Consistency, Consistency, Consistency + Strength Training

Training and Performance Fundamentals
#1

I might be on the rarer side of “consistency” meaning I have been extremely active since I was a kid, non-stop sports activities. But, a big but. I am also a person that has many periods of reduced activity.

I am 57, since the age of 10 I would say 43 of years I have involved in some type of training. Meaning I only have maybe 4 years, I did close to nothing. But probably 10 of those 43 years have involved 3-6 months of minimal to no “training.” So I have probably trained consistently for 65-75% of my life. Many winters have suffered.

I realized now is the time to solve this problem. Since having twins 9 years ago, TrainerDay and a similarly large other disruption, my life became more difficult to manage. Now things seem to be getting much easier again.

Strength Training
I have always been more intermittent at strength training not fully appreciating the importance. I would say most longevity experts these days are starting to advocate the importance of strength training, putting in on a higher level of importance than endurance training for longevity (health span).

After a period of 2 years of consistency, I got strong once in my life (400kg leg press slowly 10 times). But other than that I have been mostly intermittent.

So how do we stay incredibly consistent, ideally including strength training? Arguably, the key to long term health. I am starting to believe more important than diet, other than maybe in extreme cases. I can provide a bunch of “proof” but having reasonable muscle mass can fix many of the metabolic issues as much as being a healthy weight as well as solving other problems. Muscles help with Insulin sensitivity for example.

Consistency
I have a group of what I consider interesting thinkers and science guys discussing this stuff and it brought me to some interesting observations.

One of these “thinkers” is super strong, low body fat and fast cyclist and been consistent at strength training for 30 years. He was telling me how he does it and my conclusion was that he is so different than me, his tricks would never work. I thought he was just genetically created for consistency. But the more I dug into it I realized maybe I was wrong and maybe he is not that different and his ideas might work for me too. Then I saw the following article.

Elaine LaLaine, the now 97 year old wife of Jack LaLaine, he being one of the greatest fitness guys of all time. At 97 she trains 7 days a week. She has a core message “Always stay positive!!!”

Here is ChatGPT summary since that might be paywalled

At 97, Elaine LaLanne, the “First Lady of Fitness,” continues to shape the fitness industry and is a model for aging well. She was the wife and business partner of Jack LaLanne, renowned as the father of modern fitness. While Jack was the face of the fitness movement, Elaine preferred to work behind the scenes.

Elaine has also published books and is working on film projects about their life and contributions to fitness, with Mark Wahlberg attached to play Jack. She remains active in fitness circles, providing counsel to industry professionals and continuing her fitness routines, which she says have not only kept her physically active but also mentally sharp.

Despite facing personal tragedies, including the loss of her daughter, Elaine maintains a positive outlook and remains a testament to the benefits of a lifetime of exercise, positive thinking, and healthy living. She continues to inspire many by showing the value of maintaining an active lifestyle and the impact of exercise on aging, emphasizing the importance of movement: “If you don’t move, you become immovable.”

Can I do it?
So I am learning some tricks, and first indication is I feel they might work. I will keep sharing those tricks here. So this discussion is mostly about consistency and strength training. I really want to get into sharing the importance of strength training for cyclists. Many cyclists don’t like strength training. I am not going to try to argue that it is critical to short or medium term performance, as that is fairly unproven. I still do think it is very important even in very small amounts. Could be as little as 15 minutes a week.

My New Primary Tricks

  1. Positivity from myself and everyone in my life about training “you look sexy.” No negative statements and full support for partners and family about exercise. My wife agrees but still struggles not to disrupt me :slight_smile:

  2. Do what ever it takes to get motivated, even if that means eating something that does not fully align with your diet

  3. Realize strength training is the most important thing in MY life. There is likely nothing you can do to improve your health span more, and you can spend minimal amounts of time so it’s not going to disrupt your life. Nothing should ever come before this other than extreme emergencies and illnesses. It can be 15 minutes twice a week. Make it happen!!!

