Train Your Age - With Dr David Hulse
Dr David Hulse is a World Tour Doctor and longtime Cyclefit friend and collaborator. Dave is also a Midlife Cyclist himself and seeks to prolong or even extend his own performance envelope as he ages. As well as his professional cohort (Team EF Pro), Dave also sees many older athletes in his private clinics at Pure Sports Medicine. It is fair to say that Dave is a specialist in endurance sport and cycling medicine. Who better to help us as we set sail into 2026.
- Setting our goals for 2026
- Setting realistic expectations
- Creating the optimal training and performance paradigm
- Avoiding injury and illness
- Building resilience to training loads to make our exercise program sustainable.
- Maximizing adaptation to training stimulus
This Video podcast was filmed 18th December at Cyclefit Store Street by our friend and Filmmaker - award-winning journalist - Simon Willis
"World-Tour riders are uniquely positioned to adhere to a supported and data-driven, Train-Eat-Recover, performance paradigm"
Recording podcast on 18th December 2025
Dr Hulse treats a pro-rider who has hit the road
Pick Your Paradigm
- Train, Re-fuel, Recover
- Train, Eat, Sleep
- Ride. Eat, Sleep
All the paradigms appear to be uncannily similar. The start of the conversation I had with David was all about pulling at the threads of how Midlife Cyclists are different to professionals and how that alters the training balance.
The Inexorable Creep of Biology
As we move through our 40's, 50's and 60's there are inevitable age-related changes occurring below the surface.
- Declining chronotropic response - our maximum heartrate falls, on average between 0.7-1 BPM (beats per minute). To offset we should train specifically to create the same or more power for lower heartrates. Another way of saying that we ought to focus on efficiency.
- Hormonal changes - e.g. insulin resistance and declining testosterone. Can be somewhat mitigated with improved diet and recovery.
- Sarcopenia - muscle-fibre-loss. The only work-around is resistance training.
- Bone density loss - can be helped with resistance training and improved diet
All of which means that compared to professional athletes, who are typically in there 20's and 30's, older amateurs and recreational cyclists:
"Need to recognise that we have less capacity to adapt to a training stimulus, which is either a large volume or high intensity or a combination of the two. It's almost a case of less is more."
Dr Dave Hulse
Living The Dream V's Lived Reality
Professional athletes are living the dream. Maybe they are living our dream.
Living The Dream or Living Our Dream
Allostatic Load
