Fitness (and Performance) Beyond 50

Brad Cooper

Welcome to the latest episode of the Catalyst Health and Wellness Coaching Podcast. My name is Brad Cooper, and I’ll be your host. And today marks the third of the episodes we’ve had over the last few months, covering how to optimize our lives as we move through the decades. So as we move from our twenties to our fifties, to our eighties and beyond, how do we make the most of that time? How do we make sure that we’re optimizing our lives as we age? In may, we had professor Alan Costell out of UCLA. In June we had 75 year old Ironman triathlete Ken Ola. And today we have the co-founder of training peaks, a gentleman who’s been coaching athletes for 40 years. A guy who, frankly, if you’re in the endurance world needs absolutely no introduction, but if you’re not, you’re going to be super intrigued by this. He wrote a book a few years ago, titled fast after 50. I’ve got it sitting here next to me. And it was essentially how to optimize your performance physically, as we move through the years, how to stop using the excuse of, well I’m 40 now, or I’m 50 now, or 60 or 70 or 80, or whatever, stop using that as an excuse and saying, well, what can I do differently to adjust for the natural things that happen over time? And we’re going to get into that in great detail, really excited about today. Thanks for joining us regardless of where you are in the endurance athlete, competitive spectrum, won’t matter because the things he’s going to talk about apply to every single one of us. Couple of updates, the next two wellness coach, fast track certification weekends are coming up just around the corner. August 16th and 17th. We’ll be in New Jersey and August 24th and 25th, we’ll be in Colorado. If you’d like any details on that, you can always email us at Results@CatalystCoachingInstitute.com or check out the new website at CatalystCoachingInstitute.com. Now on with the latest episode of the Catalyst Health and Wellness Coaching Podcast.

Brad Cooper

Joe Friel. Thank you so much for joining us today. I’ve been reading your books and involved with your training peaks and all the other great things you’ve been doing for the endurance world for literally decades. It’s a huge pleasure to have a chance to talk with you. Thanks for joining us.

Joe Friel

Hey Brad, thank you for asking me. I’m flattered that you would ask me to be on your podcast. I look forward to it.

Brad Cooper

Absolutely, no doubt this will be a good one. Our audience knows your bio. I’ve given a little introduction to you in case they don’t already know you, but can you give us the short version about how you ended up becoming all these different things? The co-founder of training peaks written multiple books, literally the chairman of USA triathlons, national coaching commission, and basically one of the world’s foremost experts when it comes to endurance and fitness, that’s a lot of stuff. How how’d you get here?

Joe Friel

It’s been a long journey. I started doing this back in the 1970s, I guess, as far as starting a career. So it’s not like it happened overnight, it’s been going on for a long time. I just keep ticking. Quite honestly, I’ve just been doing all this stuff because I, I enjoy it. Number one, I’m curious when it comes to sports science, I’m always very curious about the best way to train and that wasn’t so I could write books or start anything else that was just so I could be a better athlete. In fact, I went back and got my master’s degree back in the seventies. And the reason I got that was because I wanted to see if I can improve my performance. I’ve never done this stuff for other people. I’ve always done it just for me, but somehow I’ve been fortunate enough to have that work out to be something that has become a career without trying quite honestly.

Brad Cooper

Very cool, the timing of your fast after 50 was fantastic. Loved, loved the book could not set it down. I’m so tired of people saying, well, I’m not as fast as I was since I turned, you know, fill in the blank, 40, 50, 45, whatever the reality. And you brought this out so nicely in your book is that yes, age matters. You’re not going to run as fast at 50 as you were at 26, but it’s also not a cliff. We don’t, we don’t slow down instantaneously. It’s generally because we haven’t been doing the intervals, the weights, the tempo work, all the things that got us fast to begin with. You took that head on. What what’s been the general response to your book? What are people saying? Are you getting feedback of, Oh, Joe, you’re crazy. This is ridiculous. Or what have you heard out there?

Joe Friel

Well, it’s always fun to get feedback from people who read my books and I’ve gotten quite a bit on this book. I think as people get older, um, they have the same questions going on in their heads that I had going on in my head that led me to write the book, which is what can I expect to happen as I get to whatever that new number may be. And the response I’ve gotten has always been very positive. I had many, many people who have written me and told me that they’ve applied what I talked about in the book. And, uh, their performances have improved, which doesn’t surprise me because I know what typically happens is people get older as they do things that cause performance to, for example, kind of gravitating towards just doing long, slow distance all the time and not really doing any high intensity at all. That that’s very common for athletes as they get older. So if I get somebody to start doing high intensity training, there’s the possibility that there’s a high probability that they’ll improve their performance. So, so it’s been actually very, very positive. I’ve never, to be quite honest I’ve never had one person write and say it doesn’t work. Every one of them has said, gosh, you know, it’s, it’s really working out well for them. And so feedback has been very positive.

