Why Most 50+ Athletes Struggle with Body Composition vs. Performance (And the Simple Fixes)
- Brainz Magazine
- 5 days ago
- 8 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Dan's exercise Physiology/Sports Nutrition education, NSCA Strength and Conditioning background, and work with a wide variety of active older adults since 1998 make him the ideal guide to help navigate the muddy waters of optimal eating and training strategies for the over-50 athlete and fitness seeker.
Are you a mature athlete who is less than thrilled with the combination of your current body fat level and your strength/muscularity or stamina/sprint capacity? That’s the perennial dilemma for most athletes of all ages. But in our 50s, 60s, and beyond, most have more difficulty and smaller margins for error on that ambitious quest. Eating habits and training approaches that seemed to work for years and provided plenty of flexibility are suddenly less effective, harder to maintain, and present a host of new obstacles, some physical and others psychological.
Defining the problem
Common evolving challenges for the aging athlete can negatively affect performance, body composition, or both. They include physiological and metabolic degradations that affect structural capacity and energy processing, hormonal changes that affect muscle retention and fat breakdown and storage, and elements of both that affect training tolerance and recovery. If we have expectations of strength and muscularity, we think we should be able to reach that with a level of leanness that doesn’t easily (or realistically) coexist with the muscle/strength goals, frustration and disappointment are almost certain to follow.
What factors drive the disconnect
The short answer to why these two ambitions often clash for the older athlete is that they are both difficult to reach and preserve, and each may require divergent practices to optimize. The most confounding element in the equation, by far, is a distorted standard that is pervasive in the media and popular culture. And it is close to impossible for most (especially in our age group) to achieve, let alone maintain. Each of these warrants a closer look before looking for a viable solution.
Building strength requires progressive overload resistance training, adequate protein (PRO), and calories (kcals)
A fundamental principle of building strength and muscle volume is the concept of energy surplus (see sec 2.2 Nutritional and Recovery Variables). Why is that? Post-workout (WO) energy replenishment is a critical building block for skeletal muscle resynthesis, and the process itself is energy-depleting. Further, older athletes experience age-related declines in protein sensitivity (absorption) and will sometimes circumstantially increase caloric intake as a side-effect of “hitting their macros”. The rare case of losing body fat via caloric deficit while simultaneously building muscle is only reasonable with previously untrained exercisers who are also substantially overweight or obese. This is the profile that has significant unrealized strength-building opportunities. It’s also the one with an abundance of stored fat that can be depleted without compromising stored protein (muscle tissue) during the process.
Chronic rigorous workouts require adequate carbohydrates (CHO) and rest for optimal recovery
Post-WO recovery, whether it be primarily endurance, strength, or mixed format, is heavily dependent on both endogenous CHO (already stored in the body) and fuel replenishment from post-WO, CHO-rich meals. This principle bears a linear relationship with the combination of duration and intensity. More CHO = more kcals. Supplying these needs while trying to avoid accumulating a surplus of kcals (body fat) is threading the needle with skill that requires practice and precision, many don’t ever master.
Long-term caloric surplus raises body fat levels
100 excess daily kcals = 3,000 in a month = 10 lbs. of additional fat in a year. Consider this simple equation, and you’ll start to understand why so many people increase body fat over the years, even when they exercise regularly.
Social media and popular culture fuel unrealistic body image expectations (even for peak athletic capacity)
Want to feel terrible about yourself? Keep immersing yourself in the seductively toxic arena of social media body-shaming. When I was completing the capstone for my graduate degree in exercise physiology and sports nutrition (studying for the CSCS exam), I learned that the average body fat percentage for male and female Division I collegiate athletes (average age 29) is 15% and 20%, respectively. Yet many of the images plastered across the internet, billboards, and magazines display models far leaner than these figures for us to yearn to embody so we can crash in disappointment - until we buy their product and redeem our value as humans! This is perversely twisted and has become standard. If you’re interested in a dose of sanity about this topic, watch this outstanding video on body fat levels, what they look like, how difficult each is to obtain and sustain, and the health status effects of each.
The simple fixes
Okay, I said simple (uncomplicated), not easy. But the top level of this problem (optimizing your body composition for your sport/s or as a lifestyle athlete, your WO program) has two major interdependent components: eating habits and energy use (including but not limited to your fitness/sport kcal, macro, and micronutrient requirements). But first, a well-defined (and realistic) vision of your objectives and underlying reasons is critical for long-term success. Here are the steps to follow:
Get clarity on identity, discipline, and motivation
You’ll need all three of these attributes. The deepest (identity) is also the most important. Until you see yourself as someone who practices a lifestyle that is an organic product of your self-identification, you’ll over-rely on discipline as a substitute. Unless you're a recent military recruit going through basic training, the effort is likely to fail as you can “tap out” at any time. Once you have thoroughly adopted the persona of a “fit person/healthful lifestyle proponent” and reinforced that through your actions and a sustained, consistent track record, daily discipline will be your trusted guidepost, rather than your bitter nemesis. And finally, to be quite honest, if you clear these two bars consistently, motivation won’t even be part of the equation. But you won’t have its absence as your whipping boy anymore, either.