This does not need to be an argument about the importance of strength training. It’s more just my current mindset. If you believe in the benefit of strength training than Zone 2 is the perfect compliment of strength training. Too many hard efforts on the bike can disrupt your strength training.

Again we are a cycling platform. I think cycling is absolutely great and not trying to down play the importance of aerobic exercise. I am just trying to get people to consider having more of a balance and put health first which Andrea and I both believe will bring maximum performance at any level of cyclist.

4 Likes
#2

If anyone has their tricks to consistency I would love to hear them as well as sharing what anyone feels that strength training has added to their life or their cycling.

#3

1-Set a goal
2-make a calendar
3-get a partner(s) to train with you
4-do it

There’s really nothing else to it. If you need a calendar partner that will want to know with the x isn’t in the calendar, coaches will do that on training platforms. But really, doing it with a friend is the best. Not relying on said friend, but being the motivator for…

I row or do kettlebell workouts twice a week. 15-20 minutes. After that I’m bored, but I make sure to get that done.

#4

I am a terrible calendar follower but I love this anyway :slight_smile:

#5

forgot to write : with the goal make it like a race or endurance ride or charitable association cause and put a reward for yourself too. :smiley:

I mean doing it for yourself lets you slack off.
Doing it for a cause is a major kick in the arse.

#6

I too am probably on the rarer side of consistency. So much so, it is more of a curse than anything else. I actually get anxious and depressed if I miss a day.
Once out of high school and team athletics, I immediately joined a gym where I went to college. From that time until now, I haven’t missed a single week of working out 5-6 days unless ill or on vacation. In fact I remember going on my honeymoon for 8 days, and the front desk workers all commented that they had thought something terrible happened to me.

For the first decade of this time, I pretty much did bodybuilding and powerlifting, with a few of those obstacle course races sprinkled in. Then about 3 years ago I had a grade 4 separated shoulder from diving after a softball in the outfield. Couldn’t lift upper body for 6 months. I was so incredibly depressed at not being able to workout, it was affecting my marriage and being a father. After 2 weeks of doing nothing, the longest I’ve ever gone in my adult life, I picked up running to stay in shape. This was quite a switch, but eventually I fell in love and was running 6 days a week. Ran a marathon within a year at a 3:30 pace. I then picked up cycling to cross train, and after discovering the local bike community and how much fun bike racing is, I’m all in on it.

Now I bike 6 days a week, much with the help of this great app, so thank you to TrainerDay.

As for tips on staying consistent, I’m probably not the best person to ask. People have asked me all the time, and most times they don’t want to hear what I say. When I wake up in the morning, it’s not even a question of whether I’m training or not. It really comes down to a person’s priorities. Training for me is a top priority for many reasons, only after Family and friends. Competition is fun, improving is fun, and being healthy and staying healthy as I advance in age always weighs on my mind when I think of my daughters. If you want to stay consistent in training, nutrition, or anything else in life, the reasons for doing it better be a high priority, otherwise I see people don’t stick with it. I have had dozens of people ask me for help with “losing weight” or “looking better”. In the end they all fail, unless they get hooked on the process and find a deeper reason for doing it. You have to make the activity you want to be consistent with be part of who YOU ARE. It can’t be some short term thing you are doing everyday that you hate to reach a goal that isn’t a higher priority than other things that are sabotaging it.

Anyways, sorry for the long reply, but this is a topic that I’m quite interested in as it seems so difficult for many people.

1 Like
#7

Everybody know the key is to be consistent but it is not easy. In
good days, you already can do a consistent work. It’s only when
things not working as you expected, when the external environment is
bad, then in that kind of situation, be consistent, still be
consistent, it’s the hardest thing I think.

Jame proposed that four laws: Make It Obvious, Make It Acttractive,
Make It Easy, Make It Satisfying.