Brad Cooper

Why is it so common to have us all, almost all fall into that? Well, it’s because of my age. What do you think is going on with that?

Joe Friel

No, I think what goes on is, as we do get older, first of all, we get older there’s things that happen in our lives that, that began to, um, put demands on our time. For example, when my son had his first daughter, first child, only child actually, uh, he was in his thirties. And up until that time, he had been a cyclist, raced in Europe. Very, very good athlete, always had been from the time when he was a teenager on. He was just always a good athlete and that continued even after marriage. But then when his first child came along, I had a conversation with him and told him that I, you know, you’re about to enter the most difficult time of your life. Not only, not only train, but also just life in itself. Right? Uh, there’s just going to be a lot of things placing demands on your time. You’re going to, you know, here at the age, you know, when you’re in your thirties, you’re trying to grow a career. For example, you’ve got to pay the bills, not easy when you’re in your thirties, trying to do that because you’re still establishing yourself in your career field. And yet at the same time, you’ve, you’re, you’ve got to be a good father. Um, you know, you’ve got to help raise a child. So both of those things take time. It takes time to be, to, to grow your career. It takes time to also, uh, uh, grow a family. And so no matter what you do, you’re going to be wrong. It’s going to be a catch 22. You put a lot of time into your career, so you can make enough money. Family’s going to suffer. A lot of time in your family, um, which is a good thing to do in lots of ways you’re in your career is going to suffer. So you’ve got a balancing act going on here, which you’ve never had before. And this is the worst time because you’re now at the phase where everything is, is kind of a mismatch of your time versus your money and your, and your responsibilities. And as you get older, there are lots of things like this, that occur in our lives and they do. They, they begin to interfere with our training. Uh, my son went through that stage when this child was, you know, relatively young, small infant in early, uh, grade school, years now she’s 16. And so consequently, he starting to get his life back again. Um, he’s just got, she drives herself here and there. She doesn’t have to have her dad drive her around anymore. Um, and you know, you know how it changes this, that, you know, there’s more, she’s more independent now than when she was a young child. And so he he’s become more independent because as, as his wife, consequently, um, he started back to train again. Now he started to do pretty well again in racing.

Joe Friel

So, uh, and those sorts of things just keep happening throughout our lives. And as they happen, the thing that we realize is that we’re getting older and we, so we tend not to put the blame where it’s actually should be placed, which is lifestyle stuff. We place it on the easiest key for why I’m not doing as well as I did two years ago is because I am a few years older now. And I think it’s just, it’s just a matter, that changed in our lives at that age because they constantly, we’re always aware of, and as we hit those big numbers, like 40, 50, 70 as we get those numbers, those really get our attention. There’s an old saying that takes about 10 years to get used to how old you are. And I think that’s a just right. Uh, you know, when you turn 50, you still, you still feel like you’re, you should be 40, but there’s this new number and it just doesn’t seem right. So it’s hard to imagine. So how do I define myself as being 50? Whereas just a year ago, I was defining myself as being 40. So, you know, it just catches our attention and it causes us to ask questions. And that’s how the book came about. I went through the very same set of questions, but I turned in this case 70. You know, I still thought of myself as being 60. And here I am, all of a sudden this number seven zero after my name, what does that mean to me? And so it set me on this path, which eventually resulted in that book.

Brad Cooper

There’s a difference between athletes and the general population, because so many folks that are competing at whatever level, it could be local 5ks, Ironmans, whatever. It’s almost like you look forward to that next age group. Okay. So now I’m in the 45 group. Now I’m in the 50 group. Now I’m in the 60 group, I’m in the 70 group. Do you see a difference where the athletes, people that are actively pursuing something, they see that as a positive, like, Oh, right now I’m in the new group. Whereas the general population, maybe it’s the opposite of, Oh man, now I’m 50 now I’m 60 now I’m 70.

Joe Friel

Yeah. I think that’s, that’s the, uh, the athlete mentality is that athletes tend to be positive people, which is one of the reasons I’ve always enjoyed being a coach is because you’re always working with positive people. They’re always, always thinking about what they can, what they can accomplish and how they can do it and all this kind of stuff. So they are always very positive, whereas the general population, isn’t quite that way. Um, a little bit, not quite inclined to be as positive as an athlete because some athlete is always thinking in terms of, gosh, now I’m moving up to 50. That’s a great opportunity for me, you know, I can, I’m not taking on people who are, who are older than me, but quite honestly, it never really gets any easier. And so, um, so that, that probably is where from, it’s just the athletes positively, which is really kind of cool. Yeah.

