Question for your video

[sbhikes]

Re: Strength being a general adaptation you can apply to other activities (cycling and squats being the example usually given) and how it's the most optimal choice for improving health, performance etc.

The problem seems to be that one must continuously lift more. And one also must rest and recover in order to improve. The result for me is I end up feeling beat up most of the time on my rest days, and if I don't actually rest, it interferes with my next session of lifting.

I end up rarely getting to experience what this has done for me because of feeling sore or tired most of the time. I'm not the only one, as a friend of mine said he also thinks squats would be awesome training for backpacking, but if he does heavy squats all the time, he never has any energy for any fun hiking on the weekends. He asked me how I deal with it and I told him I just struggle a lot.

How do people make strength TRAINING a thing that supports their health and vitality without going half-assed about it? Is that possible?

[Jordan Feigenbaum]

The problem seems to be that one must continuously lift more. And one also must rest and recover in order to improve.

The first sentence is somewhat true, though I'd make the caveat that "more" is only referring to "fatigue", vs. more weight/reps/volume. In other words, there are many ways to make the overall workload- both intraworkout and the accumulated fatigue over a week or series of weeks- higher. You do not need "more" rest and recovery to improve, rather the opposite is true- you need more recovery capacity (work capacity) to be able to train enough to actually accumulate the fatigue necessary to drive the adaptations.

Basically, if for some reason work capacity does not get developed through training in and of itself, you must use other methods (conditioning specific work, for instance) to boost this to a level that allows you to train at a high enough level yet not be wrecked from the training. Take, for instance, someone like me. I do not get sore after workouts and I train frequently (squat 3-4x per week, bench 4-6x per week, pull 2-3x per week). How did this happen? I've developed my work capacity over time to allow recovery from such training AND I know that I'm trying to accrue fatigue over a series of weeks vs. each session. In the most extreme example, a person might try to use a 5x5 squat to get his squat to go up in 72 hrs (TM style) whereas I am going to squat 2-3 heavy sets 3-4x/week for a series of weeks to get my squat to go up every 2-3 months.

The same work capacity that allows me to train so frequently is a byproduct of becoming "trained" to a point where early intermediate and novice programming no longer works. The reason for providing this example is to illustrate that while more "something" is likely needed to drive the adaptation, it doesn't necessarily require more recovery or take more out of you.

How do people make strength TRAINING a thing that supports their health and vitality without going half-assed about it? Is that possible?

Sure. I think the easiest RX for something like this is to run the novice LP until it doesn't work, then run TM or some sort of weekly organized training, THEN spend some time developing a good GPP base while plotting along with some strength work. After 4-6 weeks of building a good GPP base- for those who didn't already have it- more frequent or more fatiguing training can be done without as large a need for "more recovery". Just my 0.02

[sbhikes]

whereas I am going to squat 2-3 heavy sets 3-4x/week for a series of weeks to get my squat to go up every 2-3 months.

So you do not try to increase the amount you lift every time, but every 2-3 months?

I try to increase the weight every time (don't always succeed, though.) And I take 2-3 days rest between workouts (Monday: squat, press; Tuesday: deadlift; Thursday: squat, press). I'm rested enough to lift again and either lift more reps or more weight usually. But I'm never rested enough to go for a hike on Saturday or Sunday and feel fully-recovered while I do it. It takes about a full week to feel completely recovered, however if I wait that long between lifting my progress is reduced (and my motivation is reduced and fear of lifting is greater.)

[Jordan Feigenbaum]

So you do not try to increase the amount you lift every time, but every 2-3 months?

It just isn't possible for me to increase it every time, so I plan to take weeks to months to accumulate enough fatigue/volume/etc. to drive PR's, which tend to occur in spurts for me at this point.

I try to increase the weight every time (don't always succeed, though.) And I take 2-3 days rest between workouts (Monday: squat, press; Tuesday: deadlift; Thursday: squat, press). I'm rested enough to lift again and either lift more reps or more weight usually. But I'm never rested enough to go for a hike on Saturday or Sunday and feel fully-recovered while I do it. It takes about a full week to feel completely recovered, however if I wait that long between lifting my progress is reduced (and my motivation is reduced and fear of lifting is greater.)

