Dr. Phil Maffetone challenges the myth that athletes peak in their 20s or 30s. Endurance runners can improve into their 40s, 50s, and 60s with the right training approach. Mark Allen, Mike Pigg, and Priscilla Welch all set personal records well past their supposed prime.
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Recently I had, uh, Matt Fitzgerald from 80/20 Running on the podcast. We had a great conversation about, uh, one of the latest books that he wrote that was Running the Dream, where he actually joined an elite running camp at altitude and to really see what the max of his performance was going to be, because he still, even in his mid-40s, had some really big PR goals that he wanted to go after. Yesterday I re-listened to some of our previous podcast conversations that you and I have had, and I heard you say that many athletes don't hit their aerobic peak until well into their 40s. And me now, like getting into the late 30s, going into the 40s soon, it really got me excited. Both of these things, both of what Matt said and what you've been saying as well about aerobic peak not happening for many athletes until well into their 40s. Can you talk a little bit more about that part, about the aerobic peak and how that develops, like, especially into the 40s as well?
Yeah, I think the— there's, there's two ways to describe that. One is the sort of a generic approach with human physiology, um, and then we have to, we have to say, well, what are, what do humans normally do? They normally progress. And when we start looking at race pace and submax training pace and physical abilities. We have to bring in strength and muscle function and all of that stuff. And you put it all together and you seem to have a peak in the 40s. And we see, we see athletes who, you know, as they get past what people think of as their prime— Mark Allen winning the Ironman, you know, at a later age, beating a lot of those young young guys who, you know, were incredible athletes. Mike Pig did the same thing. Priscilla Welch won the New York City Marathon at age 42. And I've had plenty of athletes who in their 40s were winning races and beating, you know, good, good runners who were 10, 15 years younger. So there's the clinical part. There's the physiological part that we can look at. But again, we have to look at individual circumstances. And so the big question is, okay, you peak in your 40s. The question is, when did you begin this development?
That's such a good point.
If you began at age 35 because you thought, okay, I'm gonna— I gotta get off the couch and start training, and you do, and now you're running better and better, and at 45 you run a PR for your 10K or your marathon or whatever. Well, there's a good chance you're going to run a PR at age 50 as well. And we're not talking about the category of 50s. We're talking about the open, you know, your overall event. It's conceivable you could run your best race and peak at age 55. So it depends, but there's always a limit because the human body has limits. And one of the nice things about age group performance is that you have another goal that you can say, hey, I've run my, my marathon PR at age 55. Now, I'm going to run a— when I'm 60, I'm going to prepare for that 60 category. And now, I'm racing against my peers. And it's, you know, it's a big part of the process. It's one of the fun things that people can do. And so, that's, you know, I think the tradition of the peak is that we peak at age, you know, 25 or 30. That's a myth. And also we peak every year and we can only see that peak after we've passed it. And I don't like peaks. I think we just get faster and faster in the course of a season and in the course of your, you know, your years depending again on where you started. And those are not myths, those are real things. And the aerobic system is not dependent on sprint speed. You know, those dependencies have a big genetic feature. If you're a 100-meter racer, then those are factors, but Most of us are not, not doing that, at least right now.
Well, that, that excites me so much about this training approach, though, seeing many athletes in their 40s, 50s, 60s, all running PRs with this approach. It just seems more focused on becoming a healthier, stronger, happier runner this way, really. And, and this is where I also, like, I'm so glad that I found this training approach when I did, because I know it will like not beat me up to a point that I will get injured all over the time, but I can continue running healthy for many years to follow.
So absolutely. Yeah, it's a, it's another, it's another given that people think, you know, we're gonna be an athlete and we're gonna compete at a high level for just a short period of time because athletic careers are short, right? Well, athletic careers are considered short because so many people are unhealthy and it's health that shortens their career, not their fitness. And if we can get healthy, just the fact that we get healthier will lengthen our fitness career. And so wherever we're at, if we're a professional athlete, extending the career by being healthy is a wonderful thing to do, obviously. And then if we're an amateur, The same thing. We can work our way up the age groups and perform really well. And if we just want to be fit and, you know, do whatever workouts we want to do because it's most enjoyable to us, the same thing applies.