Brad Cooper

Yeah, absolutely. You start off your, your book, one of the first section is talking about this aging myth. Why is that so rampant? And do you think it’s changing at all since you wrote the book?

Joe Friel

Uh, aging, this is a, a really big, I really can’t explain it. It just comes down to the psychology of being a human being, I guess. And so as we move up to age 50, we think, gosh, I’m in my fifties now fifties implies to me that there’s, that I’m old because I, when I was in my forties, I didn’t think of myself as being really old. I was still fairly young person. Now, I’m in my fifties. And I’m seeing that as you know, I’ve always thought of fifties as being they’re old. And so, you know, kind of gets on the back of our mind is that when we turn 50, especially that is a dividing point in life. Somehow from this point on nothing is going to be the same. Then it probably goes back to, uh, you know, our, our growing up as kids, we saw our parents and our neighbors, you know, there, they were also in their fifties at one time and we knew they were old. Uh, they were so much different than us that, uh, you know, so we began to see people being in the fifties or bigger numbers of that as being really very old people. But back in those days, uh, you know, likely that those people were not athletes, they were, you know, they weren’t the athletes that we see today in their fifties. They were basically, you know, not, not involved in anything besides their career and their family really get involved in activities like triathlon or road racing or biplanar, or maybe they just didn’t get involved in that kind of stuff. And in those days now going back several, several decades here in American history. And so as we move into our fifties, we begin to realize that, you know, at one point our, our parents and our neighbors and their age groups in their fifties, were old people. And now I’m in my fifties, therefore I must be an old person. And so it changes our perspective on who we are from one day, you know, the 365th day of being 49 is really not significantly different from the first day of being 50. Um, so, you know, it’s, it’s all in our heads, right? Um, this whole thing of aging it’s, as you’ve mentioned, there’s no doubt that as we get older, things do change. It’s not like it doesn’t, we know it’s changing, but it doesn’t change at a rapid rate. It’s extremely small rate of change. And that rate of change can be modified. It can be a bended if you will, by the, by the athlete, it comes down to basically lifestyle and training. And that’s why I wrote the book.

Brad Cooper

Yeah. Beautiful. Well, we’re going to talk about more broad health and wellness here in a second, but for the athletes that are listening, what are some of the keys? And hopefully we can nudge them to read in your full book, but what are some of the keys to remaining competitive as you do get into your 50, 60, 70s and even we have eighties and nineties that are competing consistently now. So can you kind of walk us through some of the keys to keeping that competitive, not just drive, but ability as you move through the decades?

Joe Friel

Yeah. Good examples. Uh, a friend of mine, uh, Bob Scott, he’s a, he’s uh Ironman is his favorite distance, half Ironman or full Ironman. And, uh, he’s now in his eighties, he’s been racing for decades. He’s also a coach by the way. And, uh, I kind of look up to Bob. He’s, Oh, he’s probably 10 or more years older than I am. And I’m really amazed at what a great athlete he is. I recall when he was 73, I believe it was, he broke the course record at Ironman Hawaii did a, 13 hours, 30 minutes. Which is for a 73 year old excellent time set the course record broken by a gigantic chunk that I’m gonna call the old record, but it’s a gigantic amount. He took off the old record. If we, if we were able to, uh, uh, normalize race times by age, I sure I’m sure he would’ve won the race. In 73 years old ding 13:30. That’s really, really good. And the difference between Bob and most people I see who are, you know, even in their fifties, is that Bob continues to think of himself as being an athlete. And he does things that are very athletic. He does lifestyle when he’s not training, he’s focused on what he eats. He’s focused on how much he sleeps. He’s focused on what is, how, how his training is going, what he’s doing to make sure he’s recovered and ready for the next train session. So he’s always even in his eighties. He is still thinking that way. And it allows him to be highly competitive and doing iron man races into his eighties. Um, he’s a remarkable individual. He’s not the only one. I’ve mentioned several people in the book like that who are, you know, in seventies and eighties, uh, who are, uh, remarkable athletes. And it’s really, it comes down to a mindset. It’s just a way of thinking about yourself, but you know, this doesn’t mean just because I got this new number behind my, behind my name. It doesn’t mean I’m no longer an athlete. I’m just as much an asset as I was before. In fact, in some ways maybe I need to be more of an athlete now, as I get into my fifties sixties, whatever number it may be.

