Just the one?

"Drift on numbered days
Now your life is out of season"; Metallica 1986

Can you EFFECTIVELY train a masters athlete just once a week?

I have 2 Fiona’s who are my longest serving in-person clients. They came to me under very different circumstances and with very different goals yet both are what we would class as Masters athletes. On one hand I find it to be a rather unhelpful classification as the only real criteria is that you're over 40 years of age (Although in the field of athletics it's 35 years of age). One masters athlete can have considerably more 'time served' than the next.

BUT, I also find it to be useful because I've noticed that people tend to truly embrace it as part of who they are and pride themselves on the fact that they are considered athletes despite their age. Then comes acceptance that certain concessions must likely be made in terms of more limited recovery, sensitivity to volume or frequency of training amongst other factors.

This post is centred around Fiona Number 2 and she has distinctly more 'time served' as a masters athlete comfortably in her 8th decade than Fiona Number 1. She is one of only two clients whom I have consistently trained with weights just once per week.

Now, that doesn’t mean that she only trains or exercises once per week. She’s very disciplined and thrashes her exercise bike several times a week too on top of being physically active anyway.

Fiona made her way to my gym with the intent of building and preserving her strength as a foil to combat the most persistent of adversaries; time. When we met, time was manifesting itself in the potential onset of osteoporosis and her love of gardening was hamstrung by stiff and sore joints and back after just a few minutes of kneeling and weeding. Importantly, she also plays an important supporting role for a close family member.

I share her values on that particular sense of duty; I want to be strong and physically able to help out those close to me in their time of need whilst simultaneously NOT being a burden myself.

She had never lifted heavy weights before and had never so much as sniffed a barbell. But she presented herself nonetheless and boldly went where she hadn’t ventured before. With one major constraint. She would only train with me once per week. Please note use of the word ‘would’. Not ‘could’.

"Please Sir, I want some more"; Oliver Twist 1838

You may not have much experience working with folks who have amassed considerably more worldly experience than you have. A common trait is that they don’t mess around, don’t suffer fools and they damn well know their own mind.

The decree was that she WOULD only train with me once per week. For once I said; “Yes, ma’am”.

Those of you with too much religion in your training might proclaim that once a week just isn’t enough or that a coach worth their salt would have fought the good fight and convinced her to train more frequently; I refer back to my previous blog post on Blasphemy. Feel free to work your way back from there.

I picked my battle and set Fiona her very own Novice Linear Progression with ONE SESSION PER WEEK 😱. Unsurprisingly, she made perfectly solid progress with the squat, bench press and deadlift for MONTHS.

Her adapted weekly session consisted of:

3x8-12 Goblet Squat

3x5 Bench Press

1x5 Deadlift

Once she was strong enough, we swapped onto a squat safety bar. Squatting with a regular bar and overhead pressing were off the table thanks to a frozen shoulder.

We added 1-2kg each week to her lower body lifts and 0.5-1kg to her bench press and then swapped to triples after 5s weren’t achievable any more.

Thanks to various lockdowns and general life stresses, that combination has been enough to see her strength and physical ability grow considerably whilst working around lay-offs, planned or otherwise. She’s been able to service all of her hobbies and support duties without worry and her aches and pains are far more manageable than before.

Could we have achieved more with greater frequency? Maybe. I’m glad we didn’t try to find out because what training we did happily satisfied her goals and requirements. Pushing harder may well have actually jeopardised that; perhaps even sabotaged it.

Did she actively seek out more protein to help build more muscle? Nope. She stuck to what she liked. That didn’t work against her. It worked FOR her. As did her once a week decree.

She absorbed her training into her routine without disrupting anything. We worked within her constraints as efficiently as we could and we achieved what she wanted. She didn’t suffer anything she didn’t want to. It helped her find trust in me, she felt that I was listening to her specific needs without imposing my will upon her. She felt comfortable communicating with me and we proactively worked around issues as a result. That combination helped her to be consistent and keep showing up. Therein lies the most special of sauces.

Remember, the body will adapt to the specific stress imposed upon it. We used intensity, volume and tonnage judiciously keeping things ‘just enough’ to keep making progress. That made her strong and physically capable ‘enough’ at a pace that was acceptable to her. The subject of Osteoporosis hasn’t resurfaced as a topic of concern in any of our discussions for a couple of years now. 

Not everything needs to be a grind. Listen to your people, use your experience and knowledge to apply some critical thought. Your lifters are your greatest teachers.

"just enough madness to make her interesting"; Atticus