#14 Strength
“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general.” ― Mark Rippetoe
Welcome to the latest fit360 Coaching Healthy Humans Project newsletter. Last time we looked at Cardio training and the specific types of workouts you should consider to increase your engine capacity. Cardio training is important not just for fitness but to help in the prevention of heart disease and other deleterious symptoms of ageing. But the other side of the coin is Strength Training. If we pay consistent attention to both of these components of fitness then most other things should fall into place. Think of every workout as a tiny firmware update keeping your body and its processes functioning optimally.
They say that your Health is your Wealth and this analogy works well especially when we consider preparing for the future. If you are investing and paying into your pension regularly, then you will reap the rewards when you reach pensionable age. If you think of your physical pension the same way as your financial pension, every workout, activity and good nutritional choice that you make now will help you to be more equipped in the fight against the ravages of time and nature.
So what is strength training, and what are the benefits? As we’ve already discussed in previous newsletters, the decline in your physical function accelerates with age unless you work against it. It starts in your thirties, and senescence continues and starts to show its physical effects the older you get. Sarcopenia is the term for loss of Skeletal Muscle as a result of ageing. This loss of muscle will, in time, lead to loss of function, mobility and ultimately independence. However, this natural process can be assuaged by keeping the muscles working on a regular basis and going into old age with a reserve of strength and muscle mass.
Strength training has several other benefits, including looking buff on the beach (if that’s your thing) but also the more prosaic and less visible benefit of keeping your bones strong by putting your skeleton under compression during load-bearing exercise. Resistance training also strengthens connective tissue and tendons which are a common area of injuries and niggles. A strong body will also help with injury prevention by working in balanced, coordinated movements and coping better with slips, trips and falls.
Strength training is when you make your muscles work against resistance. This is why it is also known as Resistance training. There are several ways to create resistance. You can start by just moving your own body weight against gravity with exercises such as Push-ups, Pull-ups, Squats, Lunges etc. There is also a plethora of equipment that you can use to perform resistance exercise. You can use resistance bands, free weights (Dumbbells, Kettlebells & Barbells) or Resistance machines.
Whatever your choice of how to create resistance, you then need to work out how to program your strength sessions. Firstly, how frequent are your workouts? How can you fit in sessions with your other commitments or maybe other sports or activities? You then need to decide how to structure the actual session. If you can only fit 1 or 2 sessions in per week, I’d suggest doing a whole-body workout, maybe in the form of a circuit. But if you can fit more strength workouts in, then you may want to consider splits. You can split your workouts into body part exercises - Upper/Lower. You can work on individual muscles and areas - Chest, Shoulders, Back, Biceps etc, (Never skip Leg day!) or you can split your sessions into opposing movements - Push / Pull.
Once you have got your program sorted, you then need to look at the variables involved in the individual exercises - How many repetitions, how many sets of said repetitions and how much load or weight should be applied? By adjusting each of these variables you can focus on different areas of improvement such as muscular endurance, muscle growth (hypertrophy) or maximal strength. Remember, as with Cardio, there needs to be an element of stress in order to create the stimulus required for improvement and development. With strength training, by creating the right intensity, you are actually causing micro-damage to the muscle. Only when this recovers and repairs do you become stronger. But start slowly. Too much too soon will cause the dreaded Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS).
You can also include strength training in everyday tasks such as lifting, loaded carries or maybe just a heavy gardening session. For example, go shopping with a rucksack instead of a car. A rucksack will hold the contents of a shopping basket. Just don’t fill your basket with marshmallows; fill it with milk, potatoes, cans of beans, etc. If this doesn’t work for your shopping habits, just put a few weights in your rucksack and go for a walk, preferably up a hill. Incorporate some voluntary discomfort into your everyday activities. Think of other ways you can voluntarily make your life a little bit harder as a path to getting better.
Strength & Cycling
Strength & Conditioning has become a staple part of every elite cyclist’s program over the last few years as coaches and sports science realise the benefits. A lot of serious cyclists now have power meters on their bikes to measure the power that they are producing in watts. Power is a product of Force and Velocity. In the context of cycling, force is how hard you press on the pedals, and velocity is how fast you pedal (cadence). There is a range of cadence from around 80-100 rpm that is efficient (not including sprinting), so you can’t just keep pedaling faster to go faster. But there is no ceiling on how much force you can apply to the pedals, and strength training will improve this. So if riding faster is your goal, then substituting one or two of your rides for a strength session might be a good investment. You can do your strength work in the gym with some carefully selected exercises to improve pedaling force and core strength to improve stability. You can also include some well-structured on-bike low cadence or higher torque efforts.
Strength training can be included with all of my coaching programs or if you would like some individual 1-2-1 sessions in my private gym to learn more about lifting technique and form just get in touch.
If you are interested in some coaching for Cycling or general Fitness or just want to chat about your training, contact me through any of the channels below -
Email - Andy@fit360.co.uk
Txt/Whatsapp 07779 705971