Brad Cooper

So let’s shift the conversation a little bit here. A large portion of our audience are health and wellness coaches. So they are helping their clients more broadly helping them improve their lives with the competition, maybe a part of it, but more off to the side, kind of out there in the peripheral vision. What have you found in your research that they might find beneficial when it comes to helping their clients more, I guess more broadly make the most of their life regardless of how old they are from 30 to 90.

Joe Friel

Yeah. So I think there’s three things that, uh, um, I, I describe in the book, uh, that really are the bottom line. What the book is all about and all the book does, is just kind of fill in the blanks around what does this mean? Um, so three things. Number one is that as we get older, there’s no doubt that our aerobic capacities are going to decrease. Our VO two max is, are going to get lower. And that’s, uh, that’s a, a gigantic marker of our, of our endurance performance is how high our VO two max is typically it falls rather rapidly um, as we get older in the athlete who, um, really quits doing high intensity training and just start going out and doing long slow distance workouts, which is very common, I found for, for older athletes, they tend not to do that high intensity stuff anymore. I don’t know exactly why, but we tend to gravitate away from that as we get older. And so if you get the athlete just into doing some high intensity training interval training, it doesn’t have to be gigantic amount. It’s just gotta be some interval training in there. We can stimulate, aerobic capacities and we won’t stop the decrease in aerobic capacity, but we’ll slow it down. And in the book I described some research studies that support this, some of the best research studies we call longitudinal studies, they’ll follow for years, if not decades, which is what the research that I mentioned in my book and in those people who they follow for decades is what they, the athletes they follow for decades, you find that the ones who kept on doing high intensity interval training maintain a relatively high level of VO two max compared, especially with those who quit doing high intensity and just started doing long slow distance workouts. So that’s number one, cause you got to do some high intensity training. This doesn’t mean that all has to be high intensity. It doesn’t mean it has to be ridiculously hard, but you got to do some of it. If you don’t do some of it, I can guarantee you, aerobic capacity is going to drop faster than it would otherwise. So that’s the first thing,

Brad Cooper

Real quick on that one. So for the general population on this first one, I’m Joe Schmoe and I am not an athlete. I don’t see myself as an athlete, but I’m listening to this and I’m thinking, well, Hmm. What does that mean for me? Would you suggest things like something like a spin class at their local rec center, or just literally when they’re on that bike and they’re peddling to throw in some two minute intervals, some four minute intervals, is that the type of thing you’re talking about on this for the more general?

Joe Friel

Yeah. Could even be what we tend to refer to and, uh, uh, after sports career or sports cycle or sports, uh, uh, language as a fartlek, in other words, just go hard when you feel like it and go easy when you feel like it and hard is what you want to make it easy as what you want to make it. Doing some of that instead of just always going out and doing just this, you know, long steady bike ride, which is real low intensity, do some high intensity stuff, throw them in any way you want to. It could be just, where I live, there’s nothing flat around here. Everything is either uphill or downhill. And so consequently, it becomes very easy to do high intensity training because I’ve got all these hills, I got to climb. Some are very short, 30 seconds to minute, and some are rather long, which should take, you know, five, 10, 15 minutes to climb. And so just by driving those courses, they, they keep me, uh, developing and keep my aerobic capacity from, from dropping too rapidly because I can never go out and just do an easy, steady ride. That’s not going to happen. So any, any way that the athlete can build more intensity into their training is going to be beneficial so long as they don’t overdo it. Um, cause you can overdo it as with anything in life. You can drink too much water. There’s all kinds of things we can do that are good for us. But if we take them to the extreme, they become bad for us, same idea. You just can’t start doing high intensity interval training. Every time you go out, it’s not going to be good for you. It’s going to be bad for you. So it’s a mixture of these things. It’s not just one or the other.

Brad Cooper

Excellent. Okay. That’s great. That’s good advice. I just wanna make sure the person that’s sitting there saying, well, I’m not really an athlete, Joe, what should I do with this? That’s perfect advice. It doesn’t matter how long it is. It doesn’t have to be the same every time. And it certainly shouldn’t be every day, but we need that higher intensity. However you define that in your own life. Okay. Perfect. I got you off track. What’s number two?