David Goggen says: “It’s a lot more than mind over matter. It takes
relentless self-discipline to schedule suffering into your day,
every day.” "

Van Avermaet said: “I have always been a really consistent rider so
I think my success can be put down to my training as I train a lot,
…”

Some time, when I read “Tao Te Ching”, I even question the moment I
feel I don’t want to do anything. It’s a good way, it’s a positive
way to experience those moments. Those times are the even harder
time because You’re kind of living in a world that you can
persuade yourself that not doing certain training is good for you.

“道常无为而无不为”
– Translation “The Dao always acts without acting, yet leaves nothing undone.”

Especially for a person who trains not for competition, but for the
purpose that it is not a competition. I believe there are many cases
where you will question why you do those things.

One thing I’m still very clear, that I want to, I still seek for the
consistency. And I still try to figure out how to be consistent. And
I still want to conquer myself.

“知人者智，自知者明。胜人者有力，自胜者强。 《道德经 第三十三章》”
– Translation: “He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself
is enlightened. He who conquers others has physical strength; he who
conquers himself is strong.”

I need to find purpose. I need to find technique. I need to move in
actions. I need to reflect. I need to rethink. I need to write it
down. I need to talk to people. I need to visualize.

#8

Oh my… yes I guess you are a very rare case. When I wrote I was rare, I kind of thought a lot of people are likely rare in their own way. I am not sure your case is a blessing or a curse. For those of us wishing we got or get super strong it sounds like a blessing. I still have aspirations of getting strong at 57 :slight_smile:

It’s interesting as it sounds like you have this very strong emotional connection to training. I think you are very different than my friend, Hugo, that has also been highly consistent for a long time but he also has this strong emotional connection to training.

Your idea of making it who you are is interesting. I always feel like being an athlete is part of who I am but not who I am. This disconnect likely partially causes my inconsistent consistency. I guess genetically you personally have reasonable genes for getting muscular and if not at least worked so hard that you became very muscular early on. The first time I gained some strength was 34 (previously all aerobic stuff). Maybe if I started earlier strength would have helped identify with being an athlete (by looking like one). I wonder if this is a threshold I could cross now that I would feel like being an athlete is who I am. I would like that for sure.

#9

Yes, on the goggins quote, I am reading now this strong connection between testosterone and desire to suffer. So people with very high levels of testosterone NEED or LOVE intense suffering. It’s funny because I used to really love suffering. Not to the super depths that many people do but doing a 28 hour mountain climb trip “non-stop” was a pleasure. Sure duration suffering more than intensity suffering. I actually feel I have been likely on the lower end of testosterone my whole life and seems definitely lower now. I plan to get tested. Not sure I would want to do TRT though.

So this is interesting.

  1. Make It Attractive
  2. Make It Easy
  3. Make It Satisfying

I would love to hear how you have control over any of these items. Easy is fine. Meaning hop on the indoor trainer, do pushups… have a gym in the house or kettle bells or something. But #1 and #3 seem much more elusive. If this really works I would love to hear ideas on how to make that happen. Obviously in relation to TrainerDay satisfying can be related to a sense of completion of a task and doing smarter training, as well as digging into metrics. I am trying to train 6 or 7 days a week now and #3 is just looking at the full activity calendar.

