ai and this because for me when I look at all the different aspects of health wearables and all the data we have now it seems like they all operate in their own little silos as almost do professionals you know I'll go to a sports psychologist I'll go to a physiotherapist I'll go to strength conditioning coach they all have very little unless you're high performance and you're in one of these you know high performance environments where they're having group meetings and sharing data they're all also operating inside their own silos but the more and more I start to understand health and fitness both from physical and Mentor it's all very interconnected does AI give the possibility to start making these connections more and more it does have the possibility and the question is always going to be like any new tool how willing a people to use it so if you took your aing to your doctor and you said oh listen my HRV is low and my temperat up most of them would look at you like you're speaking Spanish like you need to problem yeah you need to want to engage with it and you need to want to learn and you need to want to do those things and I think if you are dealing with a system that is very stressed and that could be sub Elite Sport that could also be the medical system could be any of those things if you're dealing with those systems where's the incentive and how do we remunerate how do weate learning there so now you've got a case of the people who want to learn learn and those who don't want to learn don't learn now you have Haves and Have Nots so then you end up with maybe 10% of people who can use this stuff properly and the rest who can't so it becomes very difficult but could it break down some of these silos it certainly could by creating understanding between them but I think where we're at at the moment I'd say it's probably going to pull up a bunch of correlations for you and we can call that AI if we want it's probably more like an aspect of a correlation engine and then we look at it and go like we have to draw our own conclusions so it becomes another tool it's just pulling up it's it's a flagging system it's you know we used to have this in Elite Sport you have these flagging systems this guy's whatever his profile of mood States is is elevated like or is low we need to check on him or his running load has been too high we

