I’ve been been a Crossfitter since I turned 50yo. I am now 63. In my 50’s I was working out 5 days a week and was routinely at the upper end of our large gym’s leaderboard. I was also ranked in the top 100 for my age group in the Crossfit open.
When I turned 60 my intuition told me that the high intensity workouts were actually doing more harm than good, so I forced myself to dial back to 3 days per week and I intentionally dial back the intensity in my workouts.
This excellent review confirms what my body was telling me. Too much intensity is not good for a 60+yo athlete.
I now feel like I’m “out of shape”…😆.
The key for me is finding that sweet spot, just enough, not too much. I think the key is focusing on building muscle, and less on workouts that take me to zone 5 HR.
Without knowing exactly how Garmin defines activity levels, I'd say yes, but I wouldn't interpret those in the context of this study, which used a different method of measuring activity.
Hello Brady, there is some kind of difficulty for a non English speaker to translate moderate and vigorous since I feel like these two words mean something lighter that I would intuitively think of. In Medicine, we use a lot the 4 MET threshold. It’s just two flights of stairs !
When we recreationnal athlete do interval training we can hover in 12-16 MET range for 10-30 minutes usually. That’s between 120 and 480 MET-mins for one interval workout without warming up and cool down…
So saying that 1200 MET-mins/wk is a threshold in athletes seems odd to me. I guess we, athletes, have developed some fortitude in the muscle used to deal with metabolic stress. 1200 seems like 3h20 minutes of light jog to me… am I wrong ?
You’re not wrong. This is where context is key in interpreting these results! Everything athletes do is “vigorous” in terms of the physical activity guidelines, so I don’t think it’s accurate to apply the same thresholds.
Ok…I’m not nearly as smart as you guys 😂…just a 61 year old dude hoping I’m not hurting myself by training, in my opinion , fairly hard.
My tracking app shows me a MET value of 10.4 for my 86 minute trail run. Does that mean 894 Met/Min just for that workout? If additional data helps with context, my Average Power shows 232w
Does that not make the excessive vigorous exercise threshold pretty easy to clear? 6 METs is running at a 13min/mile pace or 90-100 watts according to https://pacompendium.com/adult-compendium/ which isn't exactly a high bar to clear, such that basically any endurance athlete is going to be far in excess of the ~1200 Met-min/week sweetspot. Or have I misunderstood things?
No misunderstanding. But it’s why I think we have to take those epidemiological findings w/ a grain of salt. And realize the cohort most certainly doesn’t include a high percentage of endurance athletes.
Ah ok. So do you think the best way to interpret this as an endurance athlete is that if you want to avoid the cognitive effects of too much vigorous exercise, limit time above LT1 (or LT2?)?
The muscle-to-brain MDV pathway is actually pretty clever from an evolutionary standpoint. It makes sense that the body would need a way to signal when resources are being depleted at the cellular level. What's interesting is that the J-curve shows optimal vigorous exercise around 1200 MET-min/week, which basically lines up with what most athletes intuitively figured out through trial and error.
Great article! Good reminder that exercise follows the same rule as almost everything in biology - moderation. Most of us are nowhere near the ‘danger zone,’ but it is fascinating to see an actual mechanism explaining why chronic red-line training might backfire.
The idea of a muscle sending ‘mitochondrial pretenders’ to the brain feels like something out of a scifi novel. I think, stay active, stay consistent, and leave a lot of room for recovery.
Provocative article ! Looking at epidemiological cohort from the cooper clinic study, I am not alone hovering around 5000 mets-min /wk. when training regularly it’s easy to go way above 2500 mets-min 40 MET-h. Time will tell !
I’ve been been a Crossfitter since I turned 50yo. I am now 63. In my 50’s I was working out 5 days a week and was routinely at the upper end of our large gym’s leaderboard. I was also ranked in the top 100 for my age group in the Crossfit open.