#10

Consistency is extremely important but achieving consistency will be very different per individual.
On the above list, the goal is an important factor, but it must be a smart goal, challenging enough but highly likely achievable.
About the calendar: I absolutely don’t like rigid plannings, because I know that I will fail to follow a rigid plan. There must be a broad overview plan with some milestones, things that should be achieved at certain points in time. For the rest, there must be enough flexibility to account for unexpected situations. Most of us are not pro’s, and we have plenty of other stuff that comes along.
Partner(s): depends a lot on the individual. I like training on my own, making that training time a bit of ‘me-time’. But I get what you mean. Three and a half years ago, my former dog died at age 16. The dog at that age had very little mobility left. We got a Border Coly shortly after and I walked the dog 1 hour to 1.5 hour a day. My main sport is cycling but I quickly came to the conclusion that the dog-walk should be exploited more. I changed the simple walk in to a Power-Walk, slow jog and some running. That way I was able to improve fitness, consistency without sacrificing family time. There are many more ways to incorporate more base time like walking around when on the phone, parking your car further away, etc etc. Just give it some thinking, I’ m sure you will come up with ‘free’ moving time. Any movement is better then none and will improve fitness.
The Do-It part: YES, even if you don’t feel like it, get out the door and start, maybe with the idea ‘I will just do something short’. Many times you will get the hang of it and still complete what was on your plan. The difficulty is to get started. I do get a little help from my dog for that, because not going out for his walk, is completely throwing him off.
On the ‘suffering’ topic. Suffering while doing your goal event, is not a bad thing. Even well prepared, your goal event is usually something out of your comfort zone. Suffering during daily training on the other hand should be minimal. Suffering today almost always means that you will need an extra day of recovery and that compromises consistency.
The timing of your training is very important for consistency. If you train on moments of the day where just about anything can intervene, you will miss a lot. Try to schedule your training at moments of the day where there is the least chance that you will be interrupted.
If a training is missed, I would advice anyone to take a moment and think about the reason(s) why you missed it. Once you know why you missed it, you can take actions to avoid it in the future.

#11

Like many things in life you need a strong WHY to stick with it.

Dave

#12

Get a coach…

Accountability is a really good motivator :slight_smile:

#13

I agree. Having a coach worked by far the best for me. I am on a role now with a goal of beating previous coached consistency records.

#14

Hi Alex,

Similar to yourself, I’m 55 and have been exercising in some form or other since I was 16 or so. During that time I’ve had many periods where I could do very little exercise (very demanding long hours jobs).

For me, the key to trying to maintain some consistency in my exercise, in spite of the obstacles that life throws in my way, is to try and enjoy whatever exercise I’ve been doing.

Personally speaking the undoubted benefits that come from exercise have never, and would never have been enough to keep me exercising, when trying to juggle life’s other demands.

And whatever I’ve been doing (weight training, Karate, running, cycling) almost always lost the fun factor when I’ve been trying to push to the edges of my ability. I’ve never quite got to that 4 watts/kg FTP and boy, does cycling ever lose its appeal when my workouts have been focussed on pushing hard to try and achieve that FTP.

But when I get on the bike to go for a social ride - well, that’s fun! Might not help me improve my FTP, but it does motivate me to get out and ride, with the associated fitness benefits.

So, how do you make strength training enjoyable?

Well, I started weight training at around age 16, long before taking up running or getting on a bike.

Growing up in a rough area in the UK, being small and lightly built, I took up weight training to try and gain some bulk. I tried pretty much everything - bar chemical enhancers like steroids - to gain size. 6 days a week. 2 workouts a day etc.

And unfortunately for me, I discovered that I had a very limited capacity to gain weight, strength and muscle. After 2 years of consistent training, with the hormonal advantages that a 16-18 year old male has, I’d only gained around 7 lbs of lean muscle, with the associated strength gains.

Then at age 18, I came across Arthur Jones’ Hi Intensity weight training philosophy. I found it hard to believe that it would work - brief, intense sessions - given that it was so different from any routine I’d read about, but I gave it a go.

And boy did it work! I was spending waaay less time in the gym, but working harder. And in the first 10 weeks of using the approach I gained strength at a rate that I couldn’t believe and put on more muscle in 10 weeks than during my previous 2 years of training.

I still use those approaches today, 40 years later.

The reason I’m mentioning this is that those approaches dovetail very well with cycling. I only need to do 1 weights session a week, of duration around 40 minutes, to gain as much strength and muscle as I’m able to at age 55.

I could do 2 or 3 such weight training sessions a week, but my 55 year old body wouldn’t gain more strength or muscle as my hormonal system wouldn’t be able to deal with that level of strength training.

It’s much, much easier to motivate myself to do 1 weights session a week, of that short duration, than trying to do multiple sessions and fit those around 2 or 3 bike rides a week.

The book Body by Science by McGuff, while a little dry as a read, gives a good overview of once per week training.

