Over Doing it At the Gym
 

After reading and hearing about the benefits of working out at the gym, I launched into it. Always do a warm up of 5 mins of gentle spinning on a stationary bike and do some dynamic stretching. The upper body and core exercises work great and keep me comfortable on the bike for hours. However, I am finding that my exuberant quad/ham oriented exercises are too much for my 71 YO knees and creating pain lasting a day or two. It’s good that it goes away, but two trips a week to the gym and it’s hard to get away from sore knees. So being the slow learner that I am, I am backing off on weighted squats, leg press, leg lifts, Bulgarian whatever’s, dead lifts, etc. Guess I have to find my happy medium. Dog knows when I was younger, I never focused on my hams and quads like I do now, so will take a page out of the past and forget the macho 250 lb leg presses, etc.

Word to the wisenheimers.

Where do you still like to “do it”? :D

Who wouda thunk that exuberant compliance with the "stuff" read or heard from enthusiastic promoters of specific exercising (or nutrition) regimens might lead to negative results and health problems?

As a cyclist or runner, I avoided working the legs with weights.
Just upper body and maybe some crunches.
And, admittedly, I over-did it with those exercises on many occasions.
:lol:

My advice on this. Forget ego lifting and stop using heavy weights and low reps and never grind out reps to failure. At 70 years of age your body already has enough wear and tear on it. There is absolutely no reason to lift to failure especially on compound lifts such as squat, deadlift or leg press. Change your routine and start using lighter weight. Choose a weight that will allow you to do 20 - 30 reps without going to failure. Give yourself 3 - 5 days of rest between those workouts. I know this is hard to accept for a lot of people but your joints and tendons are not the same as they were when you were 25. Don't try to act like a 25 year old pro because you're not.

Solid advice thank you.

Sorry I Like To Bike, but you are still on my ignore list. When you decide to be considerate, helpful and pleasant, I will happily remove you.

I've had a lot of joint issues in the past, especially in the knees, so I've looked into this issue quite a bit. There are two things I came away with:

1. Weight Training is not just about building muscle, muscle is easy, it's about building the musculoskeletal system, that takes much more time and patience.
2. Just like cardio, you can't improve during every session -- not only that, but you can't even maintain a PR-level tempo every time you workout. And that's why in cardio Zone 2 is so emphasized, but in weight training, the same has to happen, in that you should back off and do "maintenance" workouts between the ones where you push it. And "pushing it" is critical for staying active as we age, but it has to be balanced with less intense exercise for periods of time.

Think about the pain, what specifically is "barking" at you? When you think about it and look at the human anatomy, you realize that it usually boils down to connective tissue. Weight training does build connective tissue, but it's not the optimal way of building it -- at least the way we've been taught to lift weights.

The problem is that when you lift a heavy weight, your body instinctively knows (without you giving it one thought) that you need to apply massive force in a very short period of time to get the weight moving, which gives it momentum, effectively making it lighter. However, that initial force applied in a very short period of time, in effect, made the weight much heavier and it's your connective tissues that felt the brunt of that force. Furthermore, connective tissues don't have the same amount of blood vessels supplying oxygen and nutrients as muscle does, so any damage, regardless how slight takes much longer to heal. So when you feel the pain, it's often pain that is from successive damage that has built up over time that's finally starting to hurt.


Some good exercises for connective tissues are very slow movements and even static exercises, AKA isometrics. I've found that the YT channel Kneesovertoesguy provides very good exercises for rebuilding damaged connective tissues.

However, this guy (link below) explains it a little better, but there are few other channels that do as well. Although, I wish this was discussed more by other experts.

This goes completely against the Cyclist Mentality and tradition. It is also very good advice.

I am just a year behind the OP and have also been doing some off-season weights. With similar, but less results. So I have decided that twice a week is plenty. Once easy, lower weights, high reps. The second heavier, maybe a dozen reps. Optimum? No idea. But better than most, better than what I was doing before and seeing some small progress. And much less soreness.

I (68M) don't lift heavy, but I do lift often. 2-3 times per day, every day, less than 10 minutes at a time.

