Training Considerations for Master Athletes with Joe Friel

Steve House talks with legendary coach and author Joe Friel, now 82, about the newly released second edition of Fast After 50. Friel reflects on how a serious 2014 cycling crash reshaped his own training, and explains why the book's focus shifted from encouraging older athletes to add intensity (2012) to now urging them to build a much larger aerobic base, since he's observed most masters athletes over-doing high intensity and under-doing low intensity work. The conversation covers his "5+2" and "9-day" training patterns, how strength training is periodized across a season, the concept of durability (maintaining output late in long events) and how it's trained through fatigue-then-specificity workouts, muscular/strength endurance versus durability, adapting training around perimenopause, and the two key metrics Friel prioritizes with athletes: efficiency factor (EF) in base training and heart-rate/power decoupling in build periods. The episode closes on themes of patience, lifestyle identity, coaching athletes toward self-sufficiency, and Friel's core message: build the aerobic base first.

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