Recording workouts to track progress - how to measure intensity

[Gene61]

I've been thinking about this a little. We are a biological system. Strength training requires putting stress on the body during the workout. You can dramatically increase you wattage output by reducing the rest periods between sets, but if you don't recover enough between sets to restore the ATP to your muscles you won't have the strenth to lift enough weight to put the right kind stress on the system.

[emskee]

Besides being a burner, the human body is also an integrator. Thus it takes dynamical inputs and converts them through some process(es) to that which is expensed and to that which is stored. It is interesting to measure the intensity of a rep, a set or a workout. But since the body stores food and exercise induced stress inputs as added muscle, and it does so over the course of days, why not also consider measuring intensity as input per week or month? Like I lifted 43 tons week 1 and 46 tons week 2, 47.3 tons week 3.........?

The body is pretty good at ignoring large amplitude, short duration inputs (within reason: gunshots and the like which saturate the system are not considered here) because the area under the curve is small, and spending time and energy on transient events which may never become common is inefficient. On the other hand, the body is optimized to slowly (relatively speaking) adapt to gradually increasing inputs. (See Milos of Croton) Like a send-you-across-the-room slap across the face will not produce a callous, but a zillion taps over months will.

Perhaps measuring intensity input over longer time intervals makes more sense when specifically considering the stored variable that is muscle growth.

Just sayin......

[Charlie Davies]

It can't hurt to record more data, who knows what you might discover?

What I want is a better way to measure recovery.

We old folks walk a fine line between eating too much (and getting fat) vs. eating to little (and not recovering).
Also doing too much vs. too little workset volume.

We can infer recovery by performance changes across multiple workouts.
I suspect Rip made the SS and Texas Method programs simple, just to make these inferences easier.
But this is slow -- you are always 2 or more workouts behind in figuring it out.

We can measure it subjectively (i.e. soreness, tiredness) in realtime.
But subjective feelings are sloppy and inaccurate.

Has anyone tried one of those heartrate-variability gizmos?
Cyclists and runners use those to directly measure metabolic stress -- high heartrate variability is good, low variability shows stress.
Does this method work for strength training also?

Someday we'll be able to buy a wristwatch that measures testosterone, cortisol, insulin, etc constantly.
That will be a training revolution, I can't wait.

[emskee]

cwd,

Data mine if you like, of course. Nothing wrong there. Be it a hobby or a road to discovery, nothing wrong there.

But muscle is built after the fact, after the workout and during recovery. So the delay will always be there. Have yourself all instrumented up such that you have all the instantaneous feedback measurements necessary to optimize your workout and then a middle of the night phone call with worrisome news, a week of overtime, a head cold, cancellation of your favorite show on HBO (I'm getting better) whatever, and your recovery is deoptimized and it all goes to crap.

Read up on how the Soviets and all those other Eastern Bloc folks trained their athletes and you'll see what was done to optimize recovery. Like fake day jobs, massages, multiple naps during the day between multiple workouts and needles in the arms. If you are in a hurry.......

Rips method(s) are the same methods which have successfully produced strong people for as long as I have been following this lifting thing. Right? I mean if strong people preceded the books, and if what is in the books is the true way to make strong people, then the truth was in existence before the books. Rip has realized all that is right and put it into a series of really easy to understand books and thus allows us to jump to a right-enough answer without having to trial-and-error ourselves to death. Genius. Kindness. Entrepreneurship.

The successful people I've known (minority) had simple programs using the basic pushing, pulling and squatting movements, ate well and allowed themselves to recover. All the unsuccessful people I've known (majority) read Weider magazines and did double splits and concentration curls and bought Speedo products.

The most, most, most successful people I have known juiced.

I went from Class 2 lifter to Elite (ADFPA) in under 4 years while in my 30s by taking it slow and by avoiding overtraining. Trained 2 days a week. Sometimes 3. Squatted, benched and deadlifted. Sometimes I did rows or tricep pushdowns. I did curls for a few weeks once but the bigger boys laughed at me. I tried sit ups for a while but they suck so I quit. Mostly it was squat and bench on Monday and go home. Deadlift on Friday and go home. I did a lot of timed, speed reps (see Prilepin and Simmons). Ate a LOT of chicken breast. Said "no dear, I cannot go to (fill in the blank) I have to rest, contest is in (fill in time here) and I need to rest."

The stresses which produce strength are a function of the weight on the bar and the successful completion of the lift and thus pretty easy to measure. Push more weight successfully and more weight has been successfully pushed. Not subjective at all. Like Rip has said, wanna see how strong you are? Compete.

Anyway, I think I went off subject, but yeah, I'm with you, I wish the whole lifting thing were more y=mx+b but I don't think it is.

Mike