Joe Friel

Number two has to do with muscle mass as we get older. Um, we’re all aware of this. We see people around us who are, you know, older people in their 50, 60 seventies, eighties, you know, we can see happening is they’re becoming really small in terms of muscle mass. They’re becoming skin and bone. They just don’t have any muscle or skin fat and bone. They just don’t have any, their muscle mass is decreasing. Quite obviously you can see a picture of a, of a person when they were in their twenties and how muscular they look to now, the person who’s in their sixties and you can see the difference. There’s absolutely no question. They’ve lost muscle mass over the years, that is going to happen to every one of us. If we don’t do something to stop it, uh, to keep the muscle mass there. So I encourage people in the book and describe the details around this, about doing weightlifting strength training, because it’s very beneficial. As we get older, a loss of muscle mass is one of the major problems that people have in their lives. And they get into their seventies, eighties, nineties, because they just can’t move anymore. Lost muscle mass. All they’ve got left is just tiny little muscles. We have a hard time getting out of chairs and you have a hard time stepping over curves. You have a hard time just doing anything that requires muscle, right? And so staying with, uh, with strength training, typically weightlifting is very beneficial and we, people tend to think that even when they get older, somehow they cannot, they can no longer improve their strength, but that’s, that’s a myth it’s not right at all. In fact, there’ve been a couple of studies, I’ve read, uh, where they took people and they had them strength training program. And they also took people who were in their twenties and put them on a strength training program they’ve not been on previously. And they found both groups in the twenties and their nineties at the same rate of improved their strength. They didn’t improve the same amount because obviously the older person started with a much smaller amount of weight and improved at the same rates. So they had the same percentage of improvement in their nineties, as it compared to somebody in their twenties. This is not something that goes away just because you become 50 it disappears because you changed your lifestyle. You’re not stressing those muscles anymore. So, so the second thing emphasize you need to be working on muscle mass and keeping that as you get older, uh, and that often involves doing things like lifting weights. It could be body weight, it could be all kinds of things you do that stress the muscle. So that that’s number, number two on the list.

Joe Friel

Then number three is as we get older, the typical thing that happens is as we’re losing muscle is we’re gaining fat. Um, it’s not a, it’s not a trade-off the muscle is not being replaced by fat. It doesn’t work that way. Muscle is disappearing and fat is appearing as something brand new. It’s not something that, uh, is happening physiologically. You know, muscle does not turn into fat. It’s just, something’s being added onto your body, uh, which is not beneficial. And we need to keep that under control. Um, so that involves a lots of things, uh, such as diet, which is a gigantic part of this, but also with hormones, um, hormones, especially stuff like, uh, Oh, like a growth hormone, testosterone, um, so forth. There’s, there’s a certain number of, of, uh, of hormones. They’re all released, uh, during sleep. Uh, and that’s when the body’s done a great job with helping to rebuild itself, uh, rebuild muscle tissues, for example. And so this is a time when we can keep, uh, help keep fat at Bay, uh, by making sure we’ve got enough, uh, these growth hormones going on in our bodies while we’re also watching your diet lifting weights, uh, make some improvements. But unfortunately what happens is we’re just not getting enough sleep in this country. People are getting, they’re always cutting out things in their sleep or cutting out sleep either in order to fit more things into their daily life, whatever that may be. So we’re just trying to get too much into our lives. And because of that first place, first thing, that suffers sleep. And so sleep means we don’t get enough hormones, hormones are not good enough to keep, uh, body composition healthy, uh, along with the weight training, along with the high intensity training. So these things all kind of tie together. Um, and the sleep is kind of at the crux of the whole issue, got to get enough sleep in order for all these things to be beneficial.

Brad Cooper

Perfect. It’s interesting. Two of our most popular episodes have been sleep specialists. So you are you’re preaching to the choir. Good stuff. Thanks for that reminder. And real interesting to bring that back to the hormone side is that I think a lot of people don’t realize that you’ve mentioned a lot about research studies, which I love. We try to keep all this evidence-based and not just people’s opinion. What advice would you have for our listeners to help them falling prey to the old, you know, headlines, fads, all the latest stuff that’s out there that get shouted from the mountain top, but frankly don’t have any evidence behind them. Any, any suggestions for the folks that are wanting to go the evidence route, but they’re struggling with that?

