Carbonfiberboy 

Starting with your first point, it takes a certain amount of leg strength and leg muscle endurance to be able to maintain a high effort for a long period. I was able to increase both those things much faster in the weight room than can be done on the bike. That was only 10 hours in the gym from a standing start. Not possible in 10 hours on the bike. Being able to maintain a high aerobic effort is what increases aerobic fitness and leg fitness is how we get and keep the aerobic effort that high. The point is to enable endurance at high effort in a short training time. Gym work doesn't make one fast. There are no studies showing that E+S cohorts decreased their 40k TT times over the E group. OTOH, there are no studies showing they did worse, either. AFAIK of course.

Doing more weight training in the fall and much less during the competition period is simply periodization, like anything else. Most of us periodize our training and think nothing of changing our training emphasis as the season goes on. Of course we do. We abuse our legs so that we can later abuse our anaerobic systems.

Yes my zones are based on LTHR. As such, and unlike power-based zones, they are defined by my maximum sustainable exertion at each point in the ride. My average HR was 92% of LTHR. At every point in the ride, the zones reflect the same physiological effort, even though power and HR are not perfectly linked. IOW, this is a feature, not a bug. The power-only cyclist, seeing their sustainable power drop during a ride at their limit, will not have a good metric for their effort during the ride. All they know is that they're trying hard, but won't know how close to their limit and thus how to "titrate the pain" as I say. Saying that one's effort was inadequate because one had HR drift is not helpful for the training cyclist. All one needs to know is how hard one is going compared to one's target effort. Z4 as a function of LTHR is Z4 whether one's power is 300w or has dropped to 250w as long as one's HR is the correct percentage of LTHR.

Of course one wants as little HR drift as possible, and of course drift decreases with training and is a good metric for aerobic fitness. However denigrating a cyclist's training because they had HR drift while riding at their limit has the goal of training quite upside down. I know that the more hard riding I do, the fitter I'll get, and that HR percentage of LTHR is my best metric for decreasing said HR drift. One could argue that FTP is the best measure of aerobic fitness. However it's well-known that there are few riders who can maintain their calculated FTP for an hour because being able to maintain a high power output is a function of their HR drift. You have the talent to be able to hold a high output and that's why you're a 1 and the rest of us are not. Oh, and age of course.

Carbonfiberboy 

I'm sorry about that. However like the guy who has his car insurance cancelled due to accidents, not a person from whom to take driving lessons. I've been lifting since I was in the Army, starting in 1966 and I'm still at it using very nearly the same weights. I don't think I'd be able to do what I do if I hadn't done what I did.

Dean V

It must be quite a flat ride?
When we do group rides with solo bikes on the tandem we are usually red lining on every climb.

PaulRivers

I wrote very specifically about people in their late 20's or older who have been working office jobs for a while.

You go right to younger high school / college track athletes - which doesn't seem to have any relation to what I was saying at all.

It would certainly improve it, including people who know what they're doing not pushing people who just want to get into shape into big heavy more dangerous lifts with no warmups, no looking at mobility, etc etc. But, people go online, and someone tells them it's perfectly save to just watch a few youtube videos then throw 200lbs or so on their back. Unsurprisingly it messes people up.

OBoile

Shh... don't tell him his anecdotal data (who's numbers fluctuate constantly) isn't reflective of other people's experience. It happened to him, therefore it MUST be true for everyone. The people on this thread who haven't hurt themselves (plus all the athletes who are training for pretty much any major sport) are all freaks and don't count as normal people.

Seattle Forrest

I started lifting in a gym at 39, and I work a desk job. I'm squatting more than 200 pounds. My back is happy.

Seattle Forrest

I don't think people understand that "heavy" doesn't mean any specific weight, it just means enough weight to be challenging for the lifter. There are some movements where 20 lbs is heavy for me.

OBoile

Doesn't count. You didn't start in your late 20s.
I won't mention that both my wife and I have squatted over 200 lbs for years and our backs are fine because we don't count either. We started in our mid 20s, not our late 20s.

