There are some great questions! I am going to clearly state I am not giving medical advice. There are some common themes here that I talk with patient most days of the week and most of them are like us, middle age guys doing the best to keep at it in the mountains. I'll break this down into a couple buckets from my perspective with the caveat that defining what your goals drives how much time, effort, money you put into each bucket.
1. Training. It has to be more structured as we age. That is both for cardio and strength. I have my year broken into four periods. Base building, preseason, inseason, and recovery. Most people are doing way more high intensity training than they need to. My experience that as we age we have to be more specific ( s this a strength session/block) about our training rather than just doing a little of everything and expecting to improve. Recovery doesn't have to be a day off, it can be yoga or a walk with your dog but you do need to plan more of it in.
2. Diet. As many people here have stated they do well with limiting sugar. It is inflammatory, impairs good body composition, raises uric acid, and is generally bad all around. There isn't a magic number for the carbs but I have people start an 150g /day and see how they feel. For most people this is large drop as the average american is consuming around 300g/day. In general, most people feel better with lower carbs but it can be hard from some to sustain for a variety of reasons. Protein in the 1g/ pound of lean mass is a good goal.
3. Supplements: Here is my recommended list which has good evidence and video we did about supplements for h
ealthspan.
- Creatine monohydrate: 5 g minimum, 10g is better as it crosses the blood-brain barrier to improve cognition. Doesn't matter if you take the 10g once a day or two 5 g doses.
- Magnesium glycinate 200-400 mg/day, specific for muscle soreness.
- Urolithin A: 500 mg daily, mitochondrial support. Helps with soreness and strength.
- Neo40: This is a concentrated beet root extract that was originally developed to increase nitric oxide production to decrease blood pressure and the clinical studies are in blood pressure reduction. Many people notice improved workouts due to the increased nitric oxide production. Since this can lower BP, you should talk with your doctor before taking it. There is a OTC strength and formulation only a medical practice can order.
- Turmeric: Good alternative to NSAID and Tylenol
4. Sleep: Poor quality and quantity of sleep will ruin everything.
5. Alcohol. As we get older it really affects everything from sleep, to diet, and performance. I haven't met anybody who didn't feel better with little to no alcohol.
6. Stress. Has many of the same effects as alcohol but is more insidious. Some of us used to deal with it by working out more. At some point you can't do that anymore and have to find other ways to manage. #5 is a poor way to manage.
I have some
video's on our YouTube channel that might be helpful. This is a great topic so maybe I will have to do a video about the aging hunter!
