sorry couldn't resist, just saw it on another forum. is it Friday yet?

Isn’t that the truth. Two days ago I was scrubbing the tile grouting in the shower and now for the first time ever, my left wrist is painful if I lift anything remotely heavy. Good grief!

5 is not nearly enough when you're starting out. Maybe in your third year of uninterrupted lifing. Start with 20-30 reps. Yeah, I know, the websites say you progress faster with 3-5 reps. Maybe when you're 35 or in your third year of steady lifting. As they say, listen to your body, but the real issue is understanding what it's telling you. I've never done fewer than 10 reps and I've been using weights for . . . 60 years. Only had one injury, did something which was not obviously stupid until I thought about it later. So yeah, it is possible to screw up, just one of the many dangers associated with being alive. I was reversing direction on a lift without waiting an eyeblink in the bottom position before starting back up. That vastly increases the loading on muscles and connective tissue. Don't do that. That said, I do bounce at the bottom of an ATG squat, something to do with tendon elasticity, works fine for me. I saw an Olympic lifter doing that and copied him. Of course I'd been lifting for many years, might not work for you.

*lower body day*reading BF before the dumbbell step-ups*my legs aren't vibrating they're quivering*doms incoming*

Never have been a jock, now, getting in shape seems like washing the truck, then I'll have to keep washing it.

That's right, you can't just "wash" it and put it away. Not only that you can't even get into a routine, which we all like, because the body is so good at becoming efficient; however, Mother Nature starts tearing us down at around the age of 30 and only accelerates the process in subsequent years. So this means doing a certain routine, say riding a bike (or whatever), will only get tougher as we age, because our body has plateaued, but Mother Nature keeps stealing from us.

The only way we can significantly slow down Mother Nature's effect is to keep changing up our "routine" and pushing ourselves.

Mother Nature is a B**ch.

For ME, I am not worried about muscle soreness. I have been riding a very long time and know what that feels like. My knees never, ever hurt after a difficult ride. But I do worry about joint damage when lifting.. Hips, knees, shoulders. I probably should use bigger weights, but it worries me, so I go with 10-20 reps.

That's a factor of 2 between those. Be consistent. Big difference. As I said somewhere, the winter I did 3 sets of 30 reps was before my strongest summer. I was squatting 20 lbs less than bodyweight on the last set. The important thing was that I could "only" do 27-28 reps on the last set.

Yes, increasing max force by a factor of maybe 30 could sure make a mess of one's legs unless one gradually adapts to the greater force over a period of a few years. I've missed whole winters of lifting. Then I'd try to squat 20 reps unloaded and my quads would cramp. Gradually, gradually. One of my early revelations was that I once took a winter off from cycling and the following summer I was worthless. Similar with lifting. It was different in our teens.

got a reminder today, how much fun X-Country skiing is. managed to stay upright

This is my first winter doing squats as I (incorrectly it seems) assumed that biking alone was enough for legs. I only workout at home and do not have a squat rack. So, it's unloaded, sometimes with a dumbbell or step ups on an 18 inch stool.

With all the recent hype about "lift heavy," I am unable to do that with my legs. I have a machine for upper body along with elastics. Maybe I am too worried about "Over Doing it at The Gym," as this thread is titled. Unfounded concern?

You need to lift heavy or else...Mother Nature will take it from you

The article makes other good points, besides what I quoted below. The heavier you lift the easier cycling at a given wattage becomes easier. In other words, not only will you be able to kick out more wattage, but if you ride around at a given wattage, that will now be easier.

https://nutrabio.com/blogs/endurelit...20six%20sets**

Your unfounded concern isn't unfounded at all, it is perfectly legitimate so don't worry about it. Just continue doing what works for you. You don't need to train like a powerlifter in order to maintain bone density. Yes it's true that bones respond to mechanical loading and stress just like muscles respond to mechanical loading but that doesn't mean you have to train like a powerlifter and lift extremely weights in order to maintain bone density and maintain muscle function. As long as your exercise routine and activities which you do create some level of fatigue and stress on your body then that's all that is necessary.