Joe Friel

Yeah. Typically the evidence you see in newspapers and magazines is not the best stuff you can get. It’s, uh, it’s often, uh, uh, taken out of context and portions of it are, especially in the headlines are blown up to make it more desirable for the, uh, for the reader to read the article because the headline sounds intriguing. You know, if you simply do this little thing that’s going to make you live 10 years longer or whatever, it’s always something always kind of ridiculous. But if you start, if you were to get into the research, the research, wasn’t really saying that exactly, that somebody is drawing that conclusion from having read the research. So it’s really, uh, uh, you know, really trying to make decisions based on research. You read newspapers, magazines. What you read about them rather is probably not the best way to go because it’s often exaggerated. It’s often taken out of context. Uh, they don’t, they don’t tell you all the things, all the statistics and so forth that were in the studies. They just take you to a bottom line that they kind of like explain it to the side that we’re finding that, you know, I can, I can point out research studies too that tell you things that you would never believe you’d find hard to believe because they are so contradictory things that we’ve been knowing, we’ve known for decades, but there always be a study that comes along, which, you know, one study all by itself find something which is really unusual. And quiet often it’s because it was just not a good study. All studies are not, are not perfect. Some are much better than others. And sometimes we’re drawn to those studies that you, the magazines and newspapers were drawn to those because they find something which is really unique. And therefore we ought to be doing this wherever it may be. But if you can find a thousand studies that tell you that that’s not right, it just doesn’t work that way. So we get occasionally get this bad research. And it’s not the fault of the researchers often. It’s just because of the way the research study was designed or the, or the subjects they use, the study or the number of subjects they used the study or number of variables here that produce research, which is not great. But, uh, sometimes we tend to gravitate to those things because they’re exciting. So I’m going to change my life because I am going to live longer because I’m going to drink one more cup of coffee a day, or I take this vitamin, or we’re not going to take that vitamin anymore. I’m going to do this or I’ll do that. So it’s just all this stuff it’s always being thrown at us every day. The best thing is just to be a bit skeptical of all the stuff you read about research pills and so forth, you know, um, probably are better off dealing with people who are experts on this rather than trying to draw from an editor for a newspaper.

Brad Cooper

Very good. All right. So you have coached literally some of the top endurance athletes in the world over the past several decades, and I’m using the word secret. I know nothing’s truly secret anymore, but what would be your top three secrets that separate the good athletes, the competitive athletes from the great athletes, regardless of age?

Joe Friel

Well, number one is mindset. And there’s no doubt about that. Coached, as you mentioned, lots of really good athletes, world class athletes, and I’ve also coached people who are brand new coming into the sport, whatever sport may be. And I can guarantee you that, the world-class athlete has a rather unique way of seeing the world there. It’s not like they’re a hundred percent though. It’s not like they, it’s not like they don’t think they had some faults. So they have some problems associated with their performances. It’s just that they think they can overcome them. And the person who doesn’t always have that same opinion, they can overcome this problem. Whatever it may be, problem is just too big for me to overcome. And I find that to be one of the major things that changes the way these two groups of people perform or rather interact, in their training and racing and the really good athletes experience, elite athletes just has this mindset that they can overcome, whatever the issue may be, which they know they’ve got, they’ve got an issue. Nobody’s perfect. You know, they’ve got issues, but they believe they can overcome it. I think that’s like number one, it’s always mindset. That’s gigantic, but we can’t also rule out the fact of physiology. There are people on the planet who just have exceptional physiology for whatever the sport may be. I don’t care what it is. It’s just, you know, they, they were lucky. They were born with this stuff. For example, um, a good swimmer has very long arms. They can’t, uh, if you don’t have long arms, big hands, your chances of becoming an elite swim are, are really rather small. Um, you know, you think about a Michael Phelps. I can recall seeing him one time do an interview. The first, first Olympics he did, they brought a couch in a interview room and the couch was designed for three people. He was sitting in the middle of the couch with his arms on the, resting on the back, you know, stretched out in his hands or hanging over the ends of both ends of the couch. Um, you know, the arms, his arm length is amazing how long they are that, you know.

Joe Friel

So you start looking at things like that, that he’d had no control over that he got that, uh, genetics. Uh, and there’s lots of things I can go down the list, like I could tell you take any sports you want. And I can tell you the things that you can get benefits that are beneficial, that you have no control over basketball players are tall. You don’t find four foot, two basketball players, right. They are going to be seven foot two. You know, that that’s just the way it is, right? And there’s more stuff that we have some control over, but we don’t have total control over like a muscle type, you know, elite athletes. Endurance athletes tend to have a lot of type two muscles, um, or type one muscles I’m sorry, you have a lot of endurance muscle and consequently that, that, and that’s something that they got at birth, which is beneficial for performance. Not all of us have that. So, and the list just goes on and on. So physiology is certainly a big part of this, uh, along with the mindset. And I think if I had to pick out a third thing that probably sets them apart, it’s this, uh, desire to excel, which is also a mindset sort of thing, but a little bit different, this desire to be extremely good at something, um, as opposed to just being pretty good at it. There’s this desire among I found among the elite athletes to be, uh, exceptional in terms of being an athlete. And they’ve always had this, we’ve always done it. Maybe it’s because of their parents. One of the best athletes I’ve ever coached was a, an Olympian, um, triathlete. And I got to know his parents quite well. Great folks. And I can tell from being around his parents, I could see how he had this mind, this belief in himself that he could, uh, he could be exceptional because that was the way they raised him. He saw himself as being exceptional because they saw themselves as being exceptional and they saw him as being exceptional. So it was, it, his family, they exceptional was common. They saw themselves as being exceptional. So he’s out competing against people and it was just grade school years, high school, years, college, years, who didn’t grow up with that. That’s the same way of seeing the world that they’re exceptional. And, uh, so that, that, that set him apart from, uh, from other athletes. And we could probably go on and on and on. There’s all kinds of things, a lot come down to this mental, uh, perspective that the elite athlete have.

