Tip #7: How do you reduce your fitness age by 20+ years?

If you calculated your current fitness age in Tip #4, recall that the three exercise factors were 1) frequency (how often do you exercise?), 2) duration (how long is each workout?), and 3) intensity (how hard do you exercise?). The following two charts illustrate the relationship between these three factors and an improvement in the fitness age of a 60 year old.

Generally speaking, the more frequent your exercise, the longer you exercise, and the more intensely you exercise, the greater the improvement in your fitness age. What level of fitness age improvement do you want to achieve?

By the time I discovered the concept of fitness age in 2015, I had been training for almost 10 years, competed in 64 bike races, and logged over 100,000 training miles. I had already met all of the requirements for the maximum fitness age improvement of 30+ years. As of 2026, I’m approaching my 140th bike race and 155,000 training miles. I continue to train six days per week with a mix of one-hour high-intensity interval workouts twice a week, twice-weekly 30-minute resistance training sessions, and two endurance workouts each weekend of two or more hours (unless I have a race). At this moment, I have no reason to doubt that I can continue this training regime until age 100 when my fitness age will be equal to a 70-year-old.

If you have any questions about living an athlete’s lifestyle or about your cycling goals, training, racing, or gear, I’d like to hear from you. I may address your questions in a future tip. Just drop me a note.