Concurrent Strength Training & Running 2015: Eight-Week Workout Cycle VII

Yah, I have a drill press, so it's easy to drill straight through thicker wood like a 4x4 without getting crooked. I ordered a pin-n-pipe set from Rogue yesterday . . . estimated delivery tomorrow! So I should be able to put together a new and improved safety/dip station over the season of f'd up scheduling, and maybe get around to your plate storage idea as well. With a little more space in between the steel and wood posts, I'll be able to leave the safety/dip station in place permanently, and use the outside of the 4x4 posts for small plate storage, getting my small rubber grip plates off the steel posts, where they're in the way a good deal of the time and the nuts of the bolts that hold them sometimes get in the way on the other side when I'm pressing or doing my squats.

I don't know if you do the straddle stretch in yoga, but it's great for the hips. Just spread your legs out on the floor while sitting, or better yet, place the legs on either side of a door frame and then pull yourself forward, which makes the legs splay out further. I learned this stretch in karate and it's probably my favorite stretch. See how far you can get your chest down to the floor with your legs splayed out on either side. It's like four stretches-in-one: hamstring, piri formis, spinal, abductors, and probably a few others.

Thinking about mixing things up next cycle, maybe experimenting the rest of this cycle to see what works. I think I want to try the ladder approach or drop sets or whatever they're called. Basically, just do a variety of rep-counts for the same lift in the same workout. Use the idea that heavier loads prime the muscle and then lighter loads at higher reps can take advantage of the greater muscle recruitment to work the fibers with greater time-under-tension. Like a 2/3/5/7 scheme or something. It's probably more boredom than scientific principle, but doing multiple sets of five or seven reps is starting to get to me.

 

What I've done with the 45s down by the base is to put a cap on the plumbing pipe. Just a 1/4 or 1/2 inch overhang or whatever it is seems to keep the plates from coming off. I use washers for the bolted storage pins on the posts.

Yah, last Friday I got frustrated thinking about bumping the posts all the time. I only need another six inches or so, but an extra foot will be nice. I should still have enough floor space for deads and rows. If not, I can cut the pipe.

Yah, more squatting outside of lifting would be good. I got a little squat stool for my sit-stand(-squat) desk, but haven't used it for a while.

I sometimes wonder if there really is much difference between, say, three reps and eight reps. Do all paths lead to Rome if you're beginner and intermediate? Anyway, I think I will try the 2/3/5/7+ scheme on Wednesday. I guess for an older lifting it might not be a good idea to do doubles or triples every workout, but I've never had trouble in the past. I like the idea of keying up for the first double or triple and then relaxing a bit as the load decreases. Then go for max reps on the last set. It's just real hard for me to do seven plus reps more than once per lift. Best to give it your best shot just once, and see if you can squeeze out a few reps beyond that.

I think if I progress much more, I will adopt a full-body split routine as well. It's getting harder and harder to get through all six lifts as the weights go up, and it gets to be a lot of time spent just on warm-up sets. Then again, I like the squat everyday approach, so maybe something like

A
Squat
OH Press
Deadlift & Row

B
Squat
Bench Press
Pulldowns & Assistance

 

Yah, so far, plugging and chugging is the only confirmed protocol. Everything else--sets, reps, and so on--is speculative as to whether it matters or not. So just do whatever is the most motivating, right? If consistency and frequency get me up to the threshold of intermediate/advanced, that's good enough for me. I have no interest in advanced. Just too much time and effort for diminishing fitness returns. I'm actually pretty happy with where I'm at now, so I really should be focusing more on weight loss than strength gains, in terms of fitness goals. I think adding in a set of 7+reps after 2/3/5 or 3/3/5 or just 3/5, and more assistance, will help a bit with greater conditioning, and I should have time for it because I don't need that much rest time in between sets of doubles or triples. Consecutive sets of higher reps is what really gasses me, but the 3x5 workouts take a fair amount of time too.

Yah, working out first thing in the morning must be brutal at times. But it must be great to get it out of the way first thing. The late afternoon schedule works well because then dinner and family time are the rewards for a good effort, but it's so easy for things to come up at that time.

Anyway, got a 2/3/5/7 workout plotted out for Wednesday. See how it goes . . .

 

Nice, clean set-up. Very inviting. The evolution of our home gyms parallels the evolution of our training programs somewhat, no? I like the way the set-up kind of implies the workout.