Carbonfiberboy 

37 miles, 1810', steepest climb ~15%. They'd drop us on every climb, but we just kept the throttle open as we came over the top and would get them back on anything that wasn't a climb, hence our sustained effort. We have a not-so-secret weapon: aero bars for both captain and stoker. 285 lb. team, 142 y.o. Don't redline, just max sustainable effort. Let 'em go on the climbs, no advantage to a wheel there. Note pretty much zero Z5. Our trick is that Stoker sees both my HR and hers and matches her effort to mine.

We do better to sort of tail off, especially in rollers where we let them drop us on the climb, then adjust our power as we come over the top so that we are back on their wheel about half way up the next roller. Singles on our wheel say they work very hard on the flats and descents, then loaf on the climbs.

Carbonfiberboy 

If anyone reading this thread is actually interested in trying some gym work to see what effect it has, if any, I'll give you an easy starter recipe. People get hurt because they don't develop their connective tissue before they start using heavy weights. Connective tissue develops very slowly, much more slowly than does muscle. That's the reason people get hurt. The trick in the gym is to leave your ego at the door. You're not doing this to move big weights. You're doing this to become a better rider. Eat like a normal person and you won't put on (much) weight.

Start in the fall. First year, buy The Cyclist's Training Bible. Go to the strength training chapter. My 1st edition has suggestions for 9 different lifts. Pick which 9 you want to do, but including barbell squats and leg sled. Do 1 set of 30 of each lift, twice a week. Fool with the exercise sequence and amount of weight on each lift so that you run out of juice in the 28-32 region. Do this for one month. Next month use the same weights, but do 2 sets, circuit style. By the end of the month, you should be able to get ~30 reps on the second circuit. Next month, add a 3rd circuit and then keep it at 3 circuits. Adjust weights to reach pooped at ~30 reps, until you start serious intervals in the spring. Then quit the gym. Next year, do exactly the same thing. In your third year, you should be strong enough to move to a more normal strength training program and you should know enough to have good form and a sense of what does what. You should also notice that you're riding with people who used to drop you.

More information for that 3rd and following years here: https://www.bikeforums.net/training-...e-athlete.html

PaulRivers

You're projecting what you're doing. You sound like most of your online experience comes from arguing on political forums.
- You're pushing ancedotal and flawed data as "proof" of something.
- You are pushing "this happened to me so it must be true for everyone".
- In the last sentence you're insulting people and trying to pretend it's someone else doing it
- You are basically trying to say that if people get injured lifting they aren't allowed to talk about it because you don't like it.

This guy survived jumping out of a plane and his parachute not opening -
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/j...rachute-failed

By your "logic" guess we it's now safe to jump out of planes without parachutes.

OBoile

Do you really believe this? Really? I'm the one that produced studies (i.e. not anecdotal). You're the one that refuses to believe data in favour of your personal anecdote. And while it's less scientific:

I'm the one that pointed out that many serious athletes squat which wouldn't be the case if they were destined to get hurt. You're the one who refuses to accept this in favour of your own personal anecdote.
I'm also the one who pointed out that coaches, like Friel, who depend on keeping their athletes healthy, suggest their athletes squat. You're the one who refuses to accept this in favour of your own personal anecdote.
I'm also the one who observed that gyms haven't been sued out of existence despite letting people in their late 20s squat. You're the one who refuses to accept this in favour of your own personal anecdote.
I'm also the one who pointed out that there is an entire sport of people, many in their 50s and 60s, who squat regularly and manage to not hurt themselves. You're the one who refuses to accept this in favour of your own personal anecdote.

Incidentally, you also refuse to believe other people's personal anecdotes in favour of your own. At least you're consistent on that front.
I don't see any insult.
You're allowed to talk about it all you want. But when you make illogical conclusions that aren't based on proper evidence, you should expect to be called on it.

Again, that's your logic, not mine. I've offered anecdotes here since that is all you seem to believe, but I base my conclusions about the safety of lifting weights on the statistical evidence, not what personally happened to me. Why are you unwilling to do the same?

rubiksoval

I disagree. A few weeks ago, after taking 6 weeks off of ANY activity whatsoever, I went out and rode for 30 minutes and had 29 minutes in z4+. And I averaged 219 watts. My threshold heartrate, which would typically correspond to a wattage 100+ watts higher when in shape, now corresponded to my very easy pace wattage form 6 weeks prior. That was purely a function of being horribly, horribly out of shape. Zero gym work, zero bike work, very high heart rate to show for it. As training commences, that heart rate will drop and drop and drop as fitness is regained.

