Topic - Training for older
skiers
Date first posted on eCommunity - 7
September 2008
British people who take cross-country skiing
holidays tend to be
somewhat older than the general population. This raises issues about
how they should prepare physically for their skiing holiday. And
these issues link interestingly to more general considerations about
coping with the process of growing older.
Broadly speaking there are two ways of looking at the relationship
between ageing and fitness: a gloomy one and a more optimistic one
.
The gloomy one implies that from a very early age, perhaps as early
as 20, life is a gradual process of decline in physical ability.
Unhappily, there is a lot of evidence that can be used to support
this view. Here are some examples.
Muscle mass has been found to decline from about the age of 30. This
affects muscle endurance, strength and power. Fast-twitch muscles
are more affected than slow-twitch muscles, and as there is a high
proportion of fast-twitch muscles in the upper legs and buttocks
this has serious implications for XC skiers.
Basal metabolic rate also declines, from the age of 20, at a rate of
one or two per cent per decade. This is said to be one of the
reasons behind "middle-age spread" - your body needs less energy
for basic functioning, so unless you gradually reduce your dietary
intake your weight will increase.
Aerobic endurance - stamina - also declines. One summary (Griffin-
see references below) says: "Maximal aerobic capacity decreases in
both men and women, with an average decline of about 10 percent per
decade between the ages of 25 - 65." Related to this, maximum heart
rate reduces each decade by 5 to 10 beats per minute.
There is also a decline in the efficiency of the lungs: the volume
of air that a seventy year-old can breathe in may be only half of
what a thirty year-old can manage.
To this already long list you can add that bone density reduces,
capillary density reduces, flexibility reduces and balance skills
decline. Not an especially cheering prospect.
The more optimistic view acknowledges all the changes just
described, but says that they are mainly results of the more
sedentary lifestyle that older people tend to adopt, rather than of
the ageing process per se. Okay, they accept that there is an
unavoidable degree of physiological decline, but argue that it is
only really limiting if you are an elite athlete. The rest of us -
who have never reached our physical potential - can still keep
improving. We just need to work hard at it.
The optimists also point out that our ideas have changed as to the
optimum age for endurance athletes. Fifty years ago the accepted
wisdom was that they reach their peak at about 20. Now the view is
that they need years of training to build their aerobic endurance,
and today the accepted target age for peak performance is closer to
30. And perhaps in another fifty years time it will again have been
revised upwards.
Other optimistic data comes frequently from "masters" ski races -
competitive events for veteran skiers. Consider the results of the
30km classic technique event at the 2008 Masters World Cup in Idaho.
The fastest man in the 55-59 years category, the oldest category for
that race, finished in 1 hr 26 mins. In the youngest age-category,
30-34 years, the winner finished in the slightly SLOWER time of 1
hour 32 mins. Admittedly the older skiers started in a later wave
and had the benefit of better snow conditions, but even so the
similarity in their times is remarkable.
An even more remarkable story from Idaho concerns Russian competitor
Lev Litvinov, whose age put him in the 85-99 years category. On
March 1 he finished the 10km classic race in 50 minutes, fully 30
minutes ahead of the second-fastest finisher in the category. Just
to show it wasn't a fluke he was out on skis again on March 6, and
won his age-group in the 15km classic race in a time of 1 hr 16
minutes, this time beating the second-fastest by 47 minutes.
The optimists would conclude that, given good health, we can be very
fit at almost any age; but we need to keep training - and as we get
older we need to train a little bit harder in order to maintain
fitness.
Our fitness training needs to include a fair amount of endurance
work to maintain and improve cardio-vascular efficiency. But we need
also to do something to counter the possible decline of muscle mass.
And we should therefore do some strength work, ideally two or three
times a week. The best place for strength work is the gym, with a
structured programme of resistance training using relatively heavy
weights. But if you are irrevocably gym-phobic you can put together
some circuit training routines to do at home. Exercises like press-
ups, tricep dips and squats are useful and require no equipment. You
can help yourself further by buying a pair of dumbbells and using
them to train the muscles of your arms, shoulders, chest and back.
One group of British skiers who are right now, it is hoped, working
on strength and stamina are those who have booked on our Engadine
Ski Marathon course in March. Most of them, like the instructor, are
over 50. All will hope for personal best times. None of them will
give a damn about how old they are.
Reference: Griffin, Sue. Training the Over 50s. A&C Black. London.
2006.
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