I finished remodeling my Safety/Dip station. I'll try to post a pic or two although it's basically the same thing, just more space plus small-plate storage.

Last week of the year/cycle. It's kind of good that our last cycle is just four weeks. The holidays really screwed up last week and may mess with this one too.

Next year I was thinking of shortening the thread titles to just "Concurrent Training 2016: Cycle I(, II, III . . .)." Thoughts? It's partly to justify my lack of running, but also I like the more abstract idea of 'concurrent training' covering any sort of weekly regimen that includes an aerobic and anaerobic component. In any case, I'll try to have the new thread posted by Thursday or Friday in order to give everyone a chance to set up their log before the comments start.

 

Yah, I need to declutter a bit more still. Lots of accessories I never use, so just throw them in a box and get them off the walls?

I think sometimes these issues come and go. My right thumb is still a little off from last summer's strained BP fail. You did some serious damage to your shoulder in your fall, so, given aging considerations, it might take another 6-12 months before it's 100%. Or it might be one of those things you set off randomly for the rest of your life, like my thumb.

I'm not sure, but I think I've been able to progress with my bentover rows because I set the load really low to start with, and have taken it down once or twice since then. With relentless microloading, it's coming up to loads now that used to strain my back a year and a half ago, and I'm doing it with pretty strict form. It's also helped me to go back to viewing them more as assistance or secondary, as we've discussed multiple times. As assistance, they should be relatively easy and strain-free. I usually do my three sets of P Rows in five minutes or less, with no warm-up because they're towards the end of the workout.

But yeah, I'm going to start going heavier on the presses, but I'll back down at the first sign of trouble.

Yah, thinking about doing more rowing, maybe try to get in five days of at least 30 minutes of aerobic/conditioning work per week, instead of just three like I'm doing now. Maybe a hill running workout in there somewhere.

I'll try to get the new thread up by Friday so everyone has a day or two to post their logs before the comments start.

It's going to be a good year for lifting, I can feel it in my bones.

A few articles in T-nation that caught my notice:

https://www.t-nation.com/training/real-science-of-squat-depth
This jibes with your advice to descend nice and solid, also jibes with the way I've been feeling it lately. I think there's just a natural depth for me. I should film myself again to see where I'm at. I especially liked Seedman's point about obtaining stability before mobility.

https://www.t-nation.com/supplements/top-10-post-workout-nutrition-myths
Here's another one that jibes with my experience. I feel like the most important thing for me is to eat a banana or two plus a protein bar an hour or so before lifting. I don't worry about much else, but of course I like a good breakfast and eat protein throughout the day.

I tend to think of cross-training as training variety within a modality, like aerobic fitness. So cross-training for running might include swimming or cycling. Concurrent training, on the hand, is, for me and people like Alex Viada (http://www.jtsstrength.com/articles/2015/04/01/the-hybrid-athlete/), training two or more different fitness modalities, like strength and endurance. Hmmn, I guess that works and is more descriptive: "Concurrent Strength & Endurance Training 2016: Cycle I(, II, III . . .)"? It would be nice to cram "Minimalist" in there somewhere too, but I was wanting to shorten the thread titles as much as possible.

One other idea, besides a shorter title, is to just have one long-ass thread for the whole year, and just keep adding cycles to the initial logs, but that might become unwieldy?

 

Seems like it's still the dominant interpretation though:
http://www.runnersworld.com/tag/strength-training:
"Integrate cross-training into your workout routine to build strength and flexibility in muscles that running doesn't utilize and prevent injury. Try cycling or swimming to improve strength and flexibility."

http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/topic.cfm?topic=A00339
"So, rather than jogging 3 days a week for aerobic exercise, you alternate jogging with swimming, biking, and tennis. Rather than doing the same weight machines every time you go to the gym, you mix it up with some free weight exercises or take a strength conditioning class."

It's not so much that cross-training implies cardio, cardio, cardio, but that it seems to be used for varied training within the same fitness modality, be it cardio, strength, or mobility. Concurrent training then, is varied training across fitness modalities. A useful distinction I think.

I'm not trying to impose my interpretation, just seems like this is the dominant sense in which these two terms are used, even in the links you posted.

Anyway, not something worth arguing about. I'm not sure if cross-training has broader appeal than concurrent, but I like concurrent because it implies that one has multiple fitness goals, whereas with cross-training, the idea that comes to me is that someone has training goals in a specific sport or exercise, but cross-trains to prevent injury or to provide some carryover to the training goal.