So no, aerobic fitness is how you keep aerobic fitness high. I can go lift all day everyday and not deliver the high-end aerobic power necessary to ride the way I want to ride. Because that takes high-end aerobic conditioning. Not muscle strength. Aerobic, aerobic, aerobic sport!

I don't know what your last paragraph is supposed to be about. I'm not denigrating anything. I'm telling you that your high hr on a ride you've typically done without such a high hr wasn't because you were in shape, but because you weren't in shape. The exact same thing I've just gone through. It's an indicator of a lack of fitness. Not evidence of increased fitness. Evidence of increased fitness would be a lower hr at the same wattage. Or higher wattage at the same hr.

It's not a talent. Anyone can train to hold a high heart rate. For some that may be 88% of their max, for other it may be 93%. But the power output corresponding to that has nothing to do with actually hold a high percentage of heart rate. It's way, WAY easier for me to go out now totally out of shape and hold a ridiculously high hr at a pitiful wattage than it is when I'm peaked and primed and putting out significant more watts, when I might not be able to even hold the same hrs I can hold now.

It's like running! I can get off the couch and run at 185 bpm and barely be moving when I'm totally out of shape! It's horrendous. There's hardly any power output there. It's just be me being overweight, inefficient, and out of shape. And that heart rate reflects that.

Lastly, you abuse your legs so you can abuse your anaerobic system? I don't understand what you think that's supposed to mean.

rubiksoval

I don't think so.

If you ever get a power meter, you may be very interested in seeing how it relates to power. Z4 as a function of hr can be obtained by sprinting for 20 seconds and then dropping power to an effort that would normally be z3. However, z4 as a function of power, has to actually be in z4, and hr may not even hit z4 until the very end (or not at all in shorter intervals). And on a hot day, that power and hr correlation is going to be very different than on a cold one.

You can make the argument for power and hr together all day ( I think it's redundant at best and potentially misleading, but whatever). The argument that hr alone is more reflective than power, however. Well, I'd assert that's nearly defunct.

Campag4life

A good post. Can I ask what kept you off the bike for 6 weeks? Were you letting your body heal due to injury?
Its quite apparent you love cycling. Must of been hard to stay off the bike that long.

rubiksoval

Cardiac ablation. Had to zap some extra nerve cells.

Campag4life

Wow. Arrhythmia related?
Wish you well.

Carbonfiberboy 

You are completely missing my point or maybe you are taking my post mostly backwards, or maybe I didn't explain myself clearly enough. My point was not that I was in good aerobic shape. My point was that I was really out of shape in that regard. My post is about how I got enough strength back, and very quickly, so that I could work my bod hard enough to begin the process of aerobic adaptation. You may not be able to relate to that, but you might be able to in another 40 years. I didn't mention it, but neither of us cramped on that ride for which I posted zone numbers. That's probably the most significant tell. 4 weeks ago, we did a 26 mile ride, didn't/could't work nearly as hard, and cramped so bad we drank 12 oz. of pickle juice between us just to finish the ride alone and about 15' back.

The way we all do it, whether using power or HR, is to do lots of hard work. By the time we've ridden for a few decades, most of us know how to hold a steady output. That's all that's necessary. One doesn't really need sensors other than one's body to hold output steady. Sensors are nice though so we can see how much total stress we've absorbed and how that fits into our training.

That higher power at the same HR is coming along. I've already picked up 2 mph at VT1 on my resistance rollers. On the rollers, my speed's only about 1 mph at VT1 below where it should be at this time of year, and my HR at VT1 has dropped 3-4 beats. Everything's coming along really well. BTW, I can run again, too. 10 minute miles is all, but it's a start.

