"Functional" Training

Yeah, I've been slacking lately. Ending the cycling season and getting started in a more random training direction definitely took the edge off my focus. Nice mental break, really. And that's the idea, right? I've put on 10 pounds or so and feel strong in new ways. I'm also sore in new ways. That's not always so good. The thing about riding a bike is that you are rarely sore and rarely feel injured. Pushing and pulling heavy weights around in the gym, on the other hand, can create both circumstances.

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Packing it on

I'm now into my sixth post-season week of alternate training. I'm still riding my bike but with no structure and certainly less volume and intensity. I have made the weight room my focus, getting four or five sessions in each week. After being pretty compulsive all season about my body weight, weighing in daily in order to fill out my Restwise entry, I have a good handle on what my usual range is. I rarely saw anything under 170 pounds but I was also usually never over 173 pounds.

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Lactate follow-up #2

A reader recently posted a comment/question regarding lactate training that I thought would be good to answer as a post. It brings up a good point that could use some clarity. 

"Brian, I was browsing through Mark Twight's Extreme Alpinism book the other day and was reading up on his lactate training section. In it, he recommends keeping the rest period low (30-60s) to prevent full recovery. I've also heard that same thing that you mentioned above about threshold training, which is to fully recover between intervals. Obviously, neither one is always the right scenario, but I was curious if you favor one over the other?"

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Lactate Tolerance

As this week's post comes to print you'll have to admit I'm getting better at cranking them out. I feel good about it. This post on training certainly raises the bar for length and probably could be divided into three different pieces. But it was written in a multi-day stream of consciousness that I will keep together. Hope it works for you...

Okay, enough ranting and excuse making. Time to spend a post talking training! And not just any type of training, either. This is some of my favorite type. The kind spent in the weight room getting stronger. Because, let's face it, endurance athletes are some of the weakest people on the planet when compared to athletes who spend at least part of their training time pushing iron around. Greg Glassman and his cronies at CrossFit love to point out the fact that endurance types are pathetically weak. When Outside Magazine comes out with a cover story on the "Fittest Man on Earth", it's invariably a long distance athlete of some sort. Glassman just scoffs at the notion.

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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.

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