Don’t buy into the ‘past it at 40’ narrative. With the right approach, it could be your fittest decade yet
It’s becoming a trend in elite sport. More and more top athletes – Roger Federer in tennis, LeBron James in basketball, Jimmy Anderson in cricket – are staying competitive past 40 and in an era when their respective sports are more physically demanding than ever.
Genes play a part, of course, as does luck with injuries. And yes, the athletes mentioned above are among the all-time greats, so even with a slight drop in performance, they’d still be pretty handy.
The wider lesson though is that we live in an age when information around sport science, performance and recovery is available to all and tapping into what elite athletes do can help us extend our own prime time.
1 / Think like an athlete
A big factor in how these top athletes have extended their careers is motivation. They have maintained the hunger to do the necessary work, at a time in their careers when it would be much easier to tail off.
Whilst it might be career legacy that drives them, it’s useful to define our own reason for putting in the work and setting the necessary habits.
“(It might) just be that you can perform the everyday activities you want to at a high level. That's health and performance,” says Performance Coach Peter Tierney. “I think it's really about trying to raise your ceiling.”
2 / Build your own performance team
Another factor in why the Lebrons of this world can maintain their level is the expertise around them.
“These athletes have invested in themselves and they've looked after themselves,” says Tierney. “They've got good people around them who can say ‘this can help with recovery, this can help with your sleep’. And then that's actually helping to sort of slow down this sort of decay of their elite performance.”
What’s our own version of this? It could be arming yourself with the latest insights, following or working with the right experts and using trackers or technology that can power your process.
“It doesn't have to be expensive,” says Tierney. “Even if it’s just family and friends… surround yourself with some people who are interested in trying to improve their health as well.”
3 / Slow down the slow down
Short-term fitness goals are useful but in our forties it’s important to think long-term too.
“Lifespan is the expected age that you live to, but within that you have a healthspan,” says Tierney. “That's the age you can live to whilst enjoying your life and doing all the things you need to do.”
Tierney highlights the importance of developing lean muscle mass now to achieve functional performance as we age.
“Compare an MRI scan of a triathlete at 70 years old, and a sedentary person at the same age. This triathlete will have a lot of lean muscle mass,” he says.
Including cardio, resistance and power work in your training has been shown to help slow down decline, adds Tierney.
4 / Professionalise your approach
“Top athletes will exercise in some capacity most days. They will obviously take recovery days and rest days… they're doing quite a lot and they have good routines in place,” he says.
For the rest of us, Tierney recommends five hours of what he calls intentional exercise a week as an achievable target:
“Up to a point, if you increase your training load, running, swimming, whatever it is, you should see improvements in fitness, whatever way you define that.”
He also recommends finding ways to move more throughout the week outside of your designated exercise time, focusing on activities that you enjoy (not resent) and making sure you have “the nutrition, diet, sleep and recovery to support”.
5 / Keep it consistent
The most important thing we can learn from the Federers of this world? “Training consistency,” says Tierney, “and the same for sleep and recovery.”
“If you can put a routine in place, whatever type of class or activity you want to do, just stick to that for at least six months,” he says. “Don't change something because you haven't seen a result in a week or two because you probably won't…”
“Have a medium-term goal in mind and then get to that point and reflect,” he adds.
None of us, athletes or otherwise, can change the fact that our physicality changes as we get older but by switching our mindset and approach we can flip the doom and gloom narrative.
Most of us even have an advantage over elite athletes who’ve spent their lives in peak condition – we can still raise our overall ceiling.
“There's no real reason for people to have this sort of rapid, slowing down of performance,” says Tierney. “If you can sustain the activity levels and you're training correctly and resting and recovering appropriately, I don't see why you can't make huge strides in fitness and improvement as you get older.”
