Basic Barbell Training for Endurance Athletes
Coach Rippetoe,
Good evening and thank-you for your continued time answering questions pertaining to your expertise. I have some thoughts that I would like to share to stir up questions that you or others might shed light on as I have a full interest in hearing intelligent thought processes pertaining to the following.
I have been “coaching” the general population in Vail, Colorado (home to the World Class Ski Resort) for 8 years as a passion and career. While my experience is somewhat limited to training “athletes”, I do have a few at my disposal to experiment with.
The general population is somewhat aging, very thin, and highly adapted to aerobic metabolism. I have experienced that most people here in the general population are recreational athletes that participate in high altitude cycling, mountain biking, hiking, mountaineering, climbing, alpine skiing (anaerobic), white water sports, etc. and are “fit” by the standards set forth by the general public which isn’t saying much. Most of these sports seem to require a high reliance of VO2, muscular endurance, lactate threshold and relative strength (in no particular order of importance).
It seems the most successful of these folks (when measuring their results in some of the said high altitude sporting events) have low body weight. This leads me to believe that relative strength is the quantifiable variable that is separating them from the pack. They are carrying less weight over the duration of the event.
The big experimentation I have been tinkering with of the last few years with varying results (due to lack of continued motivation by this said population, and the small sample size) is the role of basic barbell training, particularly the back squat and conventional deadlift.
With this in mind, to some extent I am having a hard time propelling these folks strength in the back squat and deadlift (in attempt to improve force production) due to these folks emphasis on extracurricular alpine activities. They don’t get enough calories to gain weight to improve their leverages and recovery, they are too aerobically conditioned, and fail to progress.
Have you had experience with endurance athletes, and would you suggest focusing on neural adaptation alone (lower volume), or is weight gain a beneficial adaptation for this population? To me it seems like improving strength is vital, yet it seems very difficult without weight gain and in fact weight gain may negate the strength benefit altogether for this demographic.
Or, do you nix the barbell training altogether and have them specifically focus on cycling, for example if their goal is to become a better cyclist?
At what point is barbell training null and void for endurance athletes? 1xBW deadlift or squat? 2X? Or does it even matter altogether?
Warm regards,
Ryan