Even though we'll eventually be able to go faster at the same HR, and even though the rides will get longer, we'll try to decrease that time-in-zone at the top as little as possible. Over the years, 45' in zone 4 during the group rides (no matter how fit I'd become) has been my standard and it looks like we can start doing that again. As you say, the hour in zone 4 will become much more difficult as we get fitter, but being able to put in that hour now bodes well for the future.

colnago62

wphamilton

More of a consideration the older you get, because it gets harder and harder to strengthen those connective tissues and easier to damage them. Strength training in my mid-20's I gave it no thought at all.

rubiksoval

Apparently. Nothing I ever physically noticed aside from some apparently unrelated symptoms that I had tested in the first place. Just something tests picked up.

Thanks. I'm all good now.

rubiksoval

I gotcha now.

PaulRivers

Yeah this is exactly what you're doing.

You claimed "studies" like the anti-vaccine crowd did:
- Pushed a flawed or low quality study over and over again
- Refer to a study on a tiny self selected portion of the population

Studies have said that vaccines cause autism, that people of a certain race have smaller brains, that smoking cigarrettes is good for you, and that "x/10 doctors recommend our product!". Ancedotal evidence is still evidence. It is not proof. My personal experience going outside and getting wet is not invalidated by your claim of having a study that says people went outside and didn't get wet.

Aside from the issues with studies in general, pretending a study on athletes applies to applies to everyone else is completely disingenous.
- Looking at 15-21 year olds is not comparable to people in their 30's, 40's, etc. As you get older you become far more likely to become injured as a matter of biology and aging.
- Athletes are training several times a week doing non-lifting things like warming up, mobility, running around on the field, etc. Their injury rate is not comparable to sedentary people who have spent 5 or more years sitting for 40 hours/week and often not doing anything more athletic than walking to their car, and then suddenly lifting huge amounts of weight as their only physical activity.
- Coaches for the kind of sports teams who have a central training facility and report injuries to a central authority are the kind of teams who only have people with very good genetics/etc on them. Bad genetics for sports? You're not on the team? Mediocre genetics for sports? You're not on the team. Mobility issues that make you slower? You're not on the team. The coach of the team has already filtered out the average people so the only people still on the team have good genetics and are in good shape - you're only looking at a small group of people who are both inherently good at athletics and have been training for them.

I said that my experience is based on people of a certain age and background that I know. You're hoping a word salad of "study athletes safe" means no one would actually think about how unrelated what you're posting is to the topic I was talking about.

By your "logic" apparently 80 year olds in a wheel chair are safe to do heavy squats, after all a low quality study of athletes said it was fine.

I have to give you credit for cramming a political level of manipulation in here.
- You clearly say "many" not "all" yet you argue as if it's "all". Why don't the other ones doing big heavy lifts? Maybe because the risk is much higher for them than the reward. You're back to "someone jumped out of an airplane and survived so it's safe for everyone" level of claim.
- You're trying to play a game of emotional association like "if you do this you're a serious athlete!" when in reality serious athletes are in an entirely different position - younger, in the best shape of their lives, likely a professional training them (someone who actually knows how to train "boringly" and more safely not someone following the absurdly bad lifting advice on the internet), good genetics for athletic stuff as if they didn't have that they would be on the team, etc etc etc.
- You strawman literally everything I write to pretend I'm saying something you'd rather argue against rather than what I'm actually saying.
- A whole bunch more I'm not even going to take the time to get into.

You seem to have spend a lot of time on political forums as you're very versed in their tactics where the any truth doesn't matter. You aren't even arguing against what I'm actually saying.

Same things as before, but also there's a reason he says "suggests" it not "insists". That's not even getting into how much PR statements often don't really relate to what they actually do.

But I didn't say no one can do squats, I said if you are the situation I've seen people be in - late 20's or older, working an office job for years where you're sitting, and getting advice on lifting from poor sources like the internet - then if you do heavy complex lifts my experience is you'll probably get seriously injured following that pattern.

Same as before but you know that's not an argument against what I was actually saying. Gyms will "allow" you do to lots of things they're not liable for. Try hiring a personal trainer at the gym though, and suddenly you'll find that they're heavily steering you away from the free weights and trying to avoid you doing heavy lifts like squats, deadlifts, and bench press partly because they know the injury rate is higher with those and face more liability.

