The High Performance Human
I'm Simon Ward, Health, Wellness and Performance Coach. This newsletter is for athletes in their late 50s and beyond — the ones who aren't slowing down, but training smarter. Whether you're chasing finish lines or just want to keep doing the sports you love for years to come, we'll explore the best strategies for performance, recovery, longevity, and living well for longer.
Being Lighter Will Not Automatically Make You Faster. Here Is What Will.
One of the most common mistakes I see with endurance athletes has nothing to do with training. It is the belief that being lighter will automatically make them faster. There is enough truth in the watts per kilo argument to make it dangerous. Power to weight ratio matters on a climb. Carrying excess body fat will slow you down. But the leap from that to deliberately under-eating while training hard is where things go wrong quickly, and I have watched it happen more times than I can count....
What Six Very Different Athletes Taught Me About the Long Game
Over the past few months the podcast has featured six guests with almost nothing in common. A professional triathlete whose career was ended by a rare arterial condition. An age grouper tracking the human side of training with a notebook and a pen. A long-time triathlete who discovered he was fit but not healthy. A two-time age group world champion who pushed herself to the edge of overtraining syndrome. An Ironman world champion who walked away from the sport she dominated. And a masters...
Be Battle Ready - The ordinary sessions are the ones that matter most
Hi Reader, If you caught this week's podcast you'll already know who Dan John is and why I went back into the archives to bring that conversation to a wider audience. But there's one thing Dan said that didn't make it into the episode summary, and it's the thing I keep coming back to. He talked about his training week in terms of five sessions. One or two of them are great - the kind you'd post about online. One or two are genuinely embarrassing - the kind where you wonder why you bothered....
The Basics Are Still the Basics: Dan John on Strength After 50
Dan John has written somewhere around 19 books on strength, coaching and human performance. He has coached discus throwers to national records, worked with military units, trained athletes from their early teens into their 70s, and spent decades trying to explain the same things to people who keep looking for something more complicated. I spoke with him on a podcast and what struck me most was not a single revelation or new idea. It was the quiet confidence of someone who has watched the...
Be Battle Ready - The athlete who went to Kona on 10 hours a week
Hi Reader, If you caught this week's podcast you'll know Beth and I were answering the pushback from last week's recovery centred training episode. One objection came up more than any other. If volume doesn't matter, why do the pros train 30 hours a week? It's a fair challenge and I want to address it directly, because I think it gets to the heart of what most athletes misunderstand about training. The pros don't train 30 hours a week and then recover. They recover well enough to allow them...
Yes, the Pros Train 30 Hours a Week. Here Is Why That Is Irrelevant to You.
Be Battle Ready Yes, the Pros Train 30 Hours a Week. Here Is Why That Is Irrelevant to You. Last week I wrote about recovery-centred training and why how much you can recover from matters more than how much you train. Not everyone was convinced. Good. The pushback told me people were actually thinking about it, which is exactly what I want. Listen to the full conversation HERE: Recovery centred training. Your questions answered. Here are the eight most common objections, answered as plainly...
Be Battle Ready - Which savings account are you using?
Hi Reader, If you listened to this week's podcast you'll have heard the WHOOP study - nearly 3,000 runners, same performance gains, 80 minutes less training per week, 30% fewer injuries. Beth and I talked through what that means in practice for athletes over 50 with busy lives. But there's one thing I want to come back to, because I think it's the most useful way to think about this. When you invest money you choose the account with the best return. If one savings account is paying 1% and...
Why Your Training Plan Is Probably Backwards
Nobody ever asks whether the event they have chosen requires more training than their body can recover from. I know this because in thirty-five years of coaching, not one athlete has ever put that question to me. What they ask instead is whether they should squeeze in another long ride, whether they can increase weekly volume, whether they are doing enough. The question of recovery comes last, if it comes at all. This is precisely the wrong way round. Training breaks you down. Recovery builds...
You Are Not Lying to Your Coach. You Are Just Not Telling the Whole Truth.
If you want to understand what edited honesty actually costs, start with Sue Reynolds. World aqua bike champion. Age group triathlete. Someone who came out of the swim at a world championship with a three-minute lead on the entire field. And someone who then spent almost three years recovering from overtraining syndrome. Her new book, Across the Line, documents the whole journey. At the end of one chapter she poses a question that stopped me in my tracks. "How honest are you when reporting...
Grit Without Wisdom Is Just a Faster Way to Break Yourself
Sue Reynolds did not start training until she was 60. By 70 she was a world aqua bike champion, working with an Olympic-level coach, and training twice a day. She came out of the swim at a world championship with a three-minute lead on the entire field. Then she was diagnosed with overtraining syndrome, and the world stopped. We chatted about this in our recent podcast. Sue's story is in her new book, Across the Line. But the lessons it contains are not really about Sue. They are about a...
I'm Simon Ward, Health, Wellness and Performance Coach. This newsletter is for athletes in their late 50s and beyond — the ones who aren't slowing down, but training smarter. Whether you're chasing finish lines or just want to keep doing the sports you love for years to come, we'll explore the best strategies for performance, recovery, longevity, and living well for longer.