That might work for you as well and as I say, it fits very well around cycle training and most of us can find 40 minutes once a week to weight train, so motivation becomes less of an issue.

1 Like
#15

@DrJulesG1 - could you describe what your weekly weight session looks like? This intrigues me. Thanks.

#16

Interesting, I just searched this Aurthor Jones (I remembered the name but forgot who he was), and yes when I had a coach, that is exactly the style he was teaching and for sure I gained and got strong. 10 reps, slow and smooth and failure of one good set. Looking back, I now believe the two factors played the most important role were training very hard and very consistent. I got to the point I could do 10X at 4 second negatives of 45 degree leg press with 400kg. My leg press was one of the strongest in a gym with some real strong guys.

I could not agree with you more than 1 day a week of the right strength training is perfect for a busy cyclist and most people could get plenty strong enough with this approach.

I would say my thinking around training has changed (modern guru’s and authors) and I believe their are even more effective and efficient but since I can’t seem to get to previous levels of strength, that I had with my coach, the optimum method of training does not matter without the optimum level of consistency and effort. My coach had me working so hard I had to go sit in the corner in the gym as I thought I might puke… and I was not starting as a beginner, I was already reasonably fit/strong.

I now believe for most, focusing on raw strength of a couple big compound movements at least in the beginning is the ultimate, but once you have it and are more in maintenance mode or want to bulk after you are strong then Aurthor Jones style is likely the best. Again it can still be once a week, although in my case I feel like once every 5 days is more likely to cause gains after that initial “beginner” plateau, but I think that is individual. At 57, I start losing it pretty fast. Once a week will for sure keep me strong, it’s just harder to progress. Probably with the right effort and once a week, I might keep progressing.

So if someone has access to gym equipment. Even though most people could be turned off by Mark Rippetoe and starting strength, he is the recognized leader these days. He has a book starting strength. He talks very scientific and also very Texas redneck style… Very popular on youtube and his book is a bible “Starting Strength” if you are already very strong, it’s not necessarily meant for you. I would say low bar full depth squat of 1.2X body weight would be close to the threshold of going from beginner to intermediate.

So a person could likely do 1 time per week of 20 minutes and get very strong. This is kind of the minimum, but this would make your entire body strong. This is doing 5 reps with about your 7 rep max, so not to failure.

  • Low bar full depth squat (requires squat rack)
  • Flat Bench press
  • Pull ups

Now without “a gym” this could be “hacked” but would likely be a bit less effective.

  • Kettlebell swing
  • Weighted pushups getting progressively harder (aiming for 5X with 7RM intensity)
  • Pull ups

I think for most people, especially wanting to do the minimum, you don’t need to do auxiliary exercises like biceps or triceps focus. You will get plenty from bench and pull up.

I also would love to hear what you are doing. My gym is outside in a tent and it is snowing today… I am doing indoor hacks.

#17

Hi Alex,

I had just finished typing this in when your response popped in. (And my apologies if much of my response is too simplistic - I rarely come across people who are familiar with Arthur Jones and similar approaches, hence why I often have to start with a very basic description of what high intensity strength training is!)

I’d agree with most of what you’ve written. Except in my case I can say that the routine I mention below is actually increasing, not just maintaining my strength. Not beyond the levels I had when I was 18 - that’s not going to be possible at my age - but pretty close to it.

And my wife started training this way at the beginning of the year. She’s the same age as me, 55, fit (aerobically and from yoga) but has never done any strength training. And her strength is increasing still, 11 or so months in, on the same 1 day a week weight training routine.

Like myself no one’s ever going to mistake her for a bodybuilder, but that’s not her or my objective. We’re simply trying to stay healthy and active and adding this into the cycling mix.

Anyway, here’s what I’d just written to Sceva…

Hi Sceva,

Sure, my pleasure.

Weight training differs from cycle (aerobic) training in one key aspect that has a major bearing on how you should train.

