Joe Friel is 82. He thinks older athletes often back off the wrong part of their training
Joe Friel has been coaching endurance athletes for decades, and has written seminal books on the subject (Fast After 50 being the newest one) At 82 he is still training, lifting, and thinking pretty seriously about what changes as we get older.
One thing I wanted to understand from him was: when recovery gets harder, what should we actually cut?
His answer was not simply “train easier.”
A few things I took away from my chat with Joe:
- Don’t automatically remove intensity. For older athletes, Joe’s general approach is to cut unnecessary volume before abandoning the harder work that helps preserve performance.
- Strength work becomes more important, not less. He said one of the biggest mistakes older athletes make in the gym is simply not being consistent enough with it.
- Power is worth thinking about too. We naturally lose fast-twitch capacity with age. Joe talked about using lower-rep, more explosive strength work when maintaining power is a goal.
- Recovery has to influence the plan. This doesn’t mean always taking another easy day. It means paying attention to whether your body is actually ready for the workout you planned.
- Sometimes the right move is to stop. He gave me an example from his own training. He went to the gym after a couple of hard sessions, started lifting, realized he was basically going through the motions, and stopped. His attitude was: this isn’t the day for this workout; I’ll do it another day.
That last one stuck with me because it’s different from just “take it easy when you’re older.”
He still believes in showing up consistently and challenging yourself. But consistency doesn’t mean blindly completing every workout exactly as written.
At 65, 70, 80+, the skill perhaps is to becoming better at deciding which stress is still worth keeping and which stress is just costing you recovery.
Listen with this link
Watch with this link
Full disclosure: I host the Ageless Athlete podcast, and this came from my conversation with Joe Friel. I thought his perspective was particularly relevant to this group.