For legs, I do (light) weighted squats and lunges. 24 reps currently. My knees are happy at the moment, but I'm careful to watch out for pain. At the first sign of lingering pain, I stop the strength workouts until the pain is gone.

On the bike, I'm noticing less leg fatigue and "quad sting". So yay!

Good advice in this thread. I do one weight workout week with my son, who is a physical trainer. I also do a couple high intensity interval workouts that get me plenty sweaty but are not intended to overwork my muscles (for the most part!) The total seems to be keeping me in pretty good overall shaape, for riding as well as everything else.

Care to expound on the particulars of the "Cyclist Mentality and tradition" and why good advice is ignored and/or not welcome by those who have the "Cyclist Mentality" and/or are Cycling "Traditionalists"?

Agree with the above. I had my strongest summer after spending the winter doing 3 sets of 30 of 8 exercises. I added weight on each circuit, so the first one was moderate, the last one I could maybe do only 27. The gym I was using had a relatively sparsely populated weight room, which allowed me to do the exercises circuit style. I'd move from one station to the next, keeping my HR relatively high, only letting it drop to maybe 115 before starting the next one, since I didn't have to recover the muscles, just some of the aerobic. After a few months, I got so I was squatting 135 on my last set. The big guys were a bit amazed, as was I. I probably weighed about 148 then, was not a big guy by any means.

The obvious drawback to this is that at most gyms it's impossible because most of the desirable equipment is in constant use. I had at least 20 minutes to recover between sets of the same exercise. I'd read somewhere that climbers, who have to stay light, were doing sets of 30.

I was doing:
1-squat
2-Back machine
3-Leg sled
4-Bench press
5-Calf raises
6-Roman chair
7-Stiff-legged dead lift
8-Lat pulldowns

I had one injury: I was stupidly reversing the direction on the stiff-legged deadlifts without pausing at the bottom, using 115 lbs. That like doubled the force involved and I tore something in the back of my right knee. Always pause at the bottom!

I should mention that one gets big by eating, not by lifting heavy. My weight stays about the same whether I'm lifting or not, but my fancy scale shows more muscle, less fat after a couple months of lifting. It's called "body recomposition." Yes, I get hungry, but I just don't eat in response to hunger. I get used to it. I had a couple friends at the gym who did body building competition. Egg whites only omelets - not my thing.

Physical therapist once told me "Pain, no brain."

Good advice above. Went back to the gym today for a 1 hour session. Backed off on leg press from 250 to 200. 12X2. Backed off on a couple of other leg machines as well but am doing dead lifts of the same weight, weighted squats, heal raises and a bunch of core and some arm/shoulder. Increased the reps but decreased the weight and the result is zero pain in the knees and no muscular soreness. Jumped on the stationary for a zone 1 spin for another hour just to spin the legs. Feel just fine tonight.

It’s a challenge to find good weight training advice for people my age - 75+. A lot of it is geared toward folks in their 50s, which ain’t me. Generally, though, the recommendation is twice a week. Like others here, I go for more reps (15-20) with lighter weights. I still try to get within a few reps of failure. I think it’s important to push past the point where it becomes uncomfortable in terms of effort (not pain!). Modifying exercises is helpful: I don’t squat as deep for the sake of my knees, I do dumbbell bench presses on the floor for the sake of my shoulders, etc. You can find less painful alternatives to pretty much any exercise. Lunges or step-ups, for example, for quads might work better than curls or presses.

sounds like to much weight too soon...follow a proper 'plan' if you want to lift weights...you should feel 'good' after a strength training session, not like you describe...i'm 71 and lift twice weekly, still race actively and do not experience what you are describing...

I don't know, it just seems like many cyclists have the mentality of "anything worth doing is worth over doing." Longer, faster, more hills, colder, hotter. I offer a few Rules as example:

Rule 5: Harden the Fu$* Up!
Rule 10:

1. // It never gets easier, you just go faster.As this famous quote by Greg LeMan tells us, training, climbing, and racing is hard. It stays hard. To put it another way, per Greg Henderson: “Training is like fighting with a gorilla. You don’t stop when you’re tired. You stop when the gorilla is tired.” Sur la Plaque, ****tards.4

Rule 11: // Family does not come first. The bike does.