AI, Coaches, and High Performance

Need to check on him so you'd have a a sophisticated traffic light flagging system I think it probably takes that to another level at this stage and then for those who can really use it as a tool it might help them level up but you know talking to people who run AI coaching platforms they don't think it's the end of coaches they think it's just another tool that allows coaches to scale better so it allows you to see more data take in more data use more data and then make better decisions based on that and be able to see and benefit more athletes so I think it probably fortunately unfortunately starts to kill off a level of coaches or Professionals in any space that are not quite at that level and then those who are using I worked doing advisory stuff for Jordan carbert on the Breakaway app and again we have this conversation all the time I don't think the Breakaway app gets rid of coaches it maybe makes life hard for the really [ __ ] coaches the people who are copy and paste there's your week Y no insight and no look no no evolution in their coaching season on season I think they're in trouble AI is coming for them fast and it's going to be the same in every profession I think it's coming for bad lawyers it's coming for bad coders it's coming for yeah it's coming for the bottom of every profession I think so I think you know I sort of I have a newsletter that I write looking at the the the Nexus between health and performance and I recently wrote about the difference between High per like a high performance mindset versus Elite Performance versus professional pay grades so the concept is kind of professional is a pay grade some people make it there some people don't Elite is a level of performance those two sometimes correlate sometimes they don't and then high performance is a mindset and I think if you have a high performance mindset you're constantly looking for feedback you're constantly looking to level up you're constantly looking to improve I think those people are going to be fine because they're going to use AI as a tool they're going to evolve from there whereas people who are happy and comfortable and don't really want to develop they're going to struggle because it's coming fast right even I mean wearables are coming fast people what about your athlete who turns up with a Moxy Monitor and says like hey what does this mean like what do you do then like so is there any wearable that you're like so for me I'm trying to look at I'm using Aura ring I'm using whoop and a lot of time I chat to Dan PL about this a lot of time I'm worried that something like heart rate variability is in its Essence it's it's a very complicated measurement and whoop and Ora ring have tried to simplify it to just a number it's like number is high equals good number is low equals bad and then people are making training decisions based on high is good low is bad when it's actually a lot more nuanced than that so I supp the challenge is or my question is here how do you take something that is inherently complex and dumb it down enough that it has an application to a wider audience yeah I think from a product design standpoint they have to do that and the industry is requiring that of people now because that's what the consumer wants think maybe AI helps here which is AI starts to input a bunch of data starts to pull a bunch of data you know maybe like using AA whip as an example maybe whoop because they got the whoop coach whoop coach looks at your HRV but in the context of your heart rate and your respiratory rate and your sleep and maybe your body temperature and goes oh well actually higher may not be better today right if it get there and we get AI there we start to show pattern and go like hey this is this is a problem maybe it gets smart enough there to then say yeah this is a problem but again that's probably more patent recognition than it is truly AI but I do think we could get there I think part of the challenge is a lot of people don't want to you know back to sort of thinking fast and slow I'm not sure if you read the book but um yeah good book yeah so system one system two thinking right like people want a system one answer and they don't want to do the system two work and so it's super nuance super difficult I mean lactate the other example I think yeah like lactate so much more complex than people give it credit for and I think um yeah Olaf bu was saying on the podcast to me basically almost no one should be using lactates to draw training conclusions he said it's just such everyone was looking at him on Instagram and blo felt and Eden and our friends going oh I need to be doing sending me links to his Instagram going I need to be doing lactates lactates are where it's at and I was like firstly lactates are around since the 80s this is not something new that Olaf has figured out but shot to him about how easy it is to contaminate a lactate reading and then you draw training deductions because we typically don't do lactates very often we use it as maybe a baseline Tes and at the end of a block now you're drawing all your training inferences from Bad data it's not a good spot to be in no I mean lactate yeah it it's a lot more complex than everyone thinks it is I think he's spot on I mean I spent a little bit of time with him and he's influenced my thinking a lot on this but I think unless you have multiple data sources to serve as like other inputs into your understanding of the physiological situation and you're not take and unless you're taking lactate very regularly it's going to be hard to not get not not be getting something that could be pretty bad in terms of data quality because if you have other inputs right could be heart rate could be you know you want to use something like Moxy you want to use whatever it is you want to use all of these things you have now got six eight 10 objective data sources coming in plus subjective data from the person because that's you know the most powerful computers is between the two years so now once we have that and then we have a lactate value there may be some value there but if you're doing yeah let's get on the treadmill let's run a bit okay lactate lactate lactate yeah maybe it helps maybe it doesn't but I think your risk of making a bad decision there is is high as says I honestly think as a lay athlete without having all the experts in my corner the best chance I have and making a good decision at the moment is not looking at all these variables and it's or at least not looking at them straight away and actually checking in myself and saying how do you feel today do you feel like you should you can go long do you feel like you can go fast do you feel like you need a day off because a lot of these things are becoming a crutch and a proxy for how we actually feel at worse not just having a proxy and a crutch they can go the other way and make you feel a certain way there's some interesting research on sleep trackers and uh some stuff that looked at if I tell you've had a bad night's sleep on your sleep tracker you feel worse and perform worse the next day so it's it's actually worse than we're using it as a proxy it's like it could have a nobo effect as well not just a placebo effect so there certainly that aspect I mean Courtney dealta comes to mind I'm not sure if you're familiar but Courtney's arguably the world's best Ultra runner at the moment hands down um she won the Tahoe 200 uh was probably her claan of Fame which got her on Joe Rogan but she's last year she won Western States UTMB and hard rock in one year she set records like she's unbelievable and but those are 300 M races in the space of like 10 weeks or something just unbelievable so and she just TRS she gets up and she doesn't e a particular diet she just kind of cracks on and gets at the door and JS for 10 minutes and then decides what she does from there so that's interesting you know what that aligns with I had Joel Fri on the podcast and you know Joel was probably the first person I ever seen as a broke student who with limited access cuz