When I turned 60 my intuition told me that the high intensity workouts were actually doing more harm than good, so I forced myself to dial back to 3 days per week and I intentionally dial back the intensity in my workouts.
This excellent review confirms what my body was telling me. Too much intensity is not good for a 60+yo athlete.
I now feel like I’m “out of shape”…😆.
The key for me is finding that sweet spot, just enough, not too much. I think the key is focusing on building muscle, and less on workouts that take me to zone 5 HR.
Great review Brad! 👏👏🎯🎯
Thanks for sharing, Michael! Indeed, finding the sweet spot is the key for us all. And it's not easy...
do you think it's safe to go off of garmin's vigorous minutes? or is there a better way to calculate?
Without knowing exactly how Garmin defines activity levels, I'd say yes, but I wouldn't interpret those in the context of this study, which used a different method of measuring activity.
ah got it, ty. I acutely feel overtrained at times and want to have a way to "pump the breaks"
Hello Brady, there is some kind of difficulty for a non English speaker to translate moderate and vigorous since I feel like these two words mean something lighter that I would intuitively think of. In Medicine, we use a lot the 4 MET threshold. It’s just two flights of stairs !
When we recreationnal athlete do interval training we can hover in 12-16 MET range for 10-30 minutes usually. That’s between 120 and 480 MET-mins for one interval workout without warming up and cool down…
So saying that 1200 MET-mins/wk is a threshold in athletes seems odd to me. I guess we, athletes, have developed some fortitude in the muscle used to deal with metabolic stress. 1200 seems like 3h20 minutes of light jog to me… am I wrong ?
Thanks
You’re not wrong. This is where context is key in interpreting these results! Everything athletes do is “vigorous” in terms of the physical activity guidelines, so I don’t think it’s accurate to apply the same thresholds.
Ok…I’m not nearly as smart as you guys 😂…just a 61 year old dude hoping I’m not hurting myself by training, in my opinion , fairly hard.
My tracking app shows me a MET value of 10.4 for my 86 minute trail run. Does that mean 894 Met/Min just for that workout? If additional data helps with context, my Average Power shows 232w
That’s the correct way to calculate it! Though estimated METs may differ from “true” metabolic cost.
How many METs defined as being moderate and vigorous?
Moderate activity is 3–6 METs and vigorous is generally considered anything above 6.
Does that not make the excessive vigorous exercise threshold pretty easy to clear? 6 METs is running at a 13min/mile pace or 90-100 watts according to https://pacompendium.com/adult-compendium/ which isn't exactly a high bar to clear, such that basically any endurance athlete is going to be far in excess of the ~1200 Met-min/week sweetspot. Or have I misunderstood things?
No misunderstanding. But it’s why I think we have to take those epidemiological findings w/ a grain of salt. And realize the cohort most certainly doesn’t include a high percentage of endurance athletes.
Ah ok. So do you think the best way to interpret this as an endurance athlete is that if you want to avoid the cognitive effects of too much vigorous exercise, limit time above LT1 (or LT2?)?
Correct, that would be my interpretation. Because technically everything endurance athletes are doing is “vigorous.”
The muscle-to-brain MDV pathway is actually pretty clever from an evolutionary standpoint. It makes sense that the body would need a way to signal when resources are being depleted at the cellular level. What's interesting is that the J-curve shows optimal vigorous exercise around 1200 MET-min/week, which basically lines up with what most athletes intuitively figured out through trial and error.
Great article! Good reminder that exercise follows the same rule as almost everything in biology - moderation. Most of us are nowhere near the ‘danger zone,’ but it is fascinating to see an actual mechanism explaining why chronic red-line training might backfire.
The idea of a muscle sending ‘mitochondrial pretenders’ to the brain feels like something out of a scifi novel. I think, stay active, stay consistent, and leave a lot of room for recovery.
Provocative article ! Looking at epidemiological cohort from the cooper clinic study, I am not alone hovering around 5000 mets-min /wk. when training regularly it’s easy to go way above 2500 mets-min 40 MET-h. Time will tell !