The SHIFT Speed Coaching mission is to add a decade of high performance to every sprint-jump-throw athlete’s career. It’s taken me a long time to find training inputs, systems, and heuristics that work consistently…and like I referenced in A Male Perspective On Periods And Performance, the most inclusive training principles necessarily work for everyone. With that in mind, the training principles that create sustainable high performance for Masters athletes work for everyone.
To be clear, there are athletes who benefit from bigger, more, and more complicated. There are athletes who are forced to make due with smaller, less, and less effective. But what allows an adult athlete with a full-time job, family commitments, an extensive injury history (or lack of athletic development), and limited access to training facilities to perform near their capacity without injury reflects good, sound, repeatable training.
That adult athlete is the Masters athlete, whether they are 24 years old playing club sports for community and health after closing their college career or they are 65 years old contesting for world records. As Dan John is fond of saying, “You ARE there, so act like it.”
The Training Principles That Work for Masters Athletes
- “If it’s important, do it every day. If it’s not important, don’t do it at all.” (Dan Gable)
- “Little and often over the long haul.” (Dan John)
- Consistency, then volume, then intensity.
- Maximum quality at appropriate quantity.
- Get help before you need it.
Principle 1: Dan Gable
A Masters athlete absolutely must identify their priority list.
Personally, my health comes first, so I can be available for my family and for my athletes. Then I desire general athleticism, so I can play any game and teach any skill that my kids or my athletes need to succeed. Finally, I want to keep playing track and field while making measurable progress until I’m 100+ or I drop dead. Inside “playing track and field” is my love affair with the hurdle race and my crush on the versatility of a decathlete.
That’s my priority list. So I have to do what’s important every day to serve my #1. Since health and availability are #1 for me, diet and sleep and recovery habits are my “do this every day.” I miss more training days than I care for, but I don’t skip on meal prep. I (mostly) stick to my bedtime routine. I walk every day, do little mobility drills throughout my day, and I obsess over water and protein and healthful carbs. Certainly I want to take more sport skill lessons, practice new drills, and do my power training, but if I’m squeezed for time, I work on my health every day and let the rest go.
Principle 2: Dan John
A Masters athlete will absolutely get hurt trying to do too much too soon.
The most important ability is availability. Even if you are a contender for Club National Championships or for world records, if you can’t compete at the Big Show, you can’t win. If you can’t train because of injury or don’t train because of burnout, you can’t stimulate adaptation or progress.
So, in my life, “little and often” refers to how you structure training. Do the least to improve your skill and do it as frequently as your body, mind, schedule, and resources permit.
Further, “over the long haul” refers to your time scale. I’ve commented before I don’t serve professional athletes (including scholarship collegiates) because their timeline is RIGHT NOW. Instead, I serve athletes with a minimum of 1-year vision but preferably a 10-year vision.
If your goal is to stay in the game, to make consistent progress, and to find joy in every day of training, you’ll make smart decisions that keep you in it. And when you get stuck, I can help. But if your goal is to wring every drop of performance out of yourself as soon as possible with no regard for the potential consequences, I wish you the best – I’m not for you.
Principle 3: Consistency > Volume > Intensity
A Masters athlete often dominates by continuing to show up.
It’s possible to win championships with mid-pack results if you’re the only one healthy on the starting line. It’s possible to set records on well-below-average training time if you are highly selective (and select the right things of course).
And, related to Principles 1 and 2, it would be impossible to max out everything every day without blowing yourself apart, so instead focus on the highest frequency of valuable training, then sustain it.
When you can do meaningful work every day, you get into the “1% better” situation that James Clear described in Atomic Habits: 1% better every day for a year is a 3,778% improvement; 1% worse every day for a year is a 98% decline.
In the context of sport, those numbers are figurative, not literal. (What would a 38X improvement in “conditioning” even mean??)
But the point remains that little steps forward every day, every week, every month, and every year will take you to and beyond your goals with less headache than riding the boom and bust cycle of overtraining, injury, rehab, overtraining…
There’s a place and time for doing more work. There’s a place and time for working harder. But most of the time, just keep showing up.
Principle 4: Max Quality, Appropriate Quantity
This may be somewhat unique to speed & power athletes, but a Masters athlete must create capacity near their limits.
You get faster by sprinting. Sprinting is not running; sprinting is not jogging; sprinting is not any cool thing you saw on Instagram other than sprinting.
You jump higher by jumping. You throw farther by throwing. You cut better by cutting.
But all speed & power qualities are limited by your neuromuscular coordination and rate of force production. You have to develop coordination. You have to develop force capability. So “max quality” means doing both the foundational work – strength training, mobility work, multi-jumps and dynamic throws, etc – and doing the specific work in your sport with the utmost attention to detail.
You have to stay present in your body. You have to be focused. And to accomplish those, you have to be fueled and rested.
Optimize for QUALITY first. Only when you feel you can execute the same quality for additional repetitions should a Masters athlete consider adding quantity.
Don’t do more work if your hips are so tight you can’t get deep in a bodyweight squat.
Don’t do more work if your shins ache during your running warmup.
Don’t do more work if you’re having crap sleep.
Don’t do more work if you can’t focus on good technique.
MAXIMIZE quality because you only get so many good reps; don’t waste them.
Then add quantity when you find you consistently have more good reps in you.
Principle 5: Get Help Before You Need It
A unique advantage of the Masters athlete is usually access to money and people. Exploit that advantage!
If you are healthy and happy with your training, invest the time to research, interview, select, and nurture your care team. When nothing at all is wrong, find yourself these professionals:
- primary care physician (who LISTENS when you talk about your sport!)
- physical therapist
- massage therapist
- registered (sports) dietitian
- counselor / behavioral therapist
- sports performance or strength & conditioning coach (or a really good personal trainer)
- sport coach
By finding these people in advance and taking time to get to know them, you have resources you can lean on when something inevitably goes wrong. A good care team will help you identify weaknesses, risks, and issues that you are overlooking. A good care team knows how and when to hand you off to the next professional so you maintain momentum toward your goal.
Don’t skimp. Don’t think you can get by without this contact list. Personally, I know two names for each function regarding my own training. I don’t want to be dependent on anyone when an urgent situation arises, but I also don’t want to try to compress my 20 years of sports dreams, 12 years of massive injury history, 2 years of focused training, and next 6 months of competition schedule into a free consultation hoping a new face can help me.
Spend your time and money and social capital finding great providers before you need their services.
What Works For Masters Athletes?
You’ll notice I didn’t talk sets and reps here. I didn’t talk exercise selection. I didn’t talk programming or periodization. Those things are certainly valuable to effective preparation for competition. But those are all dependent variables. They are specific to the athlete, the context, and the moment in time they are selected.
What they depend on is your intention as an athlete. They depend on your capacity, limitations, and temperament.
You will absolutely be more successful as an adult athlete if you take the time to work through these principles. These training principles work for Masters athletes because they work for all athletes. We are the model for sustainable high performance for everyone else to follow.
Recap Of Training Principles For Masters Athletes
What’s truly important to you? Take action on that every day.
What is the least you can do to get better? Do that as often as possible.
Does everyone in your life know when training time or bed time is? Keep showing up before you worry about how to do more or better.
How many good reps do you have in you? Optimize your lifestyle and your training to slowly, slowly, slowly increase that number.
Who’s in your corner when things go wrong? Build your care team now.
My mission is to add a decade of high performance to your sport career. I will give you the best of my guidance to walk with you on that path.
You have to do the work to be sure you know what another 10 years in the sport would mean to you – and to ensure it’s even possible to achieve.