anaerobic exercise for the aged

So I’m 61 and my garmin tells me I’m doing plenty of low and high aerobic exercise, but need more anaerobic. cycling, jogging, and swimming don’t do it, nor does paddling or rollerskating.

If I sprint at my age I’m likely to injure or strain something and do more harm than good. Went to my first spin class since lockdown tonight, worked hard but still almost no anaerobic.

What else could I try?

If I sprint at my age I’m likely to injure or strain something and do more harm than good.

Not if you warm up properly. Try doing some sprint/rest intervals.

When you cycle every time you hit a short hill  just sprint up it as hard as you can. That’s what I do.  I am also 61

58 max effort on 2 short hills on todays ride. I’m taking just over a minute a hill. I have the save issue as you so I’m adding some harder efforts.

You didn’t have wild just a smooth hard effort

Remember pulse lags and isn’t a good guide for short efforts. Just go on feel

Or you can do 4 minutes at a slightly lower effort, then repeat

As another that’s 61 I do what imnotverygood does. It helps that Suffolk only has short hills.

Well I am 65 and running would definitely do my left knee in.

High intensity bike stuff is easier done on a turbo trainer.  It doesn’t have to last very long, then you can keep the real life cycling for steadier efforts.  If you can call getting up any decent hill at 65 as “steady”.

Tabata on a turbo/spin/gym bike, ski erg or rowing machine; 20 secs on/10secs off x 8

Lots as mentioned above. Can also do some boxing bag work, sprint sessions in the pool. HIIT classes.

Adding some hi intensity anaerobic is good, but you have to be careful w how much and recovery (I’m 59). Lots of info out there about how much of hi versus base efforts, will depend how fit and comfortable you already are with higher intensity efforts.

Longdog’s tabatas are a good way of getting into the red, and can have a noticeable improvement

What do you need it for? I’ve done essentially no anaerobic exercise for the past 5 years or so.

So I’m 61 and my garmin tells me I’m doing plenty of low and high aerobic exercise, but need more anaerobic.

How does your Garmin know? – probably by looking at your HR vs your threshold heart rate: have you got that set correctly on your Garmin?

I’m 65 and my Garmin tells me I’m doing lots of anaerobic from the hills on road and MTB rides,  so it’s probably not that difficult to do.

What do you need it for? I’ve done essentially no anaerobic exercise for the past 5 years or so

Garmin says so!

How does your Garmin know? – probably by looking at your HR vs your threshold heart rate: have you got that set correctly on your Garmin?

This sounds like it could be the easy win- I’m off to read the instructions- ta, otherwise it seems to be ‘work harder’ :)

All of those activities can be anaerobic. If you want to improve performance and build your Vo2 max and your ability to run/swim/ride faster then some anaerobic training is important. Thats not to say you wont become fitter (and to some extent a little faster) just doing aerobic training but once you have trained aerobically for a while you will begin to plateau unless you continue to increase training load.

What do you need it for? I’ve done essentially no anaerobic exercise for the past 5 years or so.

You need it because if you don’t use it, you essentially lose it, which is why you see so many old boys trundling around at a gentle steady pace on the flat, then slowing to a grinding crawl on every steepish climb. You also need it because quite a lot of trail riding involves bursts of anaerobic effort interspaced with recovery, depending obviously on where and how you ride. Also it’s ‘fun’ in a slightly painful way :-)

Tabata – 20/10s – or VO2 30/30 intervals on an indoor trainer – two or three days recovery between sessions are short, painful, but effective. Or build in short all-out sprints on gentle climbs with short recoveries, as per 30/30s.

What else could I try?

Yoga can anaerobic.

circuit training and, as above yoga. A free flow yoga would be better such as Ashtanga or Vinyasa.

Try pyramid sets when swimming. Breathe every two strokes for one length, then every three, then four, and so on until you’re doing a whole length without breathing. Then set off back down. The final length breathing every two will feel brutal! One pyramid will probably be enough – don’t rest between lengths, only at the end of the pyramid.

If you have a turbo, Zwift Insider Tiny Races, a quartet of back to back sub 15min (in theory) races that start at 1000 / 1600 / 2200 BST (might change when clocks go back end October) every Saturday. Sprint the final ~0.5Km, even if you aren’t in a pack, if you want some anaerobic exercise.

Route info of coming week usually given midweek at https://zwiftinsider.com/tiny/

Chuck in a sprint focussed workout midweek.

Fair enough that MTBing on interesting terrain benefits from the occasional burst of high power. But if you do that, you’re already doing that, aren’t you?

