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How can you build — or at least preserve — power and strength into your later years? That question sounds straightforward. The answer is more nuanced than most fitness content lets on, because it requires understanding what power and strength actually are, what physiological changes are working against you after 50, and — critically — what factors within your control are limiting you far more than age itself. Let's start with the definitions, because conflating power and stre

Recently, I watched one of the most enlightening and well-sourced exchanges on nutrition and training I've ever seen. Two of the most credible authorities on both topics — Drs. Alan Aragon and Brad Schoenfeld — sat down for a conversation that runs about three and a half hours in full. It's well worth the time if you have it. I watched it, and I've been thinking about it since, specifically through the lens of what it means for older athletes. What follows are the highlights

I just read the article Training Model for Extended Career Athletes: A Narrative Review so you don't have to. That's not a throwaway line. The research on masters athletes — defined in the literature as competitive athletes continuing to train and compete into their 40s, 50s, 60s, and beyond — has expanded considerably in the past decade, but most of it lives behind academic paywalls or in journals that aren't written for the people it's actually about. My job, as both a stud

I had my first argument with ChatGPT recently. I don't mean a frustration with a bad answer — I mean a genuine, back-and-forth debate on a question I actually care about, with a conclusion neither of us started with. The question: for athletes over 50, what is the correct priority order among macronutrients, micronutrients, and total caloric intake? It sounds like the kind of question with a clean answer. It doesn't have one — or rather, it has an answer that depends entirely

Pickleball is the fastest-growing sport in the United States, and it's catching fire specifically in our age group — for obvious reasons. The court is smaller than tennis, the ball moves slower, the rallies are more forgiving, and the social element is genuinely enjoyable. It has real elements of athleticism without the punishing demands of full-court racquet sports. The appeal is easy to understand. What's less widely discussed is that associated injuries have slightly outpa

You are probably not surprised to see a blog post promoting flexibility. It’s a well-known fact that maintaining mobility and elasticity of muscle and tendon tissue (but not ligaments – more on that in a future blog post) helps you to tolerate multi-directional movement as we age. That’s especially important for older athletes who want to preserve, as long as possible, both sports performance and general health with a lowered risk of injury. But the benefits of flexibility go

Hybrid Athletes? Spend any time in Facebook groups for older athletes and you'll notice something: they tend to be heavily loaded with bodybuilders. Bodybuilding content, bodybuilding advice, bodybuilding metrics — muscle size, symmetry, stage-ready conditioning. For some people in that age group, that's genuinely the goal and the framework that serves them. That's fine. But for most athletes over 50 — people who train for sport, for competition, for longevity, for the abilit