strength training discussion thread

I will have a look at those link a bit later and yes the main reason I saw no benefit was likely because the winter weights effectively postponed the start of my cardio season. With that in mind it feels like all advice to cyclists regarding lifting should be prefaced with add lifting to your routine either in the off season or once you can no longer fit in more cycling.

with any type of training you've got three important variables to consider

1. frequency - how often you do something
2. intensity - how difficulty or strenuous the activity is
3. volume - the amount of work you do in a single training session

how those variable are managed will have a huge impact on the success of your workout. i often encourage people to look at making their training sessions as efficient as possible, so for someone like yourself, even consider 10-15 minute workouts that you could do at home or at work.

With a five month old I cant do both right now so weights have been shelved until the fall hunting season which I think weights will complement nicely.

A side note the best thing to come from my stint in lifting was learning the importance of recovery. Adding 5lbs to my squat every day meant I needed full recovery and had to cut out a lot of the junk miles. Now that I have kept that change to my routine I am actually seeing pretty good gains on the running and cycling with fewer hours just by making sure I am properly recovered before I go out and hammer again.

awesome, so you have learned the value of the training variables i listed above. to keep your strenght training effective though you don't have to go to the gym. things like doing one or two sets body weigth squats per day will have a big benefit and cost you very little time. if you want/need more of a challenge, do pistol squats instead of regular squats. your time investment is next to nothing and the relative payback is huge. if you really want to step it up, every 30min at work get up from the desk and do 1 set of around 10 squats.

awesome, so you have learned the value of the training variables i listed above. to keep your strenght training effective though you don't have to go to the gym. things like doing one or two sets body weigth squats per day will have a big benefit and cost you very little time. if you want/need more of a challenge, do pistol squats instead of regular squats. your time investment is next to nothing and the relative payback is huge. if you really want to step it up, every 30min at work get up from the desk and do 1 set of around 10 squats.

This can't be stated enough, especially for us desk sitting office dwellers. Even doing bodyweight stuff helps a ton compared to nothing and will prevent regressing in mobility. My main focus in the gym is keeping my body functioning to do the sports I love (mountain biking and skiing). So I try to counteract the desk sitting through lifting, core and mobility work as I don't find mountain biking to be very friendly on the lower back. Because of limited time I'm just doing maintenance on the strength side, not trying to improve my lifts anymore but I feel that base level of strength helps from a performance and injury prevention angle as well.

I have got a question that is running around in my head.

Why does something like the so-called Pavel's Forty-day workout actually work?

The plan, according to the originally laid out plan, literally tells the trainee to never go to failure, and to never even struggle with a rep. Do not make more reps than 10 altogether on the big lifts.

What is the professional's take on it?

I am currently on day 28 in a row, and I am amazed how easy it has been until now and how my strength is slowly but noticeable improving.

OK
I want to start doing some at home body weight exercise, I dont have any dumbbells or weights.
whats a good routine that can be done every morning? rest days? do you just keep adding sets do the list when they get easy?

OK
I want to start doing some at home body weight exercise, I dont have any dumbbells or weights.
whats a good routine that can be done every morning? rest days? do you just keep adding sets do the list when they get easy?

Do you want to get strong or lose fat?

Do you want to get strong or lose fat?

I want to get stronger, but the old lady probably wants to slim up.

Strength:

Chinups
Dips
Pushups
Single leg squats

If you get over 12 reps you'll need a way to make them harder.

To lose fat, get a Tabata timer for your phone. Set it up for four minutes of total exercise time, with 20 seconds of active and 10 seconds of rest. Pick any movement, keep a count of how many you do of said movement in the four minutes. I often use simple bodyweight thrusters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Alh_pDhXV2M

If you aren't a mess after four minutes, you didn't do enough of them in the time alotted.

Strength:

Chinups
Dips
Pushups
Single leg squats

If you get over 12 reps you'll need a way to make them harder.

