Hi
I would be keen to know what shoulder mobility exercises you do. I have found the same. I’m 3 weeks into the 10 week programme and the main pain is in my shoulders not being flexible enough to hold the bar!!!
It really depends on whether you have an injury or you’re just tight.
Here’s a start.
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Hi onemanpeloton,
You are correct in saying that high reps and lower weights are often recommended for endurance athletes. This would be known as focusing on muscular endurance.
I think we can all understand that cycling is a sport that relies heavily on muscular endurance completing thousands of repetitions in a single ride.
To simplify the rep ranges in strength training I will put it as below:
1-5 reps (High Weight, Low Speed) - Neuromuscular Strength
1-5 reps (Low Weight, High Speed) - Power
6-15/20 reps - Hypertrophy (increasing muscle size)
20+ reps - Muscular Endurance
The overall volume of training will depend on how many sets is performed and this can significantly influence hypertrophy.
Strength training on in the neuromuscular range is generally so fatiguing that it is very difficult to accumulate significant volume to cause muscle tissue damage for supercompensation aka stimulate muscular growth to occur.
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I would definitely say it’s very misguided to say “higher reps of lower weight were recommended for endurance athletes” + “low reps with high weight is for building muscle.” Generally not a useful simplification IMO - a reasonably full range of reps can be used successfully in different situations for people with totally opposite goals (like a pure powerlifter vs. a Paris-Brest-Paris rider), as there is tons of useful overlap.
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Sorry Matt, you are right that it is an over simplification and not a particularly good one.
I should have said higher reps and lower weights are often poorly recommended as a blanket program to cover all bases, but that it is not my recommendation.
Any recommendation is likely to be poor unless we know the specific goals, strengths, weaknesses and biomechanics of the athlete.
Any decent training program, it should be specific to your goals.
A good program will address any specific weaknesses and incorperate some training dedicated towards injury prevention.
It should be structured with logical progression, rest/recovery and compliment your on the bike training.
I would recommend a periodised plan, just like TrainerRoad has structured their cycling program.
Typically in the strength world these phases are referred to as GPP (General Physical Preparedness), Hypertrophy, Strength and Power and or Strength Endurance pending which direction you wish to take with your training.
There is a lot of useful overlap as Matt states and most periodised programs will step you through rep ranges with some overlap in a progressive manner depending on your goals.
Even prior to building my own offseason routine over several years, I could never understand why the prevailing thought I had been recommended was high reps low weight. My gym partners were always true meatheads and anytime I mentioned that to them they’d ask “Are you trying to just get bigger?” hypertrophy doesn’t 1:1 equate to strength and endurance athletes are normally so clueless in the gym that we wouldn’t know. Being safe and building strength should be the focus above all else.
Agreed. So how is that done?
I’ve heard this before on the TR podcast about doing your weights on same day as workout, but not on recovery day.
If I`m doing lower body weights I do them on a recovery/Petit type day. If its upper body I can do it before a session like Junction, or Bashful, or SS intervals.
This suits me as I have a physical job, and I end up not working at all if I 've done both a hard TR workout + weights.
As far as physiology goes, I’m wondering whether I need to change this in order to get the full benefits of the weight training. It is necessary for me ,as I’m over 60, built like Marco Pantani and I’m desperate to be a bit more robust without having to eat more.
I think you may be stuck here. You can, to a point, get stronger without eating more but if you want to add mass you gotta add calories. It does not have to be a lot though, if you can get to the point that you are 100cal per day over you will likely add quality mass at the fairly slow maximum possible at 60 years old but I am sure getting that precise with a physical job is nearly impossible. Keep the rest of your diet the same and push protein to 150g per day and see if you can gain a bit under a lb per month on average.
Thanks for this. I think a bit more protein is the answer. It is a worry that I might add fat rather than muscle, but I guess as long as I don’t increase my cake eating and add a few more sweet potato ,nuts and fish in my diet that might help.