Regarding lifting heavy, which I take as "to failure or close to failure", there's a recent study showing that lots of reps at lower weight was just as effective at building strength. Testing college athletes not us old guys, and of course that kind of workout takes much longer.

An excellent substitute for barbell squats is exactly what you're doing: dumbbell deadlifts. You want to have the dumbbells almost touch the floor at the bottom and your body to be totally upright at the top. Try to bend over as little as possible, which will still be a lot, doing as much as possible with your legs. Moving relatively quickly is good, partly because the dumbbells are hard to hold on to. This is a fantastic exercise for the whole body. One of the tests for being over the hill is grip strength, so this'll take care of that, too. Right now, I'm doing 3 sets of 10 with 50# dumbbells. When I was in shape, I remember using 60#.

Depends on one's definition of overdoing it. Lifting more weight than one is ready for and getting injured is definitely overdoing it. Getting so tired at the gym that you'd like to have a wheelbarrow take you to your car is what one is after. It's not lifting more weight that one is after, really. Simply getting tired is the goal, not that different from a hard hilly ride. I used to say that if one could still walk at the end of the Sunday ride, one could have gone harder. So it's the same thing, just with more force and way fewer reps than one does on the bike. The goal is simply greater force production. The more force one can produce, the less one tires at a lower force production. One is then loading each of the available muscle fibers more lightly on the bike. One way to look at it anyway.

Think of what you're doing as simply riding really, really hard out of the saddle.

What I was saying when I was talking about doing 30 reps to start with, somewhere upthread, though I think it's still important to not be able to complete set 3. I think a good definition of "building strength" is getting so one can lift more weight. In fact, I can't think of another. How else can one know that one is getting stronger? One can't tell how much one can lift if one doesn't know how much one cannot lift. Link to that study?

I have no reason to doubt this and did quickly read the blog. And this very small "study" , and more precisely the conclusions, were of dubious value to me. For one, the control group, as I understand it, was endurance athletes doing their training only vs endurance plus heavy lifting. There was no mention of heavy vs light so any conclusions there are speculation.

Next, the statment of "never go more than 72 hours....." maybe that is observation or tradition but I am not sure how his claim of strength loss was arrived at.

Also, his assertation that if you can do 2 reps of a given weight, you need to increase. That seems, to me, a recipe for injury.

So that is why reading these kinds of Gym Bro articles is entertaining, it does not really prove anything. I watch videos from Dylan Johnson who backs up every idea with citations from academic literature. That is how I was trained in real life and I think you have to apply that to athletic training as well

I didn't post the link for the studies, I posted it because it points out why it's good for us to lift heavy. And those were NOT Gym Bros. BTW, I think Gym Bros, especially the Body building types are why so many, especially runners and cyclists, are turned off on lifting weights; however, that trend is turning now, but still some stigma in the running/cycling world about "Pumping Iron".

All the points made are sound points; however, that's not to say there is no place for doing high reps with lower weights, I do at times, simply because we cannot improve every time we workout, regardless if that is with weights or cardio. When I feel like I can't get past a point with a certain weight, then I back off and do something else, because that's what the body needs and sometimes that is lighter weights at higher reps.

All the article is saying is that you should NOT be only doing light weights at higher reps. All that is doing is working your slow-twitch muscle fibers and if you do that enough, then it's not strength training, it's endurance training. We do enough endurance training on the bike, don't need to be doing it when we're supposedly working on the musculoskeletal system. It's like the first time one went on a run or a bike ride. Many people end up with sore legs, that was a form of strength training, but as we do more and more our legs stopped hurting, because then the activity switched mostly to an endurance event. The same thing is true if all you do is lift light weight at high reps -- it becomes an endurance event, not strength training.

Dylan Johnson, that's a name from the past, but yeah, he's a good guy. I went to see if he had anything to say about weightlifting for cyclists and here's a video from 4-years ago. He also makes a very cogent point at the 14:45-minute point in the video, cogent, because it's about age and strength training.

