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Originally Posted by rwest
I never did any real gym work in my youth, but started in November with a running coach as I have a goal of running a sub 5 minute mile- long story; probably longer odds!
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Holy moly!!! That's quite the goal!! Best of luck to you. How old are you? I could barely do that when I was in the best cardio shape of my life, as a college soccer player and erstwhile amateur bicycle racer.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rwest
I go twice a week one on one with the coach. His “theory” is that if you can squat one and a half times your weight, you can run injury free- pounding on the joints is more than your weight and my knees suck.
He is more concerned with power output than total weight, so he has electronic device that magnets to the squat bar and then a special mat goes on the ground inline. He enters the weight of the bar into an app and then when you squat, it records how far you move the weight and how fast which gives you a power number. Every few weeks, he adds weight and takes away reps; then we build up reps, add weight- rinse and repeat.
He has me doing several other workouts and runs to strengthen all of me- I’m staring to get a little “cut” in my abs!
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You're putting a lot more into it right now than I am. I need to include cardio as well. For me, that's going to be on the road on a bicycle. I don't think my new right hip would take the pounding inherent in running.
Along with my age, that new hip is weighing heavily in just how I have been working out. Light weights, lots of reps. No more "peaking" like we used to.
It sounds like that is what your coach is having you do, the classic powerlifting practice of "peaking" for a contest. We would do a three month cycle, starting with light weights and high reps, in the 15-20 rep range, with lots of sets. Over the course of those three months, we would gradually add weight and lower the reps and sets. At the end of the cycle, we would do heavy doubles for just one maximum effort set, after having done half a dozen warm-up sets. Then it was a week of rest before the "contest" (our respective birthdays), then a week of rest after that. Then the next three month cycle would start.
Today, I'm just not doing the cycle. I'm just sticking to the light end of it, doing what we would do in its first few weeks. Just trying to burn calories, get some tone, and lose some weight.
I know I'll never regain either my soccer player / cyclist physique nor my peak lifting physique. Somewhere in-between is my goal. General fitness, not occupying either extreme. And, again, the A-number-one goal is to not hurt myself...