If you go crazy with it, sure, but keep it really slow. At 60+ you probably cant add more than .25-.5lb of muscle per month so adding more food than that is a waste. If you can get 40g of protein 3 or 4 times per day you will put yourself in a good position to grow. There are some studies that show the 20g it takes young men to get a muscle synthases response gets higher in older men up to about 40g. The studies suck or dont answer at all for women. Thing is, you gotta lift heavy (for you) and hard. The whole rep range thing has been disproven over and over. The best guess science has is sets to or close to failure cause the most hypertrophy. You cant just do the motions, it has to suck a bit.
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Tailoring sessions to fit into a greater plan in order to actually get stronger and not just pumping out reps. As for safety, the unfortunate reality is that it has to be as slow as necessary. I have to constantly remind myself every off-season that lifting is secondary and there is no need in jeopardizing my performance on the bike. In the past, I haven’t treated gym work as a periodized approach like on the bike and I think I have hindered adaptations, both on the bike and off it, in doing so.
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Yes. Last night at the gym while doing trap bar deadlifts I was admiring a woman my age just crushing it in the squat rack. Slowly working my way to full barbell moves, patience is a virtue.
While that all sounds great, theres not really anything tangible that a reader can take away from what youve written.
Im looking for the answer to “high reps low weight vs low reps high weight” and your answer is just “have a plan to get stronger not just pump out reps”. The answer might be “its not that simple” but suggestions of where people new to strength training can start might be more helpful.
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The issue with giving advice on the internet on something fairly complex is a short summerised answer gets poked and proded with gaping holes obviously appearing and a long answer is hard to provide and very time intensive, no one wants to read it.
I will state I have a Bachelors Degree in Exercise Science and have trained/programmed some athletes from local to international levels in a variety of sports, but for the majority trained far more of the general public and weekend warriors. Note however, I am no longer in this industry and haven’t been for about a decade.
It is extremely important to remember your target audience or who your clientle is. It is easy to prescribe block clean pulls for power development and strong VMO recruitment to assist with injury prevention and help strengthen typical weaknesses in a cyclist, however unless you are an experienced athlete who has trained for many years in the weight room it is unlikely that you will be able to complete that movement in a safe manner with the load required to generate sufficent stimulus for benefit.
An alternative that is easier for the general public might be jump squats. But like anything prescribed there are pros and cons, and the athletes history needs to be taken into account. With jump squats the athlete will be exposed to significant force on landing. Is their body adapted to handle this load? Do they have the strength to handle the eccentric load? Are their tendons and ligaments able to handle the volume prescribed? Is there any valgus movement on landing? Do they have sufficent glute medius and core strength?
Unfortunately making generalised prescriptions for the mass public is very problematic… and hence over the years a generic 8-20 reps has been considered a some what safe zone to start training with loads that are sufficent for stimulus for the typical volumes prescribed.
Low to moderate loads are used for indiviuals starting a program so they can learn the techniques, develop the required mobility and flexibility to perform exercises in a safe and efficent manner while providing sufficent stimulus for improvement.
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@mattonabike - Not starting an argument, just asking, where does that number come from? And does that study apply to just one muscle group?
I know the (my) human body is predisposed to add energy reserves (fat/glycogen ) rather than muscle mass, but that seems low (in between my own ears). To me it seems like one should be able to add muscle mass over an entire frame, and numbers in absolute weight (or mass) seem to fail to address the various height and current-weight percentage values… As if a 135 pound 60 year old and a 200 pound 60 year old of disparate heights/frame sizes, can add the same discreet amount of “lean mass” or “muscle mass.”
Go read the Muscular Force Training chapter in Friel’s latest The Cyclists Training Bible? Take Menachem Brodie’s Strength Training for Cycling Success course? Dust off your old copy of Chapple’s Base Building for Cyclists and crack open Chapter 12 Strength? Buy a plan over at TrainingPeaks? Solid introductory info and plans are out there.
or if you like podcasts these are a couple interesting ones Strength training for triathlon and endurance sports part 1 with Menachem Brodie | EP#182 and Strength training for triathlon and endurance sports part 2 with Menachem Brodie | EP#183
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Is there a blanket recommendation for how to incorporate weight training into SSBMV? Seems like this should be pretty straightforward.
Not that I know of…
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