Letting Athletes Drive Their Training

Internet and the ability to get on Pub Med and this type thing wasn't fully developed when I was a student and Joe was the first person to kind of pull together a bunch of research into a book that I was like okay here's a little bit of a manual for how I can train and chatting to Joe and you know he's Advanced years now but this was still such a great idea he said for super motivated athletes that what you maybe characterize as high performers not a bad idea and that he's experimenting with his athletes is to take your seven days training and say okay David here's your seven days training now you decide what order to do decessions in and you wake up and you're like you know what I feel like going fast today but not long and then you go and do that I think there there's something in there Ashley Jones is was a string conditioning coach she's arguably the world's best in Rugby Union uh he was with the Crusaders was with the All Blacks he's been a and he talks a bit about this is in the early phases he decides everything for the athlete and as they learn and develop they slowly get more and more control over what they do to a stage at the end where it's a negotiation and he just feels him out like hey what do you feel like doing today how do you feel about this what do you want to change there and then they go and do their own thing and I think back to sort of Full Circle back to that young kid I developed like that was where success was there as well in our physical education I think in a motivated athlete I think you're spot on if they are engaging then I think that's the right way to do it the challenge is in my experience there are two types of athletes that get that become really successful there is the athlete who is so engaged and wants to know everything that's the Gustav Eden Christian bloomfeld like those guys know more about training than many coaches do and then there's the other side which is like I don't know a damn thing and I don't care just tell me what to do I'm going to get on the bike I'm going to do it and if you tell me something that's a little bit wrong I'm not going to question it and I'm probably going to do it anyway so if I if you miscalculate my power numbers I'm probably going to hold a higher power and it's probably going to surprise both of us I didn't realize I could do that you didn't realize I could do that because I don't question anything and I think those are the two and I think if you get stuck in the middle Zone it can be a bit challenging for both coach and athlete well you know observing that latter group in life after Elite Sport I found that a lot of those hardcore just stop C turkey training afterwards where the former group The Gustaf and bloomfeld group are they're lifelong Learners they're coming out of triatlon and they're going to say oh maybe they'll take up a bit of cross country skiing and you know they're never going to get to the same lofty Heights as they are in triatlon but they're still pushing themselves because there's something great even for me this offseason I started running a lot more and you go out and you know you try and do you know a 2K interval or two 2K efforts inside a run and the first time I do it I'm like six minute kilometer Pace going oh my God I'm hobbling down the road like an old man but then you get a couple of runs under the belt and you come back and a week later and it's 53 Pace you come back a month later it's 43 Pace you come back a month later and it's three3 pace and you're like this progression I could win the New York City marathon here and then it's like the progression stops but it's like you get that amazing feedback loop of I do some training I get faster I do some training I get faster and I think the high performance group you're talking about in life after their initial career they keep going and they keep learning and they keep evolving yeah and I mean I know many Elite athletes who have also done very well academically at the same time and it's the same sort of mentality as just like they hold themselves to really high standards they want to learn they you know they want to get better they are seeking feedback and they're trying to improve right and that might be in any field of their life it can be post career all that but I'm happy to hear you're running I think I was chatting to somebody earlier today about this I think cyclists underestimate how much better running transfers to the bike than the other way around I think Elite cyclists make pretty good Runners generally and I've seen this a couple times if you can sort of like allow the muscular system to adapt but I think the other way is really potent for for cyclists I absolutely love running it's so so different cycling you can get a really nice run in in 60 minutes long run 90 minutes yep 90 minute bike ride yeah not much to it like it's about a four to one right so it's roughly I think I mean roughly that seems to be about it like you probably what's your minimum to get out the door on the bike like probably two hours yeah half an hour half hour half hour is really nice it's a really nice yeah so it's it's a roughly two is to one I reckon no it's a it's a beautiful beautiful sport it's something I'm hoping to incorporate and keep going like through my cycling season and I'm actually interested to see held that balances had a couple of Runners on the podcast recently A friend of mine mlossi who's a 22 marathon runner oh well and I was talking to him about it and his opinion on it was it' be interesed to hear yours almost everyone runs too hard he's like you need to be just on super super easy runs for a long period of time he said people come in to run in the he's and they're like I want to try for a Marathon this year and he's like he's trying to get them out of that mindset he's like you want to become a runner not that you want to try for a marathon if you want to become a runner you start running regularly and then maybe we have a go with a 5K in six months and then maybe we have a go with a 10K six months later but he said everyone that comes in saying I want to do a Marathon this year and they have a I want to do a three-hour Marathon a good chunk of them aren't even making the start line yeah it's running injury wise is so risky I 100% agree with him I'm also have been very influenced by mentors of mine and the strength conditioning field where it's kind of you got to earn the right so like you didn't do a barbell back squat until you could squat properly right and it was kind of you had to earn the right and I kind of take that to running as well I think if you haven't run a good 5K and that doesn't happen on the first go it takes 3 four five six eight goes why are you trying to run 10K let's get good at one thing and then we can transfer across and I see this progression a lot is I've done a 5k I'm going to do a 10K I'm going to do a half marathon I'm going to do a marathon and you have these people who do four in a year 510 half marathon and that's fine and they might complete them but it's hard to compete and when I say compete I don't mean I'm competitive to win this thing it's like this is actually good for me in my physiology and I'm not going to be injured afterwards and I'm not going to have a bad day and all those things so takes a long we see in Tron as well people that are [ __ ] at Sprint distance you'll talk to them be like oh what's the plan you going to try and get a bit faster and you know work on your 5K run it's like no I'm going to go up to Olympic it's like what and you see the same progression maybe not over the course of 12 months unless they're extreme accelerated timeline but over the course of 24 months they're going from being [ __ ] at Sprint to Sho at Iron Man and you're like what was the point to that yeah I mean