Rule 90: Never Get Out of the Big Ring.

Ex (meaning heavily injured) gym rat/power lifter here. About the only thing I can do now without pain is ride my bike. I can't even stand up or walk for prolonged periods... somehow I can ride my bike with zero issues, so I'm not complaining!!

To keep it simple
-Weight lifting good.
-Weight lifting can be very bad.

First - most programs, trainers, recommendations start people off way to hard and fast. Just like I did when I started reading muscle mags and El Terminators lifting schedule/routines...

The last thing I would do in the beginning is try to go heavy or push big compound movements. Squats, dead lifts, heavy on the leg sled, heavy on the benches.. = sure fire way to hurt yourself.

Form and control - learn it. Slow/easy long reps at lower weights. You have to build up all the supporting muscles, ligaments, connections - build a base.

Injuries from weight lifting to heavy or with improper form come fast and can do serious long term damage. Or create minor nagging damage that gets worse over time.

Change that to many "posters on BF", especially on the 50+ list, rather than "many cyclists" that seem to view that mentality as a virtue worth flexing about and I agree with you 100%. :thumb:

Yea...I have "worked out" for many years, but the last 6-9 months taking it more seriously. I am not trying to win Mr. Senior America but am worried about doing stuff as I get older. Like lifting luggage, working in the yard...real life stuff.
But I am worried about my joints and had shoulder problems in the past.

So many of my noncycling friends are getting, well, old. Knees, hips. Don't tell them, but my wife and I really don't want to travel with such sedentary folks. At least, not yet.

Trying to not "over" do it, but trying to keep doing it.

At 72, I've had a standard workout I've been doing for maybe 5-8 years or so. Mostly on machines, as I find it reduces the forces on joints which in my experience are my limiting factor, not muscle strength. I never do weight any more that would leave me hurting the next day -- I find that pain, especially joint pain once I get it takes weeks to recover from. Much better to avoid it to begin with.

I would go somewhere else if I had to stand around for 20 mins between sets. I try to keep to a strict 30 sec between sets. If I need more time then I'm too heavy. My only exception is bench press as I'm still too vain to just do quick sets of 20, but I do try to stick to sets of 12, maybe 10 if I'm not feeling great. Now with a new hip I'm not quite back strength-wise, but it feels great.

Have a good friend that is a retired county sheriff, who was a power lifter. He now calls himself a dumb ass for doing it (the power lifting) because of all the pain he has to endure daily, but thought it would help him on the job. His joints a back really took a beating.

At 66, I thought I was being careful and progressing sensibly with squats, deadlifts, and bench press — 3 sets of 5. But after needing help putting on my socks for a couple weeks, I’m back to my old routine which did not interfere with riding my bike and other normal activities.

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:thumb:

We are our worst enemy when we discount the physical side of aging. Try as we might to reclaim what was once our younger selves, the potential for damage in the doing is real.

I'm closing fast on 77, still work part-time in a hardware store. I lift heavy stuff (pails of drywall compound, bags of seed, bags of cement....) routinely yet remain aware of my limitations.

After picking back up with 'biking three years ago, I know the physical side of working has improved my outlook as well as my conditioning for biking. It's a balancing act though 'cause one wrong lift will put pain in my back or my knees again that keep me off the bikes.

Those of us who are over 40 need to remain aware of the fact that we're not living in the body we had 20 years before. Hard to accept when our mental age doesn't jive with that of our body I know, yet hard to ignore once we see how much longer it takes a minor injury to heal after what we would have 'walked away' from in years past.

yuuuup

I stay away from leg machines at the gym. except for:

• treadmill
• recumbent stationary bike
• slow star climber
• seated hip adduction machine (squeezing) (not heavy weights, several sets of 20 reps at 80 lbs)
• seated hip abductor machine (spreading) (not heavy weights, several sets of 20 reps at 80 lbs)

the best thing for my legs is the MTB & a hill