Don’t Tell This Former Executive He is Over the Hill
Maturing athletes encounter different physical challenges from their younger days. Everyone goes through the natural aging process, bringing on changes to the body that require adaptations. You can either ease off and make your way into retirement, or adapt your approach and evolve into an athlete achieving new goals. Rick Wimmer is the prime example of an athlete who decided he was up to the challenge of adapting with age.
The Athlete:
Rick Wimmer has a keen sense of fun, often expressed through the wide array of endurance adventures he has embraced over the years. As Rick navigated the rigors of corporate America, as a highly successful CFO and consultant, the journey of endurance sports provided mental relief, and delivered a platform of physical health and resilience. Swim, bike, run, and beyond, Rick embraced the endurance lifestyle with vigor. With the years under his belt, and heading toward retirement, father time was beginning to raise his head with more frequency, however.
The Challenge:
Rick was beginning to experience a drop in power, a reduction in recoverability, and a sense of generally slowing down. Was this just an inevitable part of life and performance? As Rick ventured into retirement from work, he contemplated if he should also begin to wind down expectations in sport? Perhaps stop competing altogether and shift the mindset to retaining the health that he had, over continuing the quest for improvement?
Rick decided he didn’t want to fold the deck that easily. For Rick, he refused to let his body ‘get old’ by avoiding the mindset that he was ‘getting old.’ He felt he still had plenty of challenges to overcome in his journey and wanted a plan for the maturing athlete.
We have a saying at Purple Patch, ‘evolve Or die,’ and this applies to athletes and individuals of all ages. The challenge for Rick was to find a strategy that would allow for evolution, even as his body was changing due to father time.
There were a few specific elements to Rick’s challenge:
What worked prior wasn’t suitable for now: Rick was an endurance junkie, but slowing down. His prior approach to hitting it hard worked for many years, but his body was changing. His recovery rate was slowing. His sleep quality and quantity were reducing. We would need to evolve the whole approach.
Tissue health was a priority: It became clear that Rick’s ability to sustain high-volume running loads was declining. He simply couldn’t absorb the same pounding of running and achieve positive adaptations and stay healthy. Instead of reducing expectations around running race distances, we simply shifted the lens.
A drop in metabolic efficiency: Athletes can eat whatever they want right? Guess what, the body slows down and nutrition decisions played an increasing role in Rick’s performance. He might love wine and great food, but pragmatism became essential to retain optimal health status.
It’s not the pump, it's the pistons: Cardiovascular fitness was not going to be a limiter for Rick, as he has been at endurance sports for years. His challenge was mobility and declining strength. If we didn’t embrace strength training, then he would remain fit, but just get slower.
The mindset is king: In early discussions with Rick, it became clear that the state of mind would be the decider on success. We felt that establishing the right mindset would drive the physical decisions, and that would include who he surrounded himself with. Spoiler alert -- we didn’t recommend Rick retire to a Florida retirement home.
The Solution:
Over the course of three years, we introduced a radical performance intervention in Rick’s whole approach to endurance sports, which was driven by amplification of expectations, not a reduction.
The Results:
Embrace strength: Central to the program was strength and conditioning, a key component of the Purple Patch methodology. Not a favorite of Rick, we utilized our video-based strength sessions that would help as a tutorial on form, a little accountability, and also infuse joint mobility and stretching. Ensuring these sessions never dominated much time was central to adherence and quickly became a habit.
Multisport is the backbone for performance: Rick was the recipient of a set of now-legendary words when he started the program; ‘Oh, you are training for a trail running race; do you own a snorkel?’ By reducing the amount of injury-inducing big long runs and replacing them with a heavy emphasis on swimming and cycling, we were able to develop Rick into a strong all-around athlete who was both resilient and healthy. His individual run sessions improved in performance, while being supported with training that could support general development by not causing injury. His running paces improved despite running less, and his fitness and muscular endurance increased as he avoided injury throughout. Consistency was king, and retaining muscle health was critical for Rick.
Fueling habits acted as a catalyst: Some strong support from daily nutritional habits was essential, as was a discovery of simple, yet critical, habits around fueling during and after workouts. Rick utilized Purple Patch resident nutrition expert, Kyla Channel, to reimagine his whole approach. The good thing is that the advice and counsel weren’t dogmatic, and Rick still gets to enjoy plenty of his favorite foods and great wine. It isn’t a monks-life for performance success.
Mindset: Rick drove the thirst for performance. At the crossroads of life, he could get busy gardening or he could amplify his quest for improvement. He chose the latter. The absolute key to all this was for Rick to maintain a drive for self-improvement. He didn’t fall into a mindset of retreat; he embraced growth. This was the impetus for his performance gains, and keeping the mind fresh and driven brings the energy to every day. This mindset extended well beyond the individual approach. Rick also actively embraced surrounding himself with better athletes, and younger athletes. He has now completed three Purple Patch camps, with the same spirit each time; ‘I might be the last, but I will be the toughest, and the one with the biggest smile.’ Guess what, he wasn’t the last, but he was the one smiling!
The Results
Rick found a new hunger for competition. He was feeling stronger, more healthy, and faster than when he first started 3 years prior. He is still hitting PR’s, and shows no sign of shying away from racing or direct competition. In fact, he is tackling 50km trail runs against none other than Purple Patch master coach, Matt Dixon. Good luck Rick. Time to put some hurt into that bloke Matt.