Set realistic (and sustainable) metrics
If you skipped the video I mentioned earlier, go back and watch it now. No, really. It may not be life-changing, but it will be perspective-changing on this hotly debated topic. And for metrics, my article on fitness baselines is a helpful companion for the mature hybrid athlete who wants to know reasonable measures for fit folks in our age bracket. But a few examples of ideal body fat ranges for different athletes might be helpful here. These are my estimates, but I’m sure coaches for these specific sports would agree with the general vicinity for each (these are for males; add 3 - 5% for a female equivalent range):
Athlete | Ideal BF% range |
Sumo wrestler | 25 - 40+ |
Football lineman | 20 - 35 |
Heavyweight boxer | 18 - 25 |
Racquet sport athlete | 15 - 20 |
Gymnast/acrobat | 10 - 15 |
For reference, I’m currently around 12% (at 63 years old) and am in my performance/aesthetic “sweet spot”. I was at 9% at 49 and felt weak, and I’m sluggish at 17%. Boxing was my sport, and my fitness program supports those types of demands.
Establish simple, sound strategies for each goal
If you want a more detailed roadmap, you’ll need to subscribe to the program. But the framework is designed around these must-have fundamentals:
Adequate energy, PRO, and a modest (but consistent) daily kcal deficit (if leaning down) or a modest to moderate kcal surplus (if bulking). Learn how best to do both in the subscription program.
Prioritize vegetables and lean PRO over fruit and whole grains, and minimize empty kcals and nutrient-poor beverages. Veggies and lean PRO sources should account for nearly 75% of your total food intake (yes, really).
Be most liberal with volume in your post-WO meal to optimize recovery. If you’re trying to lean down, frankly, it’s a little easier to manage a daily kcal shortfall if you train earlier in the day so you are not torn between replenishing PRO, CHO, and kcals and the adversarial objective of creating a daily kcal deficit. If you’re bulking, understand that you’re not going to be as lean as you’d like until you switch your focus after adding the muscle volume and strength you worked hard to attain.
Fine-tune based on how you look and feel over the long haul. Don’t get caught up in micro-analyzing short-term metrics. This is a long game if you’re going to do it right.
Have plans A-C to maintain the fundamentals (tactics)
Again, lots of ideas and examples are in the subscription program, but having a basic daily template with at least a bit of variety (say, a three-day plan you repeat and then have a “floater” day in the seven days) makes success much more likely. But unexpected obstacles spring up for everyone. So, if I take egg bites and a protein pancake sandwich, veg juice, a banana, and a protein drink to work (plan A), I’m good for a few to several hours. If I forgot my lunch bag, I’ll shoot over to Starbucks for one of the protein plates (half a peanut butter sandwich, baby carrots, a mozzarella stick, and two apple slices) and a low-fat latte as a backup (plan B). If Starbucks is closed, I’ll go to a juice bar at lunch, get whatever has kale or spinach in it, get whey and soy PRO boosts, and sub in low-fat milk for the fruit juice (plan C). Get the picture? I have similar backup plans for training, as well, that require little or no equipment.
Notice when behaviors (and results) are at odds
You may be nailing the eating plan but feel weak, jittery, or even a little nauseated or light-headed during your WOs. It’s worth considering the possibility that you’re not fueling enough for the demands of your body’s maintenance requirements and your fitness program combined. Conversely, you may feel heavy and sluggish after meals and not have your food completely digested when it’s time to train. That’s a common struggle for ketogenic diet practitioners and folks who only eat one meal per day. If you’re also bulking up a little too much, and not with quite the type of tissue you were hoping to add, the eating plan and the training plan need to sync up better. This is a typical adjustment we make with subscribers who share their experiences and ask for guidance.
Prioritize the harder goal to reach and keep
If you’re trying to manage the process on your own, a good starting point is to prioritize the more important objective (adding muscle, for example, although the opposite may be the case for you) and measuring your success at that while maintaining a manageable secondary effort (avoiding increasing body fat), and then shifting your focus on improving the other while maintaining what you already achieved. The opposing profile might be someone who wants to lean down (as I did recently to prepare for my wife’s and my annual anniversary trip to Maui). I started around 14% BF and slowly, methodically leaned down to about 11% over about eight weeks (more on how I did that in the program). All the while, I used the weight I could move for 10 reps for chin-ups, squats, dumbbell bench press, and deadlifts (about 75% of my bodyweight) as my metric for preserving strength and muscle volume. I had expected to overeat every day of the 9-day vacation. Of course, I met those expectations with ease. But we went to the gym most mornings, and I swam the width of the bay on our beach days, so I came back having raised my BF by only about 1%. This is exactly what I had planned for and ate and trained for eight weeks to produce.
Fine-tune behaviors based on progress and sustainability
This action may be intuitive, conceptually, but to be effective with the practice, you need both experience and objectivity. This is where expert guidance can be especially valuable. Although every profile is different, there are common trends, roadblocks, mistakes to avoid, and blind spots to conquer if you want to dial in your optimal fueling and training practice.
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Read more from Dan Taylor, MS, CSCS
Dan Taylor, MS, CSCS, 50+ Fitness and Nutrition Expert
Dan left a career in high-tech corporate finance in 1998 to pursue his mission of leading others in elevating and simplifying the art of physical aging through the best fitness and eating practices for the mature athlete (and the aspiring athlete). His online subscription program provides a clear and simple pathway to achieve peak performance while lowering disease and injury risk, adopting powerful and principled eating practices that effectively support the training framework, and developing an individualized, manageable, and adaptable template for both.