Maybe I just don’t get the point of special training in order to go for a ride. The going for a ride is the training. Ditto with running. Of course if there’s a major event on the horizon it’s a bit different.

Might be worth adding that I get better HR measurements over short/sprint intervals using a chest HRM rather than my watch. The latter can be a bit slow to react, so can miss peaks.

Try pyramid sets when swimming. Breathe every two strokes for one length, then every three, then four, and so on until you’re doing a whole length without breathing. Then set off back down. The final length breathing every two will feel brutal! One pyramid will probably be enough – don’t rest between lengths, only at the end of the pyramid.

Not breathing for a length in the middle of a set sounds seriously impressive. I think the lifeguard would be called into action if I tried that. But try I will!

TLDR: Ignore your Garmin and do what makes you happy.

Might be worth adding that I get better HR measurements over short/sprint intervals using a chest HRM rather than my watch. The latter can be a bit slow to react, so can miss peaks.

HR is a really poor measure of anything “anaerobic” anyway for this exact reason. If you want your Garmin to give you a pat on the back then use a powermeter and do any kind of shorter intervals a very high exertion (and get your FTP set correctly- or incorrectly if you really want an extra pat on the back ;) ). Or ride a singlespeed- amount of swearing and gurning correlates to increase in Garmin anaerobic ratings- the Garmin app seems to respond to SS gurning in my experience ;)

You need it because if you don’t use it, you essentially lose it, which is why you see so many old boys trundling around at a gentle steady pace on the flat, then slowing to a grinding crawl on every steepish climb.

It is true that physiology changes with age which is why you always see strength training encouraged with aging (your HR monitor and Garmin app won’t register it correctly but it helps in the real world). Cycling at virtually all intensity levels during is heavily aerobic and “aerobic ability” (to massively oversimplify) determines good/ bad across virtually all cycling and climbing intensities. It is quite hard to truly test anaerobic systems hard whilst cycling. Crawling up climbs with age is more likely due to aerobic ability/ weight/ habit and lack of specificity/ other health or MSK issues/ doing it deliberately to focus on aerobic gains/ etc/ etc

Try pyramid sets when swimming. Breathe every two strokes for one length, then every three, then four, and so on until you’re doing a whole length without breathing. Then set off back down. The final length breathing every two will feel brutal! One pyramid will probably be enough – don’t rest between lengths, only at the end of the pyramid.

I swim most lunchtimes (lucky to to be near a club with an outdoor pool) but I’m not sure i’d do the non-breathing bit, still maybe it’s a technique i’m not familiar with.

It is quite hard to truly test anaerobic systems hard whilst cycling

Not in the Surrey Hills it isn’t.

which is why you see so many old boys trundling around at a gentle steady pace on the flat, then slowing to a grinding crawl on every steepish climb

It could also be because they are “old boys”! I am one (60 in a week) and I know from experience the physiological changes that take place as you age, regardless of effort and commitment. Its not a lack of (or wrong) training necessarily.

@caher @wait4me I used to do a lot of swimming but I can only just manage 25m without a breath these days – it’s basically a sprint and I’m dying at the end. But you can end your pyramid at 8 breaths, or 10, or whatever before you start to work back down. It’ll have the same effect.

Fair enough that MTBing on interesting terrain benefits from the occasional burst of high power. But if you do that, you’re already doing that, aren’t you?

Maybe I just don’t get the point of special training in order to go for a ride. The going for a ride is the training. Ditto with running. Of course if there’s a major event on the horizon it’s a bit different.

I think those are fair points. If you’re doing the rides you want then what’s the problem.

For me their are 2 answers

I can ride all day in zone 2 and 3 on the hills. Longest day this year 10 hours. I also did 4 days of 6 hours back to back.

But I’m slow on the hills in pretty much any group so I’d like my zone 2 and 3 to be faster

Also if i go proper mountain biking at say Woburn then I’m destroyed in an hour or so. Because I’m not use to the the short hard efforts to get up each climb.

So I’m adding in some higher intensity efforts. It’s worked before for both these goals and it’ll with again

I just want my watch to stop calling me lazy!

I’m going to try that pyramid swim, my pool is only 20m and I can do my first length without breathing no bother, i’ll find it a lot harder a few in tho.

Yoga, id forgotten how hard that can be, I went along to a class a few weeks ago but they spent too much time on stuff like crow where I’ve got bugger all chance and I didn’t enjoy it.