With aerobic training you can gain benefit from low intensity (zone 2) training and all the zones above that. The benefits from each zone vary and if you follow more modern cycle training approaches, you’ll spend most of your time in the lower zones, with small dosed amounts in the higher zones (e.g. Seiler’s 80:20 approach).

Weight and strength training doesn’t work that way.

The weight training equivalent of cycling’s lower intensity zones is working a muscle, or muscle group, to less than failure. While you get lots of benefit from that approach in cycling / aerobic training, it does pretty much nothing for you when weight training.

Weight and strength training is a much more digital stress / response situation. If the stressor isn’t strong enough you won’t get a response (increased strength).

In that respect weight and strength training is like going out in the sun. You can go out all day in the winter sun in the Northern Hemisphere and you’ll not develop a sun tan - the stressor (UV levels) aren’t strong enough to provoke a response (tanning). But in the peak of summer near the equator, 10 minutes in the sun would be a strong enough stressor to provoke a strong tanning response (in caucasian’s like myself anyway!)

And that’s the key with weight training - you need to provide a strong enough stressor to provoke the strength gaining response.

And just like sun exposure there’s also an intensity / duration interaction. A UV stressor strong enough to provoke a tan will also burn you if you stay out too long in it. So it is with weight training. If you’re training hard enough to provoke a strength gaining response, then you can’t endure (at any age) much training like that. You’ll over-train extremely rapidly (unless you’re using chemical support but that’s not something I’ve personal experience of).

OK, so how does that all translate into my (personal) training.

My once a week training looks like the following:

I first train the core of my torso:

  • 2 sets of pulldowns (hitting the lats, biceps and so on).
  • 2 sets of chest press / bench press.
  • 2 sets of shoulder press.

I then move onto my lower body.

  • 2 sets of leg presses (I’d prefer squats but mechanically I’m not suited to those - lower back issues).

I finish off with my arms:

  • 2 sets of dumbell curls.
  • 2 sets of triceps pushdowns.

And that’s it. Once a week, 12 sets in total.

Doesn’t look like a lot does it? But if you’re working with proper intensity most people can’t do much more than that.

So what do I mean by intensity in a strength context? Simply going to muscular failure. And that’s difficult to do!

So let me illustrate what that looks like with a biceps curl that most people know.

You start with a weight at the bottom of the curl and take a slow 10 seconds to raise the weight. No cheating, no body lunging etc. At the top of the arc you stop a little short so that the biceps can’t relax and remains under tension. You pause for 2 seconds.

Then you lower for 10 seconds. Again you stop short of a lock out at the bottom of the curl so that the biceps constantly remains under tension. You keep going until the muscle fails after around 1 to 2 minutes of constant work.

How do you know your biceps has failed?

It’s not when it’s feeling painful and you’re getting tired. It’s when you literally can’t raise the weight any further. You know you’ve hit that point when on the last point in the exercise you struggle to raise the weight for 5 to 10 seconds and you don’t manage to move the weight at all.

If you’ve done it right you’ll know you’ve worked your biceps hard!

Hence why only 2 sets. If you do these exercises right, completing even 2 sets is a challenge and you’ll often have to back-off on the 2nd set.

Again, to illustrate what I mean by intensity, when I finish a set of leg presses my legs will be shaking so hard that I can’t stand up properly for a minute or two and my heart rate will have rocketed into the 150 to 160 range - which is above my aerobic threshold.

And I’ll be sweating and breathing like I’ve just finished a sprint interval on the bike.

When you look around in most gyms there aren’t many people who are working hard like that. Which is fine, we’re all there for different reasons.

But in my case the above routine takes about 45 minutes to complete, wipes me out and at age 55 is about all I can stand. But it’s also keeping my strength levels close-ish to my 18 year old self, so I’m happy with that.

Incidentally my description of how I train above is just one of the approaches to working to failure (Super Slow Reps as it was known when I was a teenager). There are other high intensity protocols that work equally well, but they all boil down to working to failure (painful!) and working out briefly (few sets, few workouts per week).

The following Wikipedia entry gives you a good starting point if you’re interested in reading further.