To lose fat, get a Tabata timer for your phone. Set it up for four minutes of total exercise time, with 20 seconds of active and 10 seconds of rest. Pick any movement, keep a count of how many you do of said movement in the four minutes. I often use simple bodyweight thrusters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Alh_pDhXV2M

If you aren't a mess after four minutes, you didn't do enough of them in the time alotted.

Good stuff,
chinups are hard to do at home, and i dont wanna go anywhere cause its cold out and im a lazy sob.
I'll def get on that timer excerise program there too, does that go for squats and push ups as well or are those better left to a set and rep program?

Good stuff,
chinups are hard to do at home, and i dont wanna go anywhere cause its cold out and im a lazy sob.
I'll def get on that timer excerise program there too, does that go for squats and push ups as well or are those better left to a set and rep program?

Tabata's are for burning fat, not strength.

If you're going for strength, you should keep the sets from 2-5 with reps less than 12.. if you can do 12 easily then you need to weigh it down.

You need to find a pulling movement to incorporate in there…

Strength:

Chinups
Dips
Pushups
Single leg squats

If you get over 12 reps you'll need a way to make them harder.

Strength is the application of force against an external object. So, in the case of the push-up, you apply X amounts of force against the ground. The force production is essentially the same on the first rep as on the 100th. This means doing lots of pushups is not actually increasing strength but rather muscular endurance. (yes, I know this is simplifying the physics of the matter)

In order for strength to increase, you need to apply increasing amounts of force. This would mean (in the case of the push-up) weighting them. This obviously has limits and is incredibly impractical making it less than useful as an exercise for strength training. So what to do?

The simplest and most effective way is to use barbells as you can incrementally increase the weights. The best exercises using a barbell are those that use the maximum amount of musculature over the greatest, effective range of motion across multiple joints. Those exercises happen to be the back squat, deadlift, press, bench press. If you want to get strong, then your program must include these exercises.

To suggest chins, pushups, one-legged squats etc as the core component of a STRENGTH training program is an egregious error and based on a complete and total lack of understanding of what strength is and how one goes about acquiring it.

Strength is the application of force against an external object. So, in the case of the push-up, you apply X amounts of force against the ground. The force production is essentially the same on the first rep as on the 100th. This means doing lots of pushups is not actually increasing strength but rather muscular endurance. (yes, I know this is simplifying the physics of the matter)

In order for strength to increase, you need to apply increasing amounts of force. This would mean (in the case of the push-up) weighting them. This obviously has limits and is incredibly impractical making it less than useful as an exercise for strength training. So what to do?

The simplest and most effective way is to use barbells as you can incrementally increase the weights. The best exercises using a barbell are those that use the maximum amount of musculature over the greatest, effective range of motion across multiple joints. Those exercises happen to be the back squat, deadlift, press, bench press. If you want to get strong, then your program must include these exercises.

To suggest chins, pushups, one-legged squats etc as the core component of a STRENGTH training program is an egregious error and based on a complete and total lack of understanding of what strength is and how one goes about acquiring it.

Go read the initial boundary conditions for the workout that was requested. Then take a deep breath, count to ten and re-read what I said. You should find I kept it inside the requested conditions, outlined the downsides as you have all without the venom and hostility.

Now I'm going to go to the gym and train just as you would suggest, tricep kickbacks for seven sets of nineteen.

Out of curiosity, how much do you pull?

Mr. West, as I mentioned earlier you really need to incorporate some pulling movements in there if you are going to do the other things.

One just came to me today that is safer than a chin up bar in between a door. Get a strong wooden pole and put it between two chairs.. you can then do inverted rows.

Just do a 'buncha jumping jacks, man.

Mr. West, as I mentioned earlier you really need to incorporate some pulling movements in there if you are going to do the other things.

One just came to me today that is safer than a chin up bar in between a door. Get a strong wooden pole and put it between two chairs.. you can then do inverted rows.

These can even be done while lying under a table. Pretty deceptive move, this one.