Brad Cooper

Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. So let’s pull that crystal ball out. You’ve seen a lot of stuff over the years. You’ve seen, you know, the heart rate monitor coming into the forefront. The GPS developed the power meters obviously had a big influence on cyclists. As you look into that crystal ball, any predictions about what we might see in the next 10 years?

Joe Friel

Well, I can probably take some stabs, but quite honestly, I’m, I’m really poor at this. Give you the example that my son was, uh, in the early nineties he was racing as a pro cyclist in Europe. And he called me one day while he was over in Europe, 92, if I recall, right. And, uh, clipless pedals had just come out, uh, you know, before that we had, we had the toe clips slide, your foot into this bear trap sort of thing. You pull a leather strap, lock your foot place. That was what he grew up using what I grew up using 1992. And these new clipless pedals have just come out and he called, Hey dad, do you think I should switch over to the clipless pedals? And I said, Oh, I wouldn’t do that. It’s just a fad. Here we are. We’re now like, uh, almost 30 years later. And, uh, it’s just the opposite. That’s the standard. Everybody now uses, uses clipless pedals. You know, if you see somebody using the old bear trap that pedal, you know, leather strap and so forth, that was highly unusual. So I’m really not very good at this stuff at trying to predict what’s going to happen. I’ve always been kind of blown away when the stuff comes out, proves itself to be useful, like the power meter, for example, or even a heart rate monitor going way back in time. But I see things all the time because people are, are bouncing things off of me. You know, for example, now that device that hardly anybody uses that helps measure oxygen saturation with the muscles, um, which has been around medicine for a long time for decades. But that’s kind of interesting tool because it tells you how much, you know, how much oxygen you got in the system, really gets into how much fat you can burn and how good your aerobic capacity is and all this kind of stuff. You’ve got these things coming out now for, for athletes that could be worn to, to measure oxygen in the system. You know, we’ll, we’ll eventually be able to measure lactate probably seems like there are some places that you can measure lactate levels in the body without making any drawing any blood, you know, without going into the body itself, without making any dents in it or little pokes and prods and so forth that caused you to believe, you know, measure lactate, which is interesting in itself, but most athletes could use it.

Joe Friel

But it’s interesting information to have, you know, we’re getting new ways of seeing the world with people who come along from time to time who changed the way we see things. The inventor of the power meter is a professor of sport science or not professor, but a PhD in sport science named Dan Kogen. He’s changed the way we see a train with power meters and continues to come up with new ideas. The guy is just amazing. Just seeing the number on your power meter is interesting. Okay. That’s my power right now, but he has taken back to the point now that we’re looking at all kinds of stuff beyond the, the, uh, the realm of being able to understand some cases, you almost need to have a PhD to know what in the world we’re doing. We’re just becoming a really, really deep but extremely viable information about this athlete. What is his or her current status is and how we can even go about improving, what are the things we need to improve? And all that comes from just looking at data from the power meter. And the thing is just amazing. It’s unbelievable stuff he’s coming up with. And there are other people out there also come up with ideas. Also change the way we see the world.

Joe Friel

So the not, there’s not a lot of them, but there are enough of them right now that we’re changing uh, training training is going to take Steven Sivor, he’s a professor in sport science in Norway did all the research started the early two thousands on a polarized training. The 80 20 concept of training, lots of, lots of training and a little bit of very high intensity training, which kind of takes us back to this VO two max, scientists I was talking about earlier, but he’s changed the way we’re seeing the world also when he’s not changing the stuff we’re using, as far as the equipment is changing the way we look at the data that comes out of that equipment, my heart rate data or power data or whatever it may be. So he’s, he’s changed the way we see the world also. And those kinds of people pop up from time to time and they just see things differently. And that changes the way eventually changed the way we all see the world polarized. Whereas 20, 20 years ago, nobody talked about it, but I thought the whole idea was, was kind of ridiculous that you do a lot of massive, massive amounts, very and a small amount, of my high-intensity training. Nobody was even talking about that. He comes along and over the course of a couple of decades almost now, that’s the way I’ve seen intensity and training. So I’m always looking for these people to come along with ideas that are different and to see what their idea is and what happens because that idea often they’re called nuts and crack pots and so forth things that come up often just challenge you to rethink how we’re doing that. So those are the things that are most interesting to me, as opposed to the hardware it’s the people who are yeah, that see things a little bit differently. That that’s what is unique I think.

