Getting More From Less

I would characterize my athletic career as primarily an endurance one. Whether it be running, swimming, cycling or skiing, my best performances have always involved breathing hard for long periods of time. In spite of this proclivity, weight lifting has always been in the picture. There have been times over the years where the weight room was where I spent the bulk of my training time. I was a pretty skinny kid, still am, and getting bigger and stronger always provided a sort of salve to those wounds sustained while being 95 pounds and attending an all-boys Catholic high school. As I approach 50 years of age (and 175 lbs.), I lift weights less for my ego and appearance and more for the performance benefits as they apply to my competitive aspirations.

There are more than a few words in these pages dedicated to my opinions regarding lifting weights for endurance performance. In spite of my enthusiasm, I continually struggle to find a balance between strength, speed and endurance training. Certainly, the first two are intimately related and I typically place them on the same training day. They both place high demands on the central nervous system and these efforts must be thoughtfully meted out during the training week. Most coaches would limit an athlete to two such workouts in a given week. Within those particular days, some thought needs to be given to the volume of the speed and strength efforts. I feel this detail is best approached on a workout by workout basis depending upon recovery level, overall training volume and enthusiasm for the effort, which, in turn, is probably dependent upon a combination of all these variables. The popular terms for this in the body building literature is "instinctive training" and "autoregulation". I'm a big fan. Although it's important to adhere to some sort of structured training plan, there needs to be some flexibility built in to take advantage of increased intensity and energy levels or, alternatively, to be able to back off or go home when the lack of the same demands it.

When it comes to preparing for sports that require relatively large training volumes such as cycling, running, nordic skiing or triathlon, most of the training time should be spent doing the sport. Time in the weight room should represent a small percentage of overall training time. It is merely a supplement and the athlete should avoid getting too caught up in weight lifting for weight lifting's sake. As a long time gym rat, this can be a struggle in the early season when getting stronger is intoxicating after a long season of endurance work. Nice to see some muscle for a change. But as the true early season looms, I try to have most of my strength goals attained and can then focus on simply maintaining the gains and get to the business of riding my bike. Eight to twelve weeks of intensive strength training is about all most of us can afford before endurance work must, once again, dominate our efforts.

As I have written before, many coaches believe that large volumes of endurance work will limit the optimal response to strength training. In addition, there is nothing like a crushing weight room session to make you feel flat on the bike. Because of this, I am experimenting with some concepts that will hopefully decrease the cost the of strength sessions while still getting the desired benefits.

Many years ago, when I first added heavy leg training to my cycling program, I applied a version of this idea to my in-season workouts by simply reducing the load and overall volume of the workout performed before getting on the bike for that day. I would then proceed with a sprint workout and relatively low mileage for the day. I wanted to do a weight session that was heavy but well within my ability compared to what I was doing when strength was dominant. What I am trying now is a similar concept in that the idea is to stay fresh but it may allow me to continue to make gains. It may be the proverbial cake and eating it, too, concept.

This idea was gleaned from an article I recently read on tmuscle.com called, "The Perfect Rep." Although this program is for body builder types, the concept seems perfect for what I'm trying to achieve with my own weight training. The aspects of the program I have adopted are as follows: 1) Aside from the warm-up set, each set is in the 1-3 rep range. 2) Each rep should be performed as fast as possible. You need to be very explosive. This, of course, is relative to the weight of the set. Your feet may actually leave the ground while squatting with light weights. That's okay. 3) Each set may have smaller increases in weight which allows for maintaining this important speed component. 4) The set should end as soon as you sense the rep speed slowing. 5) The final set weight is determined by your sense of how you are moving the weight. As soon as it feels like a "grind", you are done going up. This point may vary from day to day. Ultimately, the weight varies in the 50-85% of your 1 rep max. Lighter than you would think.

The beauty of this technique is that you never feel wiped out. Each set is stopped way before exhaustion and the workout is over while you still feel pretty fresh. Allegedly, as long as each rep is performed maximally, steady progress is guaranteed. It makes sense to me. I have always felt that when I was using heavy weights and grinding through five to eight rep sets, I was training something other than maximal contraction. Neurophysiologists have discovered that the high threshold units, the Type IIa/b fibers, drop out early in the set as fatigue slows down repetition speed. At that point, you are training something else. I'm not interested in that. I simply want to develop maximal contraction speed and involve only those fibers best at delivering it.

I also alternate maximal height box jumps in between the weight sets. I do two or three jumps, depending on how they feel. Remember, the target motor units are activated by either heavy weight or high speed contraction demands. Nothing like the fear of raking your shins over the edge of a box to get your contraction speed up to snuff! 

After all is said and done, I leave the weight room with plenty in the tank. I am also missing the sore knees that followed me out after higher volume routines. I will not miss those. The jury is out as to how effective this will be for me. Christian Thibaudeau, the author of The Perfect Rep is sure I won't be disappointed. I'll report back on it in a few weeks and perhaps I can inspire some of my other Guinea Pigs to give it a go. - Brian