Good point. Without evidence, I shouldn't say it's much safer, and although it would seem to be common sense that blood pressure spikes could be dangerous for masters athletes, I have not researched the issue. I have heard anecdotal reports however. I can see how that would be important to someone who enjoys powerlifting. I on the other hand am simply interested in retaining muscle and strength as I age, perhaps increase it a bit too, and there is good evidence that 20-25 reps to exhaustion works just as well in achieving those goals as heavy weights/low reps.

I don't powerlift any more (just kind of lost interest) although I'm still friends with many of the people I met while doing the sport.
I agree, you can do higher rep sets and be successful. But... I personally find those to be miserable, particularly with large compound exercises. I like sets in the 8-10 range much better.

Lifting half or more of your bodyweight is considered heavy lifting and this alone can result in torn aortas. I'm 185 lbs and never had any trouble lifting half of that and would when I was in the military. What the medical literature says is that these were undiagnosed aneurisms.

Well, one might theorize that those of us that are considered senior citizens no longer have to worry about these sorts of things but we have about the same numbers of heart failures as young healthy weight lifters. I suppose I could look around and try to find that study in Cardiology but if you're interested you could look it up yourself.

And who says red bikes aren't faster?

Here's hoping you never have to walk up stairs or get up off the toilet. That could be dangerous!

Seriously, are you just trolling here?

Would you prefer if I said that muscle fibers come in cardiac, smooth and skeletal? But since you have no control over cardiac and smooth what point would there be in talking about them? You do all of your work with your heart but only indirectly. You require your kidneys and liver to cleanse your blood of the toxins created by the work of the other two types but again you have no control of this. And skeletal muscles come in Type 1, Type 2a and Type 2b but unless you're a medical technician of some sort what would that mean to you that "Fast Twitch" and "Slow Twitch" don't do a better job of?

What has happened to Lennard Zinn and countless endurance athletes who would push their hearts for 8 hr. straight riding excursions is pretty eye opening.
Zinn is a very smart guy and can't reverse his heart damage so far. The article makes a lot of sense. If the muscle stiffens as it is damaged by age and overuse and the electrical system doesn't morph, the firing of the heart can go out of rhythm. Has killed a fair share of aging endurance guys including runners.

Take away to me, is prolonged hard efforts in the saddle are not good for the heart. I have done my share of distance riding with high effort. I am not going to push my luck and have really backed off distance riding or...pushing myself too hard to stay up on the A group ride.

Lennard Zinn is now relegated to riding his excellent e-bike because he can't push his heart at all without it going out of sync. Sobering for a guy who embodies the sport.

Good luck to us all.

Excuse me but what "training advice" have I dispensed? Do you consider it improper to refer people to Joe Freil's "The Cyclists Training Bible"?

I really don't want to waste my time typing in stuff which you could read on your own from the docs for which I've already published links. In any case you are misinformed:
1) All muscle fibers are not the same.

2) They do not all have the same strength. Fibers in different muscles have different strengths. Not only that, but different fibers in the same muscle have different talents.

3) Muscle fibers are activated by nerves. You have to teach your nerves to activate the fibers. The first time one plays tennis, one does very badly. Trained, one can play because one has taught one's nerves to activate particular fibers at particular times. This is called neuromuscular coordination. You have to recruit the muscles in your arms to lift weight with your arms. For instance, were you to actually go to the gym twice a week and do only biceps curls but using as much weight as you can for 3 sets of 8 reps, by the end of the 3rd week you'll be curling considerably more weight than you did the first time, yet your arms will be no bigger. This is because of fiber recruitment. Trainers test this by having the client first try to curl 1 rep with as much weight as they can. This is called 1RM or one repetition maximum. At the end of the training period they will have the client test their 1 RM again.

4) Physical therapists are usually trying to fix injuries so they use light weights. Physical trainers are trying to make you stronger. Physical trainers may yell at you to force you to do one more rep. Getting stronger usually involves from 3 to 12 reps, depending on where one is in the training cycle.

No, physical therapists do not disagree with me. Go ask them.

Go read and learn. Better yet, read, learn, and exercise. Faith without works is nothing.

I don't know him personally so I can't say. But don't you think that training ideas for any endurance sports are pretty much the same? Find your weakest links and manage your training to improve those?

This is true. I used to train that way, 3 sets of 30. The problem is that it takes too long and creates a too large training stress, which cuts down on the cycling one can do. Everyone is recovery-limited. As I've stated above and as you say, it's training to failure that the cyclist is after, however many reps are used.

"Scientists are calling for widespread heart screening of people before they begin weight training. That's based on new evidence that lifting more than half your body weight could put you at risk of sudden death.

Yale New Haven Hospital surgeon John Elefteriades and colleagues report in an advance online study in the journal Cardiology that they've documented a link between heavy lifting and torn aortas—the heart's main artery—in young, healthy patients who had previously undiagnosed aneurysms, or enlargement of the aorta.

In a group of 31 patients who had an undetected aneurysm and subsequent torn aorta from heavy lifting, 10 of them died. Elefteriades defines heavy lifting as lifting more than half your body weight."

Seriously, exactly who is trolling? This study started because of suspicions as far back as 2003 among members of the team.