High-intensity training

Hope that magnum opus helped a little!

1 Like
#18

Simple is perfect!!! It’s better to provide context to everyone. As I am sure you know 10 reps to failure is considered hypertrophy training or increasing size, and non-failure to 5 is considered strength training. Most “experts” agree on this. After 30 years of researching this stuff and experimenting I would say alternative experts suggest this may not be so black and white. Slowing increasing volume may play a more important role than 5 vs 10 for strength or hypertrophy.

If you want to try something new, which is very high intensity, both aerobically (breathing hard) and strength wise as well as being incredibly time efficient and safe. It’s called EDT or escalating density training. It’s truly like HIIT for strength training.

Here is a good book. Charles Stanley is an expert as well and this breaks out of all the stereo types of strength training.

Coach Andrea does EDT (he loves minimum time maximum results), and I have done it at times as well. For me I have to be in the right state of mind to take this on, similar to needing to be in the right mind to do hard HIIT on the bike.

Also with your HIIT style speed and 40 minutes that might be why you continue increasing, where I minimal number of total reps with more rest, so ultimately you are doing more volume which is likely the driver of your success.

#19

Hi Alex, I’m not familiar with EDT training so thanks for the recommendation! Will read that book with interest.

And going back to your comments around training styles - number of reps, pacing etc. Like you I’ve tried lots of different approaches over the decades, and I’d agree with you that it’s not totally black and white around volume versus intensity.

And I think the reps debate is something of a red-herring. Low reps, high reps etc. Your muscles have no idea what weight they’re lifting, nor the number of reps they’re doing.

The only thing your muscles know about is what percentage of fast-twitch fibres they’re having to recruit, how quickly they’re tiring and what percentage of fast-twitch fibres remain in reserve (a bit like the W’bal situation during intervals).

So high intensity and going to failure is really an exercise in trying to exhaust more than a threshold number of fast-twitch fibres in a muscle group, within a short space of time.

You can achieve that with heavy weights and lower reps, or slightly lower weights, lower pacing etc.

Incidentally, in that thinking I’m ignoring the central nervous system’s impact on your performance, which obviously has a major impact on things. Some days, like everyone, I’m just not in the headspace to push hard on the bike or in the gym, and that’s the major limiter that day on the quality of my weights or bike workout.

But coming back to weight training, it’s my (non research backed opinion!) that as your muscles get better trained they will need a slightly higher volume to provoke the same response (you’ve already got a sun-tan, so need longer in the sun, or more intense UV exposure to get a further response).

The fast twitch fibres will become more fatigue resistant, or recruitment patterns will change etc.

So I wasn’t meaning to suggest that once per week training on the pattern I’m using is the optimal, but it does fit in nicely with bike training a few times per week and the rest of your life.

But having said that, thanks again for the suggestion and I’ll look into EDT with interest!

#20

I am a minimalist as well, so once a week is great :slight_smile: especially as a cyclist or someone with other training goals. EDT is so effective because you can do more volume in less time. You alternate every set to opposing muscle group. But you do lots of sets. It’s 100% time boxed. As many reps as possible in X minutes.

One thing I would say is your muscles do have some idea of pressure (newton meters) i.e weight as well as time under tension. EDT will give you a totally different perspective on this matter. With slow you are focused on time under tension. This means 50kg = 50kg but for 5-6 seconds most likely. If you raise 50kg fast enough it can be 75kg of force or more but time under tension will be less at least on the positive direction. Also it seems intense/slow negatives are what make your muscles sore. The value of this is debatable. Meaning you don’t need to get very sore to get strong. It’s all super interesting and seems like science (some of it is, like faster is higher pressure/weight) but in the end it’s finding what works for you.

I would normally recommend against machines (unless it drives consistency) but it sounds like it is working for you which is great. I don’t know your back problems but when I did leg press I had back problems and with good form squats (I was always afraid of) my back is excellent now. Deadlifts would be similar to low bar squatting to giving and incredible back.

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