Fitter and Faster at 40, 50…

Written by James Witts, content writer for Nopinz.

Fact: research suggests that once you turn 30, you begin to lose up to 8% muscle mass every decade. Not great. Even more deflating is that this rate of decline accelerates once you turn 60. Unfortunately, age-related muscle loss, aka sarcopenia, is a natural part of ageing. That’s the bad news. The joyous news is that reams of research prove that physical activity – in our case, cycling and triathlon – are unmatched countermeasure against the passage of time, attenuating age-related decreases in strength, especially if you make simple but effective tweaks to your current training and performance set-up…

Goodbye Testosterone…

One of the major causes of the age-related brakes slowing down your cycling and triathlon is a reduction in both size and number of muscle fibres, especially your type-2 fibres or your fast-twitchers. These are the power generators, burning strong and bright but only for a blink of a racing eyelid, like that all-out sprint when the finish line’s within sight. Type-1 fibres, the slow-twitchers, are the more sedate and reliable siblings, containing more mitochondria (the cells’ energy producers), a richer capillary supply and greater aerobic respiratory enzymes for longer, stamina-packed efforts like a steady-state road ride. Comparisons of muscle biopsies from younger and older individuals reveal that type-2 fibres are smaller in the older athlete, while the size of type-1 fibres is much less affected.

Why the type-2 plummets is due to myriad reasons but the biggest culprit is a hormonal change, especially testosterone. The hormone testosterone is a peak-performance powerhouse. As a snapshot, it helps to create red blood cells, ensuring greater oxygen carrying and delivery – nectar to the endurance athlete; it preserves and increases lean muscle mass for greater power output; cranks up bone density to prevent conditions like osteoporosis; and speeds up recovery from a tough swim, bike or run session. In short, you can see why the likes of naughty Lance Armstrong packed their medical cabinets with the stuff in search of a competitive – and highly illegal – competitive edge.

It’s produced in the testicles and, to a lesser degree, the ovaries in women. But from the age of 30, testosterone levels drop by 1% each year. In female athletes, a drop in oestrogen levels during the menopause can see post-menopausal cyclists and triathletes lose about 1% of muscle mass per year, potentially leading to a 30% strength loss by ages 50 to 70 and another 30% per decade after that. Both genders also endure an age-related drop in human growth hormone, which is responsible for both muscle repair and growth.

Stronger, Faster, Longer

It’s a bleak picture. Or it would be if it weren’t for strength training. You see, when you strength train, you enjoy an anabolic hormonal response to the stress of lifting weights, including a rise in testosterone levels and an increase in lean muscle. That can differ to endurance exercise, which, certainly at high volume accompanied by insufficient calorie intake, is catabolic, meaning that while your metabolic profile might improve, your muscular profile doesn’t, as your muscle begins to eat itself in search of energy. Need convincing that you must squeeze in a gym session or two instead of saddling up?

“I’m a lifelong cyclist who started racing back in 1987. I turned 50 in October just gone. My most successful season came recently, in 2022, at the age of 48. I give great credit to hitting the gym…”

The words of Conrad Moss, a long-time NoPinz user, when asked about the secrets to his age-defying success. Moss runs Velopower Performance Coaching out of his base in South Devon and he coaches online, too. His disciples are across all abilities including professional, as he’s coached local boy Harrison Wood since he was 15. Twenty-four-year-old Wood currently races for Portuguese Continental team Sabgal/Anicolor, moving from Cofidis in the winter. Moss clearly practices what he preaches with a string of records to his name including in his annus mirabilis of 2022, where he won 18 out of 18 races plus racked up three national veteran records.

“That year I felt like a different athlete because of the training changes I made in the winter,” he says. “In 2021, I was ill a few times, had a lot of time off the bike and was finding it hard to reach my previous level. I also noticed that my body was starting to change and not in a great way. I had less muscle mass, an increase in body fat, I was heavier and every pedal stroke felt harder than before. So, I reflected that if I were to stop the decline, I needed a rethink about my training.

“So, from autumn through to spring 2022, I went back to the gym. I used to be in the military so I was used to strength training but hadn’t been for 10 years. I know that as you get older, you lose muscle mass, but this wasn’t about building muscle mass – it was about teaching the body to get stronger with what it’s got. If you’re clean [not doping] and fit, you can’t really build new muscle tissue into your 40s and your 50s because of the drop in testosterone production. But you can teach your body to grow stronger.”

Which is what Moss did. He’d hit the gym once every four days – so not too time taxing – but would make every repetition, every set, every second count. Understandably for a road cyclist, his main focus centred on the “rear chain”, so dead lifts, squats and leg press, though Moss undertook some “token upper-body push-and-pull stuff”.

But key, adds Moss, is that he focused on very heavy weights in his 30- to 40-minute gym sessions. “Each exercise, I’d do four sets of four to five repetitions to near failure, with around a minute between each set, so really nestling in the strength range. For years, endurance athletes looked to turn strength training into an endurance exercise by trying to replicate what they were doing on the bike [or swim and run], so loads of reps and not a lot of weight. But I did the polar opposite as I knew, as you age, it was all about raising testosterone and boosting strength.”