I'm in my 30's and I've known many coworkers (and myself) to try taking up lifting to get into shape. They either go online and start doing something they found online or they try doing what they were doing while on a sports team in college. Every single one of them (including myself) that does stuff involving squats/deadlifts/bench press seriously injures themselves doing these heavy lifts. I messed up my right leg and hip. My coworker who played rugby in college did something awful to his back and went from sitting in office chairs fine to it being painful in his back to sit in them.

After that I noticed there's basically 2 groups of people who make claims about lifting.

1. People who face no negative consequences if their advice hurts people. If they tell someone lifting is perfectly safe, then that person gets horribly injured, they can just ignore it.
2. People who face professional or personal negative consequences if their advice hurts people. Like professionals who train athletes.

From the "whatever I say won't hurt me" group you get loudly pushing all kinds of over the top positive claims about lifting and health benefits. When you get injured and talk about it they get very angry and attack you.
From the "if I get someone else hurt it will be bad for me" group you get basically the opposite advice - a lot more isolation lifts for training athletes, a lot more "we tried squats and deadlifts but the injury rate was to high so we do something different now", and even from coaches that train people to powerlift and compete you hear a long list of boring things they do like not going above 85%-90% of your max in training, spending the first year at smaller weights to get the body used to doing it, and that there definitely are people who because of their genetics or physical condition should never be lifting heavy weights with compound lifts because their body just cannot handle it.

Meanwhile, back online people are some of the worst advice you've ever heard in how to exercise. There's a forum I sometimes check where they ban discussion of injuries, and recently had a thread exactly lifting with big compound lifts where they specifically mention how a guy who's had 2 surgeries was doing so great with it.

I think it's a combination of lifting being a little dangerous moreso if your body isn't suited for it, and just abysmally terrible advice given out as to how to lift. The "popular" lifting programs I see are like equivalent to suggesting people bike by dressing up in all black and riding on the street at 01:30am in front of the worst bar in town. When you see actual professionals who both train people and also face consequences if they injure people talking about how they train, it's almost always the exact opposite of the "popular" advice you read about lifting online.

"Muscle fiber type can be measured in 3 ways: myosin ATPase histochemistry, immunohistochemistry, or (much less commonly) metabolic enzymes.

Changes in muscle fiber type can be2 presented as either changes in the proportion of fibers of a given type, or as changes in the absolute or relative cross-sectional area of the fibers.

Although all fiber types have a similar single fiber force, type II muscle fibers display a much faster shortening velocity than type I muscle fibers. A higher proportion of type II muscle fibers may therefore be beneficial for strength and power sports."

Do you suppose this is reconciliation enough or would you prefer the opinion of a high School PE teacher?

This is true, but begs the question. Do you believe that Zinn has increased his risk for "all-cause mortality" in the next 10 years? That study says "no". Remember that people die from all sorts of things. But the more you ride, the longer you'll live - statistically. I'm a member of the largest bike club in the nation, some 13,000+ members. It has had free daily group rides for decades. I know of only 2 people who've died from a coronary on these rides. TdF winners tend to be long lived.

You mention " countless endurance athletes who would push their hearts for 8 hr. straight," yet you don't see studies showing that these countless athletes met an early death, do you? The zonatandem couple are still riding in their mid-80's and they did a heckuva lot of miles.

If you read the original article, 2 of the 5 had aneurysms doing pushups https://jamanetwork-com.offcampus.li...bstract/197746 if you can't get access to the full article I can provide it via email. The 31 patients in the 2007 study were from extensive clinicial review of nationwide databases. It seems like the risk is a pretty small one, which they fail to statistically quantify

Is this a serious question?

redlude - I have full access to the information. I completely agree with you that this appears to be too small of a study to strike any real conclusions. Remember that this wasn't concerning physical stress but ONLY heavy weight lifting. Furthermore, less than 20% of these sorts of studies yield a reproduction of the initial findings upon repeat studies.

But I will ask you - do you truly believe that you can't stress yourself to death? Mentally or physically?

Ugh... not this again. The "I got hurt, therefore it must happen to everyone regardless of what actual studies say" argument doesn't fly.

First, where's the link?
Second, what does "lifting more than half your body weight" even mean? As I said, you lift more than half your body weight every time you get up from a toilet or walk up stairs.

The fact they had to group weightlifters and people doing pushups in their initial study to convice themselves that of the possibility I think says a lot about the prevelance. Sure its possible to give yourself an aneurysm while lifting heavy and its prudent to have your heart checked before starting weight lifting or even cycling but its not as much a danger as they make it out to be.

He also fails to mention that individual muscle fibers can grow in size, thus making them stronger than they were previously despite the fiber type not changing.

Firstly it gets a little tiresome to hear people make false comments such as "I lied". What part of "Although all fiber types have a similar single fiber force" did you not understand?

As PaulRivers noted, you face no negative consequences for anything you say concerning these things so it doesn't bother you at all to make any claims that are totally outside of your expertise. The medical establishment has another responsibility altogether and they say different than you. They are actually interested in people's health and lives. You on the other hand are not.

So unless you actually have some reason for arguing about this perhaps you can explain to us why you are making these claims?