Learning to Run Slow

And that speaks to my personality is you know I've done I don't know how many marathons now but I've been running for a good amount of time and I've done three Ultras and they've all been 50 to 55k and I'm not even considering going longer than that I would like 60 kilometers is like maybe something I'd consider and most people look at me go like what do you mean I mean even for my first Ultra I was in the mountains uh i' spent some time in Europe I crewed someone for UTMB and she was like are you going to run an ultra this year I was like no she's like you are so ready run a 50k you'll be fine she ended up being right and I ran a really good 50k when I got home back to Australia at the time but yeah I I think there's a lot in that I think part of the challenge with running is it's been punishment for a lot of people as part of team sports uh I also think we generally run as hard as we can for the distance which ends up being kind of that FTP threshold Sweet Spot Zone in terms of intensity and running slowly is quite hard because the difference between cycling and running is I mean you could theoretically cycle super slowly and not be able to stay up like that is theoretically possible but by definition running needs to be of a certain Pace or you're actually walking and yeah that's the challenge for people this was my this was my experience when I started running that I almost couldn't do a zone two run as soon as I got out the door and I wasn't walking I was right at the bottom of Zone tree yeah and that took me a lot of time just doing right at the bottom of zone three before that actually became a zone two run yeah and I tend to I I think especially if you're very fit that's the case right because you muscularly can tolerate and that sort of thing so so I think you just to be able to do that and try and understand that and keep it as uncomfortably slow as you can until that becomes more zone two and you gain a level of efficiency uh but I tend to agree with you a lot of people are running a lot people look at me and they go how are you running 100 kilomet a week or how are you running whatever and it's like well I'll run a lot of it slowly probably slower than you're running some of your runs right like I've run a you know any of your friend but I've run a two 2our 42 Marathon uh very fast thank you uh but you know I'll do most of my training at 520 per kilometer in comparison to three I think it's 350 something per kilometer for my even marathon pace so it's very very different I can't actually believe how there's a friend of mine and he's trying to run 270 actually maybe the time this has come out he'll cila be over he's trying to run 27 and sevil yeah and I've got out doing a few runs with him he's like oh you know we'll we'll pick it up to 345 pace for a kilometer and for me that feels like it's Sprint and he's like we'll go down to 330 for a kilometer and that does feel like a fullon Sprint for me but his race pace is even faster than that it's unfathomable as a non-runner how fast these guys are going in Marans I think running has done a terrible job of this it's most people have got no context like I tell people have run a marathon if they got no idea they're like oh have you run like how close to two hours were you and I'm like uh 242 I'm like oh so you're real slow and I'm like yeah I mean yes but also also no so I think we've done a terrible job in running for context I think if anything park run has helped running a lot uh to allow to have people understand what 5K is actually like and what speed that actually but I can tell you now if you watched on because most marathons are film front on so you've got no context for how fast these people are moving but if you watch them run past you side on you would be astounded at how fast they were moving I mean that is very quick 21 kilometers an hour is fast that is very fast I think in general we've just done a bad job of context and Sport my next door neighbor always asks me on I ride in the tour to France when I go out China yeah that's I mean that's certainly something that I think is better I mean cycling until recently I had no context for understanding what the difference between like pro pro tour versus Pro Continental versus World Tour versus like all that stuff and I just it's really hard to understand that in a way that for some reason in football or or rugby it isn't and I think we need to do a better job of that in Endurance Sports is really allowing people to understand and allowing them to see those things like I If you told me like I understand what high high power is but I wouldn't know what I should be riding my power at if you said to me let's go for an easy right I would have and you put a power me on my bike it would be a surprise to me I don't I don't know what that number would be I'm really excited to announce our show sponsor today is Silka for those of you who might not know Silka offers best in the game bike accessories like tools pumps plus all your everyday bike maintenance kit like chain wax and even sealant what sets Silka apart is their commitment to Quality Beauty and craftsmanship trust me these products are built to last I've been replacing my track pump probably on average every 2 years but my dad has had a Sila track pump since I can remember and it's still gone perfectly strong almost without a blemish on it so if you want to spoil yourself or maybe you want to treat one of your cycling friends they have so many amazing products over on the Sila website there's torque wrench sets bike bags 3D printed bike computer mounts and loads of other really cool pieces all over there and as a roadman listener you can get 13% of all Silka products just use the code roadman 13 at checkout not only does this get you a fantastic deal but also let Silka know that sponsoring this podcast is valuable whether you're shopping for a gift or you're treating yourself Sila has something for every cyclist who hates the throwaway culture and loves quality so check them out and don't forget to use the code roadman 13 a checkout the details are in the description below well I think the thing that has been interesting the last couple years is the Advent of Swift my wosh and these online platforms because now everyone knows about watts per kilogram but what they don't realize is because most people haven't had a chance to ride World Tour Riders the numbers they're putting out they're not putting them out tapered fresh indoors with a fan on them and their girlfriend handing them sandwiches and water bottles in a safe environment they're putting out seven watts per kilo in the third week of a grand tour after six hours of racing at altitude they're putting those numbers out and when you train with these guys you get that inside I remember training with Mike Barry in Toronto who was riding for our team sky at the time and we'd race up to local coffee shop and it' be like a four or five minute climb and to try hold on to him on that was just you got this just slap across the face to just say we're not the same thing like we might look the same in kit my neighbor might think we're about the same but we are not the same there's something physiologically under the hood going on that's very different in those World Tour they're X-Men they're 1% of the 1% and I think what you're talking about a lot of time is is actually what they referring to the literature as durability or fatigue resistance is probably I mean they're fresh whatever may be impressive but their ability to do something fatigued or after a fatiguing bout of exercise is unbelievable so yeah I mean IL kogi's 5K pretty impressive no question but his ability to run 5Ks after he's run 37 kilm is otherworldly that's where it's really impressive is he could probably if if we lined up a group of people we knew the fastest Runners we knew and tried to beat him in a marathon each running a 5k segment we would struggle and that's the

