Physical Recovery Hacks for the Masters athlete

…or, How I Learned to Avoid Overtraining

Coach Dan John: masters athlete, teacher, mentor, coach, wise man and all round good egg.

Recovery is the bedrock of health, fitness and athletic training. You must address recovery if you’re to get the most out of your gym time!

NB: this was first published at Muscle Talk in their Over 40 training forum but applies to EVERYONE

Let’s face it 40 isn’t that old any more 50 isn’t even that old anymore, and your training should reflect this. As the body ages and types of training needs do not change just the ways you train and amounts of training that you use. The different tools you use and the amount you use them change. Recovery techniques are such tools.  Whilst this may seem like a serious disadvantage it can actually be used to change training for the good making it more efficient, effective with less injury and more result.

So what does training smarter mean and what facets of recovery should you look at? Below is a little introduction to training the Masters athlete, the changes you make for a them and the practices you encourage.

Training smarter

Training smarter means doing the same things that you did before at a more effective manner. The younger body can bounce back from plenty of needless volume and when you look at people in their early 20s you’re reminded of how much of that training is ‘deadwood’; sets and reps simply not needed for progress and ones that take the emphasis of the main task at hand.

A seriously effective warm-up
I’m only in my early thirties but personally I have seen the length of my warm up increasing over the last few years, nothing dramatic just a couple more methods included. When I trained masters athlete I’m aware of the fact that the warm up needs to be effective at both safeguarding against injury and increasing performance later in the training session.

A good warm up can transform a weights session but many younger trainees simply ignore this aspect of trying. What comprises a good warm up?

1. Raise core temperature: this can mean five minutes on a exercise bike but I prefer the trainee to use a brisk walk to the gym and fast change in the changing room instead this saves time and is actually much better movement pattern wise.
2. Work range of motion: Range of motion drills are like dynamic stretches examples of this include lunges and squats just body weight, for the hips and legs. Shoulder rolls, full range of motion girly press ups, And shoulder dislocated (double the towel or poll) the shoulders and cat stretches down on all fours for the spine.
3. Activate muscles: As we age some muscles actually partially switch off even though we continue to train this means that we have to spend a bit more time activating these muscles. Of course the muscles of the upper back such as the lower traps we all need to activate a little bit more (especially if we have an office job) things such as wall slides and a few cable rows to the chin can help with this. The glutes are a particular muscle group that tend to switch off as we age so activating these using single leg deadlifts can help. Another very effecting way to activate the glutes (and improve your squat and deadlift numbers) is by standing with 1 foot on a weight plate resting on the floor. Keeping the leg straight you told your pelvis up by squeezing the same glute as the foot standing on white plate.
4. Practice lift: We’re already familiar with practicing the lift before going into work sets so leave that

Decreased volume but increased intensity
For many the amount of volume we did when we younger is simply an option. A decent warm up will allow you to safely shift higher intensity weights and also mean that you get more out of each set. increasing the intensity (the weight you use) and decreasing the total volume is the smart way to train. As we get more years under the bar on nervous system becomes more effective at firing our muscles and as such intensity should go up anyway.

Connected to time under the bar is experience of different movements. As experience increases so does the speed of adaption to different movements meaning that generally as our experience increases we need to change our workout routines more often.

Cut out the Bull.
Your simply don’t need that 5^th set of flies, or that 4^th set of curls. Train the compound movements intensely, work on a higher weight and lower rep scheme making every set count and then get the hell out of the gym. We all have a limited capacity for recovery, don’t dip into the tank even further for those beach muscle sets that really aren’t the focus of training.

Energy systems and conditioning: boosting those hormones
energy systems work usually means the most people steady-state cardio on a treadmill or bike. However, shorter, harder energy systems workouts may be just the thing we need to boost hormone production supporting a lean muscular body. Intervals or metabolic conditioning is very effective at taking fat off people. Many people use EPOC (elevated post exercise oxygen consumption) to explain why these methods are so good at stripping off fat however they really don’t explain the dramatic effect seen. What may be contributing to this is elevated levels of hormones that start to drop off properties such as growth hormone. Amongst older coaches, as far as their own cardio training goes, metabolic conditioning is very often the clear favourite.

PRH’s: Training

80-90% compound movements: concentrate on compound, drop most isolation

Lower volume but increase the weight using a few more but lower rep sets


Minimise the long cardio efforts, include shorter harder interval sessions but do go on walks etc for recovery.

Recovering smarter

Recovery is a massive massive part of strength training in fact some much smarter than me once said “ successful training is just the management of fatigue”. Recovery as we’ll know is where muscle adapts, the cardiovascular system makes improvements and the nervous system ‘ learns’ to fire the muscle more efficiently. The recovery phase is also where all the hormones that are kicked out by weight training and sleep get their chance to work.

