Thanks to a wonky hamstring and some bad oysters, I’m currently coming back from a training hiatus of nearly a month. It’s an unfamiliar and somewhat unsettling feeling. So I have a lot of sympathy for Romuald Lepers, a French physiologist and dedicated triathlete who, in the name of science, agreed to take 12 weeks completely off training in 2022.
With the help of his colleagues, Lepers underwent a whole bunch of tests immediately after competing in the Swimrun World Championships in Sweden that fall. After 12 weeks of sloth, he repeated the tests. Then he resumed training and, 12 weeks later, repeated them a third time. The data is presented in a pair of papers in Frontiers in Physiology and JCSM Communications, offering a detailed look at exactly what happens when you lose then regain fitness, and raising a surprising and tantalizing possibility: maybe a long training break is actually good for you.
Two Theories of Aging
Lepers runs a lab at the University of Bourgogne in Dijon, and is one of the world experts on masters athletes, which typically refers to athletes over the age of 40. He’s also…
