How My Training Has Changed In My Mid-30s (Less Work Capacity!?)

For a long time, work capacity was a pretty big part of how I trained.

Metcons. Hard intervals. Multiple conditioning pieces inside the same workout. Training myself to do a lot of work, recover quickly, and keep output high for short, mid, and long duration bouts.

I still think there is value in that.

But over the last couple years, I've slowly changed what I prioritize in my own training and what I prioritize when I write programs for my clients.

These days, most of my training revolves around three things:

-Strength

-Power

-Aerobic capacity

And before anyone gets their panties in a bunch, I didn't eliminate work capacity.

I still train it. Usually around once per week. Sometimes more, sometimes less depending on the training block.

But going forward, I don't see myself writing many training cycles where improving work capacity is the primary goal...meaning we're training it 2-4 times per week, sometimes with multiple hard conditioning bouts inside the same session.

I've done plenty of that.

At this point in my life and training career, I think there are other qualities that deserve more of my attention.

I want to be really strong for a really long time

Strength gives you options.

If you can deadlift 200 pounds, picking a 40 pound bag of dog food off the floor isn't much of an event (I always use the dog food example – give me a break if you've heard it before, I've got 3 of them so this specific task happens often, lol). 

If your maximum capacity is 45 pounds (that's the weight of an empty barbell), that same bag represents a much larger percentage of what you're capable of doing. I mean it quite literally might take your ass out if you can't deadlift a barbell but you have to carry a 40 pound bag of food.

That's what I think about when I talk about strength as we age.

I don't care about being strong just so I can say I lifted a certain number.

I care about maintaining a huge gap between what I'm capable of doing and what everyday life requires me to do.

Research backs up the importance of strength, too. Higher muscular strength has consistently been associated with lower all cause mortality risk. That doesn't mean deadlifting magically makes you live forever. It means strength appears to be one useful marker of physical reserve and overall health.

And we know what happens if we don't intentionally maintain these qualities as we get older.

We lose them.

Which means I'm much more interested in going into my 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond with a big strength reserve than simply being really good at surviving another metcon.

But strength isn't enough. You need power.

Strength is your ability to produce force. Power is your ability to produce that force quickly.

Think jumping, sprinting, throwing. Catching yourself when you trip, getting out of a chair quickly, moving your body rapidly when something unexpected happens.

This is one reason power has become such a big part of my training.

Research in older adults has found that muscular power is strongly related to physical function and may actually be a better predictor of functional performance than strength alone. Power focused resistance training also appears capable of improving physical function in older adults.

That doesn't mean everyone needs to start doing max-effort box jumps at 70.

Power training can be scaled A LOT.

Medicine ball throws. Jumps. Hops. Kettlebell swings. Faster concentric lifting with appropriate loads. Short sprints on a bike or rower.

The movement doesn't have to look crazy.

The point is simply to maintain the ability to produce force quickly.

I don't just want to be strong. I want to stay explosive.

Then there's your engine.

The other major shift I've made is putting significantly more emphasis on aerobic training.

And I don't mean turning every strength workout into cardio.

I mean actually training the aerobic system intentionally.

Easy aerobic work, longer steady efforts, intervals, and occasionally very hard efforts.

One of the easiest ways to think about aerobic fitness is the ever-popular VO2 max: essentially, the maximum amount of oxygen your body can take in, transport and use during hard exercise.

You don't need to become obsessed with the number or need to become a longevity influencer and start telling everyone about your biological age. You just need to understand this:

Having a good aerobic engine is really important for life.

A massive 2024 review pooled evidence from 26 systematic reviews representing more than 20 million observations. Higher cardiorespiratory fitness was consistently associated with substantially lower risk of mortality and several chronic health conditions. Even relatively small increases in fitness were associated with meaningful differences in risk.

Association isn't magic...Having a high VO2 max doesn't make you immortal by any means, but your ability to move oxygen around your body and use it during exercise tells us a lot about the capacity of your cardiovascular and respiratory systems.

That's something I want to keep.

Most of your aerobic training doesn't need to destroy you

This is another important distinction.

Training your aerobic system doesn't mean doing puke-on-the-floor conditioning five days per week.

A lot of it should actually be pretty boring.

Walk uphill. Ride a bike. Row. Jog. Ruck. Ski. Do something cyclic at a sustainable effort for a decent amount of time.

Build the engine without constantly redlining it.

Then... occasionally...redline tf out of it.

I want my heart rate near max at least once per week

This is something I originally picked up from exercise physiologist Andy Galpin and eventually started building into my programming.

At least once per week, I want some exposure to very high intensity cardiovascular work.

Not an entire hour and not every single workout, just enough hard work that, assuming you're healthy and appropriately prepared for it, you spend some time approaching the upper end of what your cardiovascular system can do.

"y tho?" 

VO2 max represents the upper limit of your body's ability to deliver and use oxygen. If you want to improve that ceiling, you occasionally need to train toward the ceiling.

Research on high intensity interval training supports this general idea – intense interval training can improve VO2 max through adaptations involving cardiac output, stroke volume and the muscles' ability to utilize oxygen.

And importantly, you don't need to live there...you just have to VISIT. Say hi 👋🏼

That could look like:

• Hard intervals on an Assault Bike, rower, SkiErg or bike
• Hill sprints
• Running intervals
• Hard sled work
• Longer intervals like 2-4 minutes with recovery between rounds
• Shorter repeated efforts that eventually drive heart rate very high
• A hard work capacity circuit designed to keep you moving long enough to get there

This is pretty much what it looks like in my programs now. 

I'm not programming hard conditioning just for the sake of making people tired.

I'm using it to accomplish something specific.

Get the heart working hard and push toward the upper end of aerobic capacity.

Then recover and move on with your life.

And while heart rate can be a useful proxy, the actual adaptation we're chasing isn't simply "make the watch say 95%." Heart rate lags behind effort and varies between people. The bigger goal is accumulating some genuinely high intensity cardiovascular work that challenges the upper end of your aerobic system.

Recent research continues to support using HIIT for this purpose, with longer intervals, like two minutes or more, often producing more time near VO2 max than very short intervals.

So where did work capacity go?

Nowhere. Still here, dawg.

I still think being able to pick something heavy up, carry it, put it down, race somewhere else, pick the next heavy thing up and continue working without falling apart is incredibly useful.

I still train it. I've just had quite a mental shift about it and I'm having a really positive outcome from the changes I've made so far (for me and for the majority of my clients). I'm not in the gym just to make myself feel like I got my ass kicked for no reason. I want it to actually count. 

If I have a limited amount of training time every week, I have to decide where I want to spend it.

Right now, I want to be:

Really strong, explosive, aerobically fit, and capable of occasionally going really MF hard. I'll still able to handle a good work capacity session when it shows up! 

Metcons are not bad and work capacity absolutely matters. But.. you have to decide which adaptations matter most to you, and then spend enough time actually training them.

Mine have changed just a little bit. And I think they've changed for the better based on where I'm at in life (and probably most people reading this).