Multiomics and the Longevity Hype

Bit that's really crazy yeah I was even talking my buddy about his 217 and his pacing strategy and he's talking about his pacing all the way through and then his last 10K he's trying to do a pickup and bring it home in 3130 for 10K yeah and it was only when he said that that I was like I can't run a 3130 for 10K now fresh with the new super Runners on there's no way I can run that time I could give him an old pair of shoes and get him to try and run that last 10K whatever he ends up running he would still beat me in superoes even me like that is so fast 313 it's such a fast time for 10ks it's insane H just to finish up David we talked a lot about aging and technology is there anything that intersection of aging and technology that you're kind of excited about or you see in the pipeline down the road that's potentially impactful for anti-aging I'm actually really worried about the space I think there's going to be a ton of stuff that comes out that it's probably not going to be as good as we think it is or it's going to be oversold uh in terms of Aging space it's just such a hot space at the moment given the longevity push and all those things but I think if I was to say anything I think we're going to start getting I mean I've seen quite a few of these startups pop up that are looking at multiomics trying to draw conclusions from Big Data and understand that space and I think there's probably something there that will come out that will be great I don't know what it is but it' be cool looking at let's integrate all this data and start to try and understand maybe using some predictive modeling so I think that's probably the big thing uh we are going to deal with a ton of what do we do with this data which is you know your if you came into a hospital and you had atrial fibrilation with symptoms of it in the hospital I know like there's you know a monkey could do that it's very straightforward the guidelines are very clear on what to do with you where your risks lie and all that stuff if you come in with asymptomatic atal fibrillation on your Apple watch I have no idea what to do and it's really hard to understand that we don't know what the base rate in society is for most of these things so with all this new technology that's ahead of the curve which which is seeing changes earlier we should have no idea what that data means in people who are otherwise well and that's going to be the the huge barrier the huge hdle we have to get over first and that's for any new tech that's for HRV now we're looking at and going okay this is probably normal in certain people but 10 years ago it was really hard to understand that because all the research is in heart or something like that so you have this curve that happens with everything and we're going to see a lot of that in people who are healthy and that's really hard for doctors and the medical system because they talk about the worried well and it's you know it's their it's like a big bug for them is like people come in with this stuff and we don't know you know it's probably fine but we don't know what to do yeah I'm a big believer in the kind of the pendulum swings and the Pendulum is swinging very far in you know you mentioned Andrew huberman there Peter T is someone else that's you know gained a lot of popularity online and they're talking about you know zone two training like this is something new like this is something endurance athletes haven't been doing for the last 50 60 years and because of that there's this huge industry has popped up around I want to say quick fixes but marketing leads itself to selling a solution and so they're trying to sell Solutions be is you know some of them have marginal or sometimes in some cases like saas good benefits but compression boots ketones saas coal therapy there's a whole industry springing up around longevity and that's the pendulum for me at one end I feel like the pendulum's going to swing back because the pendulum always swings and there's an unglamorous reality to a word you've used a lot in the podcast is high performance y I always think high performance happens in the shadows and there's an unglamorous reality to what happens in the shadows Michael Phillips had a a quote back in the day and I remember printing it out and having it in a little scrapbook at the front of my journal and it's what we do in the Dark Matters in the light yeah and I think that's what high performance is and more and more people from this group that are looking for the longevity hacks are going to start to realize that the own glamorous work happens in the shadows yeah I've written about this a little bit in my uh uh in my newsletter again where like the big rocks matter the most there's no question about that right it's that whole big rocks Little Rock sand solution like your cold plung is probably helpful but not as helpful as sleeping properly and eating properly and doing the exercise and I think that's one aspect to it the other aspect is especially with high performance it doesn't need as much money as you think like there's a great book called The Gold Mine effect looking at the Brazilian uh football development South Korean golfers Russian tennis players and Jamaican sprinters and looking at the environments that these athletes come from and what creates them and so much of that is culture and role modeling it's not facilities it's grass ovals with you know a pair of old starting blocks but you have a mentality to get better and all those things and that will come across to longevity right the people who are living the longest right if youve watch the Blue Zone stuff to are not using any Tech they're not doing they're not measuring HRV they're not caring about that stuff they're living a good life with healthy food good Community sleeping well exercising enough you know it's all that stuff laughing it's everything there that's going to help and the rest is the icing on the cake and the key is to like not make the cake out of icing so yeah I think it socres has a quote about let's not waste time arguing what a good citizen should be just be a good citizen and I think about that transposed into the health space let's stop wasting time arguing what a healthy person should be and just get out and be a healthy person yeah and the way to navigate that space is what's nobody arguing about probably do those things like nobody's arguing that you should be eating more fruit and vegetables I mean there's a couple people who probably say that but for the most part people generally agree that fruit and vegetables probably healthy so go that way double down on that you know there's not a lot of people who are arguing that you should be exercising okay let's double down on that maybe some people say more Zone to maybe some people don't but generally people there there's good agreement on fruit and vegetables lifting enough weights doing enough endurance training sleeping well having Community being happy like there's good agreement on those so like go do that and then worry about the rest later David the BR podcast I could chat forever about this because you're just a fountained of knowledge uh I will link up your newsletter to reference a couple of times in the show note so people I would highly advise to go and check that out appreciate that thank you

