I love my bike sessions, indoor and outdoor. Then again I also love my indoor rowing session. Due to age reasons (closing up on 50y!) I do more weightlifting now, and stretching/yoga.
Now, Weights I do mainly upper body to accompany my lower body focused biking and rowing. So there is not much interference there. Stretching/yoga is benefitial and not too exhausting anyway.
But naturally my biking and rowing do interfere with each other a lot and turn out to be a zero-sum-game. I cant do rowing on a recovery day, neither can I do a proper bike workout after a couple of sessions on the rower.
But I do have a bad feeling leaving out one of those for too long or even doing less than 5 workout days per week. I feel that rowing and biking do complement each other very well, but unfortunately both do mainly aim at the legs resp do put lots of strain on the legs.
I do not train to compete or “to get faster”, rather just for generell fitness, health reasons, for fun and for stress releave.
How do you guys handle several sports paralallely, how do you take care not to over-exhauste your body… and how do you work against feeling bad leaving one of the activities aside for too long.
I don’t know about rowing and biking, but I have been doing triathlons for 10+ years. It is a balance and you can’t look at each sport individually. They have to all work together to balance intensity and recovery. My typical week is 4 runs, 3 bikes, 2 swims, 2 weight lifting. A couple years ago (I’m 44) I started lifting weights twice a week. It had a noticeable affect on my ability to do multiple “hard” swim/bike/run workouts per week. But it was a trade off I was willing to make. I’ve figured out a good micro-block schedule that works for myself. Monday is a hard bike in the morning & hard swim in the afternoon. Tuesday is an endurance run in the morning & weight lifting in the afternoon. This usually leaves me trashed on Wednesday. Wednesday is a recovery ride. Thursday is a hard run in the morning and an easy swim in the afternoon. Friday is weight lifting. Saturday is moderate bike + moderate run. Sunday is a recovery run. It took a while for me to figure out this schedule.
You said you are doing this for general fitness and fun. Play around with your schedule and find what works for you. Listen to your body and don’t be afraid to sleep in and skip workouts. And most of all, have fun!
The only thing I can suggest to keep the balance is watch out how many intense days you have. 2-3 is usually max without burning the candle at both ends.
So if you do a couple hard rows during the week, use the bike or runs as aerobic (easier) work.
Strength training I would say listen to your body, use lighter weights some days/ weeks and work on form. Practice weight training like it’s an art of movement and not just how much weight you can push.
If you’re just training for fun/health then the good news is that you can periodise pretty aggressively.
If you have 3 activities (A, B and C) work out your maintenance dose for each of them.
At any one time, have two of them on maintenance and the other one is your focus for that training cycle (whether that cycle is 4 weeks, 3 months or even a full year)
Obvs if you have a mix of indoor and outdoor stuff, focusing on indoor training in winter and vice versa makes a lot of sense.
When I’m not training for something (usually XC races), I just do whatever sounds the most fun. Sometimes extra running, sometimes something else. If you aren’t training for something specific, just do what sounds good to you. What do you want to do?
I’m training for an XC race next month. After that loosely training for a 70.3 triathlon (with zero goals, so more preparing than training). After that, I just do whatever sounds like the most fun.
Thank you - great posts and points. I am just struggeling to leave one of the two aside for a while and feel bad not to row or not to cycle. In general I am struggling to accept that an off day is not a lost day.
Maybe don’t consider it as “leaving aside” but as low intensity base period for non-focused sports? It maintains specific fitness and still improves movement efficiency
Certainly with lifting, you can go down to, say, three sets of squats once a week and lose nothing (maybe gain a bit if you’re at the low end of intermediate or below)
I dont do any leg training on weights. It would be additional strain for the legs, which are alrady quite well trained with cycling and rowing. I do weights only for upper body
I was addressing the wider issue, not your particular use case. You should absolutely do what suits you.
Depending on what folks’ cycling needs are, building bigger quads and glutes and developing their neural drive are definitely something that they may wish to consider.
I struggle a bit with this. Not just with sports, but all the things I enjoy doing. I just try not to think about the stuff that I enjoy LESS so I am doing it less. But it is difficult.
One of my motorcycles was stolen last year, and I decided not to replace it. My other one hasn’t been started in about two years. A day on the track completely destroys me physically and takes away from my ability to ride or run.
Like going to the bikepark for me since I don’t do it that often anymore.
The way around it would be to introduce it gradually but therefore consistently. I.e., not a whole day, but therefore once a week.
Unfortunately not very practical if some activity comes with a high offset cost.