Moss complemented his gym work with weekly essentials of a long, steady three- to four-hour endurance ride and a shorter, quality session on the turbo. “Then, when I moved into spring and summer, the strength work was more about maintenance and I’d lift once every 10 days. I also undertook an intense phase of VO2 work [in power terms, efforts at around 106 to 120% of functional threshold power]. The off-season combination plus the summer change created a stimulus that really worked.”

Understandably, Moss is a fervent believer in strength work for the older athlete, both through reflecting on his own performances and those of his clients. “Many of the riders I coach are over 40 and they’re split between those who have no desire to go to the gym and those who have embraced strength training,” he says. “If I were to be brutally honest, those who have embraced strength training have kicked on more than those who haven’t. You just cannot be too strong on the bike.”

Fuelling Strength

When it comes to fuelling, Moss recommends increasing protein intake on strength-training days to facilitate muscle repair and rebuild. “On a normal day, endurance athletes might be looking at around 1.2-1.5g protein per kilogramme bodyweight, so on the days where you’re strength training, up that a little bit,” he says. “But remember you’re a cyclist or triathlete, not a bodybuilder, so you don’t need to be pumping 200g of protein. You’re not after huge muscle mass – you’re after more strength.”

Protein-rich foods include chicken and salmon. Moss is a vegetarian so is a great advocate of eggs, milk and nuts. He also tops up with a whey-protein mix but prefers “real food”.

As for protein timing, studies suggest the following guidelines will optimise muscle protein synthesis: 0.4g protein per kilogramme bodyweight four or five times a day; additional one to two servings of dairy (glass of milk, low-fat yoghurt…) or nuts and grains with each meal; and a 40g casein protein before bed to maximise overnight synthesis rates.

If you’re a female cyclist or triathlete and women and going through the menopause, it’s also recommended that you should knock back plenty of dairy foods to avoid the onset of osteoporosis, which can be stimulated by the hormonal changes through the menopause.

Moss isn’t a huge fan of supplements but takes ferrous sulfate to boost iron levels. “That’s because my vegetarian diet tends to mean that my iron count is a little bit on the low side, so on the advice of my GP I take an iron supplement,” he says. “If you’re eating a typical carnivore diet, that might not be necessary.”

Position optimised for NoPinz

As for any equipment changes, Moss offers the same advice for all ages: “The best thing you can do is to improve your position on the bike. There’s no point having a £12,000 time-trial bike if you’re sat on it like a sail.

“I’ve coached athletes to national championship titles, from 50 to 100 miles, from 12 to 24 hours, and they’ve been riding 15-year-old alloy bikes with mechanical shifters. But that doesn’t matter because they’ve got their position dialled in. On top of that, they’ve got the right skinsuit for them.”

Which is where Nopinz slipstreams into the equation. Nopinz has a range of speedsuits and trisuits to suit every level of time-triallist and triathlete. Whether it’s a form-fitting garment from the Hypersonic or Pro-1 Evo range, you’ll cut drag and gain speed from apparel that’s proven fast in both the wind tunnel and the open roads. It works for the Mighty Moss and will work for you, too.

Sleep Your Way to Success

All of NoPinz’s suits deliver comfort as well as speed. Whether they’re comfortable enough to slip into for the final age-related pointer, well, we’ll leave that to you to find out and report back. But as legendary coach Joe Friel once told me, ageing athletes will benefit more from extensive sleep than their younger brethren.

That’s where good sleep hygiene comes in – the usuals of refraining from caffeine after lunchtime, layers instead of a duvet for better temperature regulation and no smartphones in bed (albeit it seems a smartphone’s sleep interference stems from information overload rather than the previously thought blue light).

Friel also suggested older athletes should nap. Naps have been used by such esteemed figures as Albert Einstein and Napoleon. In triathlon, 2016 Olympic champion Gwen Jorgensen is renowned for napping for 30 minutes or less six times a week. Why is napping been shown to restore alertness, enhance performance and reduce mistakes. A study at NASA on military pilots and astronauts found that a 40-minute nap improved performance by 34% and alertness by 100%.

The good news is that with naps, you don’t even need to fall asleep. Just letting your mind wander, relax and you’ll still enjoy rejuvenation benefits. And that’s particularly important if you have an evening session planned.

So, there you have it. Age is just a number – albeit a number you need to respect and recognise, so that you can make suitable changes to your cycling or triathlon lifestyle. Over to Moss for the final word. “Key is recognising what’s going on with your body and not accepting it; instead, take measures to address the changes. You can’t hide the ageing process, but you can manipulate it to perform as well as you ever have.”

– This post was written by James Witts.

James Witts is a writer who specialises in endurance sport and sports science. He has three books on his palmares including The Science of the Tour de France and Riding with the Rocketmen. He also writes for a broad range of consumer publications including Rouleur, Cyclist, The Observer and 220 Triathlon.