I wrote an article specifically about recovery here: http://www.muscletalk.co.uk/article-recovery.aspx

But there are some specific things worth mentioning here with regards to the Masters athlete.

Sleep
as we get past the age of about 25 we generally starts to sleep less and this trend continues certainly into our 50s. Sleep is busily extremely important and the body will to a certain extent regulated itself with regards to sleep needs however aiming for as much sleep as possible is definitely a good thing. Special consideration should be made off the environment which was sleeping so getting the TV out of the bedroom making sure the curtain is actually to the light out and the bed is comfortable and cool, these will all help. Also important is the period before going to sleep. Getting into a pre-bed routine that involves some relaxing activity such as reading fiction (watching TV is more excitatory and doesn’t help promote sleep) or doing some boring task will help bring on sleep quicker. Also important is a routine so going to bed at roughly the same time each night will also be helpful.

PRH’s: Sleep

Audit the bedroom: check curtains work, pillows are plump, matress is still in good condition

Loose the TV

Stabalise the time which you go to bed. Develop routine

Use a relaxing pre bed routine; folding clothes, reading etc

Nutrition
Obviously being a nutritionist I’m going to mention this, but we all remember or know the 20-year-old that can eat Big Macs train hard recover poor muscle and avoid getting fatHe. Sadly for us that boat has sailed.

It was still training hard as we get older we get less wiggle room to play with our diet in other words it gets harder to support muscle mass and to starve fat mass. Thankfully though we may have been training for a while meaning we have a better idea of what works for us and what doesn’t. Paying attention to the quality of foods the types of carbohydrate (and to a certain extent their timing) as well as ensuring that we get lots and lots of fibrous vegetables as well as fruits and berries is very important. We also need to pay attention to the amount of polyunsaturated fats were getting so regularly eating oily fish and getting a good amount of nuts and seeds in regularly will help.

PRH’s: Nutrition

At your next shop but double the amount of fibrous vegetables and berries you buy. Eat a variety

Lean complete protein at each meal

Include omega 3 fats every day

Soft tissue work
while stretching is all very well and good as they age, the athlete needs to pay more attention to techniques like foam roller and massage to really keep the quality of the muscle tissue high. Buy high-quality we mean muscle tissue with low levels of adhesions caused by weight training. Whilst some in their 20s with an office job may only need to get on the foam roller once A week, the Masters athlete with the same job may need to use three short sessions a week.

Range of motion work
the same goes a range of motion work this work (a few details shown above) Is extremely important when it comes to training effectively and safely and looking after our joints. Whilst the couple short sessions a week may be all that is necessary for somebody in the 20s you may want to consider three or even four short sessions a week in your 40s especially if you’re in an office job. This and the foam roller work can be bracketed around the workout so range of motion work in the warmup and foam roller work as you cool down.

PRH’s: Mobility and soft tissue

3 Foam 10 minute roller sessions a week, that’s just 30 mins total

2 mobility sessions a week 10 mins each: focus on hips, thoracic spine an shoulders. After training is a good time

Use a little mobility work in your warm up

Balance those nervous systems
You have a system that is excitatory and it stimulated by high intensity work (sympathetic nervous system), this is balanced by the other that is stimulated by longer more sedate efforts (the parasympathetic) aim to balance these by training smarted and briefer in the weights room and using more relaxed activities such as walks, golf or whatever to stimulate recovery. It’s no accident that athletes suddenly develop a golf habit when they are signed by trainers and coaches that look after every facet of their performance.

PRH’s: Nervous system

Lift heavy weights and do cardio intervals but don’t forget the other end of the ’spectrum’;


Meditate: this can be actual meditation, tai chi or just a good walk.

Golf or long walks are active recovery for both muscles and nervous system.

“As you age needs to change in ‘kind’ just in amount”

Anyone who says Masters athletes shouldn’t do this or shouldn’t do that; ’squat’, ‘dead lift’… you fill in the blanks, is misguided they may think that they are keeping the trainee healthy by avoiding injury but they are reducing the function of that person’s body at the time when they should be looking to develop the most.

The picture above is of Dan John. He is currently a champion of highland games, discuss and record holder in Olympic weight lifting. And he s over 50. He’s 20 years older than me and in better condition.

To quote a famous coach “ masters athletes needs don’t differ in kind they just differ by amounts”, you should keep doing the same things but use the wisdom the extra years on the planet have given you to leave the ego at the door and train smarter and recover harder.