I guess I would like these threads to remain focused on the intersection between strength and endurance, which was the original inspiration from Abide's epic "Optimal Training . . . " thread. It might become too diluted otherwise, although, in practice, it doesn't seem like too many people at BRS would be interested in maintaining a weekly log outside of mileage reporting, Which is understandable, given that this is a running site.

If you have any other ideas for broadening the appeal though, it would be good to discuss them. There must be some other folks who are doing concurrent strength and endurance training, right?

It would also be nice if you maintained a log, but your commentary is always welcome either way. I like how all four of us have slightly different interpretations of what a minimalist, concurrent training routine in strength and endurance should involve.

 

Maybe we could continue with the one-cycle-per-log approach, but have a separate thread that serves as a yearlong summary. So after each cycle, we can copy our logs to that. We could even do it for this year I suppose. Just have to copy and paste. I'll try it later if I have time.

That Squat article was nice for me because that's how I've been feeling it, without really reflecting on it or justifying the feeling with scientific princicples as Seedman did. But there is a point below which I lose tension. It makes sense to go as low as you can while maintaining tension and then reverse directions. I'll try to film myself, but today the only goal is just to get in a damn workout after a week's lapse.

I think I might engage in some mild dieting, just a little calorie cutting. I think if I can be properly fueled before a workout, I won't worry too much about other aspects of 'peri-workout' nutrition. Just trust my body to figure out protein synthesis and recovery on its own. If it slows lifting progress, but increases weight-loss progress, so be it. I have no desire to become a fat powerlifter. But I kinda doubt all that nutritional hand-wringing on T-Nation really applies to novice-to-intermediate recreational lifters like us anyway.

 

Yah, "trust the process" is a little mantra I've been using myself for the last year or two, whenever life or work feel overwhelming. Really helpful. In a way, that's what microloading is all about too.

 

Well, for me, what I've found is that if I microload a bit behind my true rate of progress, that accounts for those off days or off weeks and you don't really need to catch up much, just make sure that everything is primed and you can either pick up where you left off or even where you should be. In order to do this, I try to reduce loads, reps, sets, or selection for the first workout or two back in, although it's not always necessary.

I think for general fitness, more conditioning is more important than more strength gains, although I don't think they're mutually exclusive. Just hard to get to it all, right? I think next cycle I will try to limit myself to two heavier days, Monday and Friday, and keep Wednesday a lighter, higher rep day. That also works well when you miss a day, because then Wednesday kinda becomes expendable and you still get in one or two days that are going to lead directly to progress. As for aerobic stuff, I think maybe just one endurance day per week may be enough, then the other two could be more conditioning or tempo-pace type stuff. But I'm also wondering what it would be like to simply row first thing every morning for 20-30 minutes and then get in the bike rides on the Tu-Th-Sa/Su schedule whenever I can. Seems like aerobic exercise should optimally be done pretty much every day.

Any way you can do fartleks or intervals on your bike commute?

I'm still a month or three away from when all four of my main lifts will be of truly equal intensity and I'm making PRs on all four pretty much every week, but I've already been anticipating some of the issues you may be experiencing. Time will tell if I can do all six lifts with high intensity two or three times a week. I may have to adopt a full body split like you. I know my body can handle squatting relatively heavy three times a week, but I don't know about the other lifts yet. For you, maybe your third day could be like my Wednesday, with subbing and variation and then, if the urge hits you, you can up the density or reps to make it more of a conditioning day as well. That's kind of my plan anyway, but I don't work out first thing in the morning.

One other solution I'm contemplating if things get to be too much is to simply slow down the rate of microloading. But with heavier loads, it may not matter much how fast I'm progressing, there might be an absolute weight threshold for, say, the deadlift, beyond which I simply need more time to recover. That is, the six-lift, Iron Ratio protocol might work when the squat is 300, the bench 225, and the Deadlift 345, for example, but not when the squat is 360, the bench 270, and the Deadlift 414. Twice a week at those latter loads might not be feasible, recovery-wise. We'll see.

Yeah, weight loss is becoming more of a priority for me too. The good news is the less you weigh, the more you can probably squat, as the same load of belly fat is converted into plates. I figure if I'm 30-40 pounds overweight, then, at a lean bodyweight, I should be able to squat 30-40 pounds more than I can right now. Don't know if that's the way it works in practice though ...

Anyway, Happy New Year everybody! See you on the other side.