I just think this may be my last chance to pull it back, my exercise regime never recovered after lockdown in many ways and I am the ageing plodder described above

Swap it for another watch ;-)

I just want my watch to stop calling me lazy!

Get yourself a single speed bike. Mine makes me feel really good about myself, and it makes everyone else think that I am a great cyclist (I am definitely not)

yep I ride singlespeed pretty every day, good ole grunt getting up some of the slopes round here. Definitely feeling it around 8% and by 12% is a right old heave-ho. Yoga and military style PT training help to keep all round body conditioning. 55yrs old and there’s definitely a noticeable difference to what/when and how I do things from when I was 50.

Do you live somewhere flat? I’m a total layman about these issues, but I’d have thought steep, hard climbs on a mountain bike are almost the definition of anaerobic!

I thought so too, but apparently the highlands aren’t steep or hard enough ( or I’m too slow and lazy)

It is quite hard to truly test anaerobic systems hard whilst cycling.

I wouldn’t agree with that. Road racing, for example, involves repeated anaerobic efforts (which is why you do interval training). At times it can be a succession of near death experiences.

Anaerobic exercise, by definition, can only be sustained for a limited time, so climbing a steep hill might not actually be anaerobic, if you are managing to sustain the climb for several minutes. You can do anaerobic efforts on the flat; you just have to sprint really hard! As others have pointed out, it may be easier to do this on the turbo.

I’ll also repeat the point about using an HRM. That’s a waste of time for anaerobic efforts as they’ll be over before the HRM registers the effort. Go by feel. Trust me, you’ll know if you’ve done an anaerobic effort. You’ll definitely know if you work up to doing a few back to back.

Anaerobic exercise can still be beneficial even if you just do endurance riding. Mixing it up a bit is always good, and working on your ability to tolerate going into the red can have a positive effect for “normal” riding. I just wouldn’t rely on Garmin’s assessment of what you are doing.

would hiking/climbing mountains like tryfan do it?

I know i cant without stopping countless times

I’ll also repeat the point about using an HRM. That’s a waste of time for anaerobic efforts as they’ll be over before the HRM registers the effort.

I don’t know what type of HRM you’ve been using, but that’s not true for me.

It could also be because they are “old boys”! I am one (60 in a week) and I know from experience the physiological changes that take place as you age, regardless of effort and commitment. Its not a lack of (or wrong) training necessarily.

It’s partly that for sure. If you read Fast After 50, Joe Friel’s training guide for the ageing athlete, he talks about which metrics decline with age, but also that you can markedly slow that decline with specific training, particularly regular intense intervals. You can’t prevent it completely, but you can make a big difference to how fast it happens.

I’m not saying everyone has to do that, or should do that, but for me it’s worth the relatively short time investment because it means I enjoy riding my bike more on interesting stuff – which for me tends to be nadgery, up and down, from my door-step Peak stuff and hilly lanes, back roads, big climbs etc. There’s also evidence that a higher VO2 Max is associated with increased longevity, which seems quite important to me.

I just want my watch to stop calling me lazy!

Stop using it then. If you’re happy with your fitness levels and how they work for you, then doing stuff just because Garmin’s algorithms tell you to seems a bit nuts.

Fair enough that MTBing on interesting terrain benefits from the occasional burst of high power. But if you do that, you’re already doing that, aren’t you?

Maybe I just don’t get the point of special training in order to go for a ride. The going for a ride is the training. Ditto with running. Of course if there’s a major event on the horizon it’s a bit different.

Don’t do it, I guess is the obvious answer. Everyone’s wired differently, so just do what works for you. Otherwise, yes, mountain biking will, to an extent, ‘do that’, but it’s less efficient than structured intervals and because that stuff takes commitment and hurts, you’re less likely to do it on a ride.

would hiking/climbing mountains like tryfan do it?

I know i cant without stopping countless times

It depends how hard you go basically and why you’re stopping. You’d be more likely to go anaerobic, I think, if you didn’t stop, or at least not as soon as you started to feel uncomfortable.

The nature of anaerobic stuff is that it bloody hurts, which is why structured intervals are a more effective way of training it than just going for a ride, unless you’re properly bloody minded and the terrain is very conducive to it. But it’s one of those ‘perfect is the enemy of good’ things, particularly given that a big chunk of the population gets out of breath waddling from their sofa to the car so they can drive half a mile to the supermarket and buy more do-nuts…

I just want my watch to stop calling me lazy!

I’m going to try that pyramid swim,

Its like giving in to a child seeking attention… they will just want even more next week!