Brad Cooper

All right. Last question. My friend, you’ve been a lifelong athlete competitor. If you were to go back and coach the younger Joe for you, what words of wisdom do you wish he’d known in his twenties, thirties, and forties?

Joe Friel

Well, there’s so much stuff. Just, just along that line, I’m just kind of like, this is like, related to that. I guess I had interesting thinking in my mind the other day, which was what year in my life, what age did I have my best power outputs? I’ve been using power meters since 1998. Uh, I was one of the original people started using it back in the early nineties. Actually, I didn’t have one finally started using consistently at 98. And I started collecting data and writing it down and reporting in 2006. And so I’ve got data that’s clear back to something like about 13 years now. My very best power data came out of the year when I was 68 years old. So at 68 years old, I was producing better power up than I was in the several years before that, you know, back till 2006, I was producing better power at age 68 than I was at those other years before that. And it wasn’t because I was becoming more powerful. I think, although obviously it was because the numbers are bigger. It was because I was training differently. I’ve learned how to use a power meter. That was the big thing that caused that year to be so significant and a rather significant change. It was because it was all coming to a head when I was 68. I was just learning how to train on a bicycle. Even though I thought I knew how to train for decades and how to do it. Once I began to figure out the details of the power meter and what it could do for me going back a while ago to applied principles and so forth that were coming out of all this, for example, that began to have a big impact on performance. And it was simply because of a different way of training, you know, so if I had to go back and talk to myself, when I was younger, I would tell myself to pay attention to what’s going on in the world around me. And don’t think that people are wrong because they differ with me. I try to get myself the opinion that when I’m having a debate with someone or we disagree on something, I try to keep in the back of my mind, this notion that he or she may be right, I may be wrong. I’ve been wrong before. I’ve been wrong before I may be wrong this time also. That person may be right. So even though I may be arguing with the other person, trying to prove my point, I tried to keep in the back of my mind, always that I could be wrong, which means that the other person could be right and maybe I’ll be doing what they’re suggesting. So, you know, if I could talk to myself and others back in my twenties and thirties, I would, that would be the thing I would tell myself, always be open-minded what other people are saying. Don’t rule them out because they think differently than you. You may be wrong.

Brad Cooper

Wonderful way to wrap it up. Thank you again, Joe, for joining us. This is so valuable. Again, I’ve been reading your stuff for literally decades and it’s, it’s fun to be able to chat.

Joe Friel

Thank you, Brad. I enjoyed talking with you. Thanks

Brad Cooper

So many great tips. Thanks again to Joe Friel. You can follow him on Twitter at J Friel, J F R I E L. You can follow me as well if you’d like @Catalyst2Thrive. So it’s catalyst two thrive. I thought it was interesting two of the three things he identified as secrets, if you will, of sustained performance were related to mindset. Something we can help our clients or in our own lives, integrate at any age. It’s not age dependent at all. That, I mean, just think about that. The physical from this guy who’s been coaching athletes for 40 years comes back to mindset. That’s a powerful reminder. Speaking of mindsets, we have finalized our speaker lineup for the September 6th to the 8th Coaching Retreat and Symposium in Estes Park, Colorado. And they have me kicking off the event. So I’m going to be speaking about the practical application of some of our PhD research we pulled together on this concept of functional mental toughness. How you can integrate it as a coach, how you can integrate it in your own life. Any of the things you’re trying to pursue, if you haven’t registered yet, you can check out all the details, all the speakers at CatalystCoachingInstitute.com under the retreat tab or email us anytime Results@CatalystCoachingInstitute.com. Hope to see you there. Thanks again for those of you who’ve clicked subscribe on iTunes. I’m told that makes it much easier for people to find us. We’re here. If you need anything at all, anything to coaching, email is Results@CatalystCoachingInstitute.com, let’s keep chasing better. And I’ll speak with you soon on the next episode of the Catalyst Health and Wellness Coaching Podcast.