Yah, I love the 3-5 rep range, although it depends on the exercise. Lately I've been single rep-ing the bench press and deadlifts, then pyramiding down, and I like doing landmines, for example, more in the 8-10 rep range.
Thanks, you've really helped me refine the mix. I think it's pretty good now, and the three times a week/three body zone approach, with an optional plyo/mobility day if I have time on Sundays, seems to be working well for me. 48 hours twice, and 72 hours once a week gives me plenty of recovery time, and lately I've been making some good gains.
But you're absolutely right about the internet lifting gurus, even worse than the barefoot running and Paleo gurus! I think another problem is that these folks are just projecting from their own experience, or what they've read, and haven't really trained a lot of different folks over a period of years.
I liked Ferruggia's simple focus on low rep maxes, but he does emphasize always getting stronger, and at some point I'll be happy with maintenance. And as you say, if you want to run long distance endurance, it does you no good to have extra upper body weight/strength. At some point you have to choose. Since my goals are just general fitness, I'm enjoying adding a little mass (Plus as Nick has noted, the extra mass keeps your metabolism high and so helps burn calories). If it means I can never run more than two hours at a time, I'm OK with that. Mostly I just want to get faster anyways. My weekend long runs are kind of the highlight of the week, but they're still in the service of improving my overall running fitness so that my weekday hour-long runs come down to a faster pace. I do the hill repeats and sprints for the same reason.
And there seems to be some kind of ratio whereby you shouldn't really run aerobically past a certain distance until you can run tempo at a lesser distance. I don't know what the ratio is, and it's probably non-linear, so that you can progressively run longer the faster you can go at the shorter distance, but my sense is that two hours, or 11-12 miles is my upper limit right now for my LSD until I can get my tempo pace during an hour's run down to about 8mm.
For you, I would think at some point you'd want to switch over to more of a circuit training or HIIT routine, and only do the heavy weights once in a while for maintenance. It's almost impossible to just do heavy weights and not get stronger and bigger, even without supplements. I've never consistently done weights for more than three years at a time (I tend to move around too much), but that's been my experience every time I have. Even with my current lackadaisical approach, now that my left shoulder is solid, my strength is really starting to take off.
