Maximum heart rate in older athlete
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I am a 74 year old woman. I am training to hike to the top of Mt Shasta at the end of August. I am coached by Maya Sackinger. All of my aerobic training has been in Zone 1 and 2 until yesterday. My AET has increased from approx 107 five months ago to approx 118 currently. Yesterday I did 4 sets of 3 minutes weighted pack uphill hikes on the treadmill. I went as aggressively as I could maintain for 3 minutes. My heart rate went up to 146 for each set. It felt like I was nearing my maximum heart rate. I felt constrained by my maximum heart rate, as if I could do more/go faster if my heart rate were higher. Sorta felt like the low maximum heart rate was acting as a “governor,” to keep me from going faster, like the governor the company installed on the buses when I drove buses, so that the driver would not speed. Is this one of the reasons why older athletes slow down with age?
Polly
What you are experiencing is a common and unavoidable result of aging. Max HR drops with age and there is no training or secret sauce that changes or even slows that down. This DOES indeed act as a governor because your cardiac output is the product of the heart’s stroke volume (which usually declines with age as well but we can slow that decline) and the heart rate. Your maximum cardiac output is the amount of oxygen-carrying blood your heart can provide to your muscles. Clearly when the the maximum HR you can reach drops the maximum cardiac output is also going to drop. At 70 I am in the same boat. In my 20s and 30s, I used to race for 3 hours with a HR of 185. Now it takes a massive effort to hit even 160.
This unavoidable decline in cardiac output is why Maya has you so focused on improving the metabolism of your muscles. They still respond as they did when you were young.
Have a great trip to Shasta.
Scott
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