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Why do athletes get slower as they get older?+

Dr David Lipman argues that most age-related decline in athletes is not primarily biological. It is driven by gaps in training caused by life events such as parenthood, career stress, or injury. Athletes who train consistently across decades tend to maintain far more of their capacity than those who take extended breaks and attempt to return.

Can you get faster after 40 or 50 as a cyclist or runner?+

Yes, according to Dr David Lipman, most people feel physically very similar at 40 to how they felt at 30. Athletes who maintain consistent training without prolonged breaks can continue to perform at a high level well into their 40s and 50s, and in many cases outperform peers who trained harder but inconsistently when younger.

How do you stay fit when life gets busy and training drops off?+

Dr David Lipman recommends replacing short-term performance goals with non-negotiable personal standards, such as always being ready to accept an invitation for a long ride or run on any given day. This shifts the focus from peak fitness cycles to sustained baseline fitness across years and decades. Moderation and consistency beat extreme sessions followed by long breaks.

Does taking a break from training permanently affect your fitness?+

Dr David Lipman warns that athletes who take significant breaks from training rarely fully recover their prior capacity. The compounding effect of multiple gaps over the years is one of the biggest factors behind the performance decline most people wrongly attribute to ageing alone. Protecting training continuity is more important than optimising any single training block.

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Every Episode of Roadman Podcast with Dan Lorang

Dan Lorang has been on Roadman more than any other World Tour coach. Here's every episode, what it covers, and why it matters for age-group …

Every Episode with Prof. Stephen Seiler

Prof. Seiler has shaped more endurance training in the last 20 years than almost anyone. Here's every Roadman appearance, with what to take …

Getting Faster After 40: The Cyclist's Guide to Age-Defying Performance

The data says VO2 max declines 10% per decade after 30. But the data also shows that trained athletes lose far less than sedentary people. H…

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