Again with the "someone jumped out of a plane with a faulty parachute and lived, so everyone who does it lives!" level of absurdity.
I would bet most of the people doing that have suffered serious injuries. I've only met a few people who do things like that but they always seem to have a surgery story etc. And those are the ones I meet...if someone got seriously messed up I probably wouldn't meet them because they can't go out or at least can't do the physical activities I meet them at.
Some people smoke their whole lives and live to 80, others (like my grandfather) die in their early 60's from lung cancer.
Some people get shot multiple times and live. Others get shot once and die instantly, or their spinal cord gets hit and they're crippled for life.

You are consistently in pushing manipulative arguing tactics and political level claims along the lines of "someone did this once and didn't die so it's 100% safe for everyone".

What I originally said was that no one is doing studies on people of varying ages, fitness levels, and backgrounds and their injury rate so there's not really any objective or scientific data on what the injury rate is to refer to. And after all this rubbish from you, that is still true. We don't have data on it above personal experience level.

You've offered exactly the same thing as the anti-vacinne people. A flawed study, followed up by manipulative tactics.

Then your claim is that I can't trust what I see with my own eyes, only you know the "real truth". I see a lot of that in political arguments. That's why they're so awful.

----------------------------------------------

What my argument has been is that everyone I've known (around 5 people) with these characteristics:
1\. Late 20's or older.
2\. Spent years working an office job where they sit all day.
3\. Their prep work wasn't more than doing a little online reading then they jumped into the gym with big heavy lifts - squats, deadlifts, bench press - heavy complex lifts that they're starting out near their max weight with.

From what I learned later, the people who actually train people, face liability for injuring them, and know what they're doing - would generally never train people this way. Some of them don't like squats. Some of them do like squats but wouldn't just throw people under a heavy bar with near their max weight right away. I learned that most of the online advice is driven by sounding cool to people who don't really know what they're doing, without regard to effectiveness or safety, and you end up things being pushed that are mostly the opposite of what people who know what they're doing would do. (For example most online programs don't mention warming up which is critical, most online programs push excessive lower body work on people who's only goal is to look good which is absurd, most online programs push are just like "just jump into the gym near your max weight" whereas pro's do a lot of "boring" work with no or minimal weight to get peoples bodies used to lifting....the list goes on and on, most online advice centers entirely around cutting out anything that sounds boring or unexciting without any regard to whether it's a good idea.)

I highly recommend that anyone who's in the same age/background/etc that I described be aware that there are risks to lifting. And if you're lifting via bad advice (much of popular online stuff about it) those risks are higher. People can make their own decisions on what level of risk they want to take, but not if they're being fed bad advice about those risks, and bad advice about how to decrease their risks. There seems to be some group of people really invested in telling people that it's risk free but then angrily attacking people who get injured to try to silence them, which cropped up alongside the rise of other disingenous themes like anything in politics, and "vacinnes cause autism" absurdities.

If you do mess up your back/spine/leg etc in a serious way, it doesn't even seem to slow down the people who claimed it "wouldn't happen".

PaulRivers

You're jumping to a pretty huge conclusion there. The person I knew who worked his way up to lifting the most - I think his squat was 600lbs but was a while ago - strained his upper back helping a friend paint the walls in their house. He just kept painting all day, his upper back hurt like hell for the next few weeks. It was a relatively minor injury he just had to wait for it to heal on it's own nothing long term - but his impressive numbers in lifting didn't help with that. Some pro athletes lift and some don't, but they don't "just" lift. Football players spend some time lifting but most of their time practicing football. If you've seen football teams practicing you'll see them warming up and doing tons of mobility stuff on the field that develops their bodies ability to move around in a direction that's not just the up/down motions of lifting. I remember at the time going online and reading people saying the same thing that you can train your body to be really strong doing one motion then it completely fails doing something you'd think was basic because it's only adapting to the lifting motion.

I think if this guy had done what a lot of people do - watch a view youtube videos on deadlifting, go to the gym, try to lift near his max weight - he probably would have also thrown out his back, perhaps even worse.

No doubt he would have been less likely to do so with a reasonable and balanced exercise program, sure.

redlude97

Wait, people shouldn't lift because it might lead to injury doing something other than lifting because lifting doesn't prevent all injuries? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills