A lot of interesting stuff here, following.

I'm new to weight training and have much to learn. Yesterday, I followed my weight workout with a 19.5 mile commute (WHEW!)and now realize that much thought needs to go into mixing weights with cycling. AND I only did 3 sets of dead lifts, squats, and bench press with beginner-old-man loads.

Just had 15 yards of mulch delivered and moved it with shovel and wheelbarrow. This is a fraction of the acre maintained

This is why the gym work is necessary as we age. It's necessary so that daily tasks such as described here can be done more efficiently, with decreased fatigue/chance of injury.

Fast After 50 solved my issue. A week can be 7, 10, 12 or however many days you want it to be. So simple. Doh!

Yep, I often throw in additional rest days if I need to and don’t worry about fitting everything rigidly into a 7 day routine.

For the past ~25 years, my weeks have been rigidly fixed around the sacred Sunday group ride for which I am the route master. And those rides are in turn focused around a couple annual event rides, so there's a year-long cycle of prepping for same. That gives focus to one's riding life. I also have a year-long cycle associated with hiking, where my wife and I prep for our annual 10-day backpack in the Cascades. That hiking cycle has been closely associated with the riding cycle. The two activities reinforce each other and having a year-long cycle keeps things from getting boring and possibly prevents overtraining. Weight training is also part of that cycle. We move through the various gym modalities as the year progresses. Hiking turns into skiing and snowshoeing in winter.

Since the group ride is always going to have a good dose of intensity, during the week I try to get in a couple hour or so Z2 rides and those two gym days, which becomes 1 gym day on the first of April as the riding and hiking stresses increase with spring. Thus there are two rest days and the group ride takes case of all the weekly intensity.

Sunday - group ride.
Monday - hike (when we were working, work was Tuesday through Saturday)
Tuesday - gym in winter, rest in summer
Wednesday - Z2 for me, dressage for my wife
Thursday - gym
Friday - Z2
Saturday - rest
In winter or when the weather is inclement, the Z2 rides are indoors. We rode rain or shine on Sunday until we were about 70 when the group put a stop to that. Since then we've done intervals indoors on Sunday if the weather was bad. Sometimes it's a group sufferfest.

When it's not butt-freezing cold or raining, in spring some of those Z2 rides become Z2 walks in our local city hilly terrain, no traffic lights. Walking helps prevent back issues associated with only cycling. If we walk fast enough, my wife can hit Z2 on the flat but I'm stuck in Z1, fine..

Cross post,, but thought it was worth sharing with the wise:

55 miles (88K <-which sounds more impressive) with 2,300’ (701 meters <-doesn’t sound that impressive) and 3 PRs on an ideal day temperature wise - low 60s.

I usually try to hammer this kind of distance and try for 17 to 18 MPH average and feel wrecked when I finish and for the rest of the night and the next day. But, after several rides of Zone 2, which is super easy, I thought, why not keep a more moderate pace and see how I feel during the big climbs and at the end. The answer is, the climbs went really well and at the end I felt fine and could have easily done 20 more. Nothing wrong with taking it to the max to improve VO2 once or twice a week, but not feeling wasted at the end of a 50 mile ride is fantastic.

Congrats on the PRs.

I go out of my way not to feel wrecked after a ride and the next day. Why? I have a lot of training activities to do during the week that require a somewhat recovered next day.

I do not get your last sentence. It sounds like you mix VO2 training into 50 mile rides. I do not do that. If I have a VO2 workout, I do a warmup and then do the VO2 workout with rest intervals and then some type of warm down / recovery. The entire workout may take some time but not 50 miles of actual riding, In fact, my VO2 and anaerobic training mileage is short but the total time devoted to the workout may be long.

A gym workout is predominantly uses the phosphate creatine system for ATP. My goal is to keep the gym work focused on the PC system and not fatigue the other systems. Having said that, the PC system takes the longest to recharge so rest periods are important.

If I am going to do an endurance ride, I stick to endurance.

I think I will bump the San Millan thread in T&N since he is still affiliated with UAE and Tadej Pogačar is killing the Giro.

I started a new thread in T&N featuring San Millan's latest and first solo video that was not part of a podcast.

Sorry for not being more clear. The VO2 rides are on separate days from distance rides. However some of the distance routes involve climbs of 15% for a quarter mile which unavoidably gets the HR and Watts way up.

I'm challenging the idea that our old guy workouts don't add strength.

I did no strength work for about 3 weeks and finally got off my azz yesterday. I had to cut back the resistance on a Bowflex by about 20 percent, and roughly the same loss of oomph for the floor exercises. That strength, that I lost, was due to old guy workouts.

I'm curious how many weeks it will take to get back to where I was pre-sloth. Five or six weeks is my guess.

[MENTION=527252]rsbob[/MENTION] - nice gym. Ever want to work-out at an alternative gym? Free membership!

Funny. Spent 5 hours today on one section by the drive. Back was killing me. I’ll let you know when I’m available. Hopefully no membership required.

Where did that idea come from? Silly, of course strength work will make you stronger. Although there's a caveat: if one doesn't use as much weight as possible for the number of reps attempted, not much happens. Even just doing one gym workout a week, I can usually increase my max squat weight by about 5#/week.

My hands will not let me work like that anymore. Nice work, BTW [MENTION=527252]rsbob[/MENTION]

I discovered https://startingstrength.com about the time I got my squat rack and I’m now 3 weeks into the Novice Program. (Skipping the milk and 95 % of my meals are vegan.) I’ve put on 5 pounds and there is no change to the %fat on the bathroom scale. My body is recovering better judging by my 90 minute commutes. Summer Vacation starts next week and I’ll mix in some long rides and intervals.

The realities of fitness and age are becoming clearer. There's this base level of workouts and rides that only keep me at a plateau.

To improve, to get stronger, requires this significant base level plus some seriously intense work. I'm guessing to improve will require about 15 hours a week and I'm more in the range of 8 hours per week...which is just maintenance of fitness. I'll see if I can string together some 10-12 hour weeks.

I found this podcast very informative on building muscle. Don't dismiss it because it mentions losing fat. On thing I gleaned from this is that building muscle requires a more specific type of exercise. Otherwise, you may simply be building endurance with weights rather than gaining muscle.

Check out that video. The trainer is pretty much saying the opposite of what you are.

Thanks RH. The video was good but doesn't address my issue; how to increase FTP, climbing and sprinting abilities at age 64. The early elbow of the improvement curve was easy, I was coming from place of zero fitness. My fight now is getting past the (arguably respectable) plateau that I'm on.
All good, BT

My thinking was that possibly something like more weight and fewer reps with perfect form (from the video) might get you to the next level faster than more time spent in the gym. No argument at all. I'm trying to figure this stuff out myself.

There is a significant but not complete overlap between this and one of my typical workouts. I don’t have a kettle bell. I also do step ups and step downs and jackknifes. But overall it’s quite similar.

Otto

RH Clark
My thinking on improvement is inconsistent, at best. Not unlike my cycling performance.

My weights are getting heavy (for me) and in my opinion, recovering from sessions of squats, presses, and dead lifts is different than recovering from hard and/or long rides. I completely understand that building strength and cycling HIIT occur in different periods of a periodized program.