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Lifting for higher reps builds strength and endurance at the same time. Riding a bike only builds cardiovascular endurance and leg endurance. You also need upper body endurance and the best way to train the upper body and core strength / endurance is using higher reps. For me personally I would much rather prefer to deadlift 140 pounds for 50 or 60 or 80 or 100 reps non-stop than deadlift 600 pounds for 1 rep.. I would argue that endurance training is more important and more useful in real life than raw strength training because humans have evolved to be endurance creatures. As for developing fast twitch muscle fibers, you can do that with sprinting, plyometric training and fast explosive type of training non of which require very heavy weight.

Many years ago, I found a website that claimed to know about what the road pros do in the gym. Of course, only their coaches really know, but . . . They concentrate on squats and work to near failure on the last set. They start in the fall with high reps, as many as 15 IIRC. I wouldn't say light weights, because these folks are strong! So, I should say lighter weights. They gradually decrease the reps and increase the weights over the months between fall and their events. They'll be doing sets of 4 reps, having worked up to very heavy squats before they stop lifting for the season. I've modeled my gym work after theirs. My weights are much lighter, but the idea is the same. It's simple and easy to program. Also, being a geezer, I do full-body workouts and put on much more upper body muscle than a pro, though I use a similar progression for everything.

One of the most famous modern road pros had gym videos up for maybe a couple weeks, then they were taken down. That's the only first-person pro-roadie gym stuff I've ever seen published.

Referring to Dylan's video above, that's what's worked for me with caveats noted above. I lift twice a week, full-body workouts, with one day mostly pushing work, the other is mostly pulling.

Don't laugh, there is a program, which is free from some Medicare plans, called Silver Sneakers. Geared towards seniors, of course. Some exercises are very mild, others can provide good conditioning. The one near us, which my wife uses, is too easy, but the gym is still free, so I use their weights and machines. But another, a bit further away, really provides a workout. And at one of them, we found out about a rec center that offers a free exercise program for seniors. It utilizes weights, stretch bands, and various exercises such as jumping jacks, stretches, cardio, etc., etc., which offers even a fit person a good workout, and you can work at the exercises as hard or as easy as you want, so good for all levels. There are some Silver Sneakers workouts on YouTube also. I scoffed at them at first, but if you consistently work at them, have found them helpful in maintaining fitness.

I want to emphasize that I'm not saying to do one or the other, rather I'm saying I do both, as well as a third type which is power, which is like plyometric training. Lifting up to a 100 reps is good, but it doesn't work on setting a foundation of strong connective tissues and bone, which lifting a very heavy weight (slowly) does as well as doing power reps. And I do sprint, both on and off the bike, as well as things like jumping; however, I did injure myself years ago when I first started sprinting (in a run), because I didn't understand the importance of building up the musculoskeletal system. I injured my Achilles heel -- that took a long time to heal and that's when I started to realize the importance of connective tissues.

As I said above, we can't improve every time we lift, so when I feel like I've hit a ceiling, I switch it up and I also do tons of reps. I don't like to say one is better than the other, but they all serve a very specific purpose, of course there is a little overlap. However, strength is foundational and it lays the foundation for even the power/plyometric movements. I've seen it recommended that one should squat at least 1.5 times their body weight before starting intense plyometrics. I would include doing some isometrics as well and be very careful when starting power/plyometric exercises. That's where the real injuries come from. A normal joe just jogging can easily impart a force of twice their body weight (at least) on one leg and a professional sprinter can impart about 1,000 lbs of force on one leg during each stride.

Running is not just a cardio exercise, it's a Power exercise. And so is sprinting on a bike, but since the pedal gives way, it's much harder to injure oneself.




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got a reminder today, how much fun snow shoeing is

Sure, I can use that, it makes sense.

Today's workout, I lifted heaviER. Not my absolute max for 8 reps, 'cause it still worries me a little. My plan, for now, is to do strength training twice a week with once heavy and once lighter with more reps.

My point was, perhaps poorly written, was that so much that we see in popular media, Youtube etc. is so dogmatic. This Is The Way! When so many of us are just trying to find a method that is doable, challenging but not so difficult that it is a chore to be avoided.

OK, one other bone to pick: in our local newspaper their is a weekly column about health and fitness from a person with dubious credentials and claims to have a PhD in Results! I want to strangle her.