Yea this tells me that your recovery is not very good. It may very well be that there's not much to improve on that would yield a significant change in your recovery, though I would bet there are a few things:

1) Sleep
2) active recovery
3) GPP work
4) Nutritional interventions

[sbhikes]

Well, I sleep at least 8 or 9 hours a night, take a walk on days I don't go the gym (or on lunch hour the days I do), hike at least once a week in the mountains and I'm pretty fat and eat a lot of meat so eating is not my problem. As for GPP, I did sprints 2x a week (on stationary bike, 22 second sprint, 1:30 rest, 8 times) for about 6 months last year but it didn't really change things for me.

Here I am last August after 3 or 4 months of all that sprinting, plus copious chicken breast and whey protein. I look the same now and squat about 20 pounds more and deadlift about 50lbs more but I don't bother with the sprinting anymore.
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7365/...bf8b56f43c.jpg

I have always looked pretty much the same regardless of what I've done to myself.
Me as a kid with my skinny sister: https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7101/...b50db9a4_n.jpg
Me as a 17-year-old anorexic: https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7240/...30f28f64_n.jpg (yeah, 500 calories a day worked well)
Me after 1800 continuous miles of hiking: https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Q...-no/021_21.JPG

I just play the hand I was dealt and I do the best I can. I guess it's just not really possible to work on strength and enjoy an active weekend at the same time without one affecting the other. I hope someday to figure out a balance so I can do all the things I want to do. I am curious if you know how that is done, how an older person can achieve the benefits of training while still being able to do exercise at one's full capacity and not always be dragging down one with the other. To me this seems to be the key to a healthy, active older life, but at this point, I'm sort of sacrificing the fun in order to build up some kind of base of strength. I don't know any other way to do it.

[Jordan Feigenbaum]

I'm going to try and really just put the nail in this coffin, since I do tend to see this question come up over and over again in different permutations.

The reason you "can't enjoy an active weekend" whilst strength training purposefully during the week is because your recovery capacity is underdeveloped, period. Some people need to train their recovery to a higher level so they can sustain a greater level of volume/intensity to get stronger (read: competitive lifters/advanced intermediates). Others, however, need to train their recovery to a higher level so they can participate in a significant amount of activities outside of the gym without either severely attenuating the response to training or making the extra-gym activities laborious due to being fatigued. If you, for instance, just strength trained and did nothing else- you'd be super fresh (or fresh-er) on most sessions you did at the gym, thus strength would be likely to improve more rapidly. Since, however, you're also interested in participating in activities that require significant "resources", if you will, your recovery for strength training is going to be blunted AND your performance on the "activity" is going to be depressed unless you figure out a way to significantly shorten the time it takes you to recovery post strength training.

Problems I see with your current setup:
1) yea so you're not "fat" or even mildly "overweight". At all. That said, your nutrition may be on point, but I would like to see quite a bit higher level of conditioning. Things that would indicate a high level of conditioning outside of being lean would be a low resting HR (50's) and a very fast recovery from a sprint interval of 20-30s, i.e. your HR recovery would be complete in 30s or so. This requires a significant amount more conditioning than you're currently doing, so there's one way to go with this.

2) I think your training programming could be altered in such a way to not necessarily be more or less stressful, but just be more "optimal" from a "what can I do today" standpoint. Example, you "want" to go to the gym and do 3x5 at a certain weight, but you feel like shit...what do you do? Similarly, you go to the gym and feel awesome so you do 3x5 at the desired weight, and it was easy. In both cases you've given yourself a suboptimal training stimulus-one is too much and one is too little, respectively. You can see that having 2-3 sessions a week that are too much might build up a significant amount of fatigue that cannot be dissipated quickly enough for your weekend excursions given your current level of recovery capacity. This doesn't mean you need to train less, just more intuitively for a period while you build your work capacity.

At the end of the day, I do not think there has to be much of a sacrifice between being "strong" and being "active", unless you want to achieve high levels (relative to your individual potential and resources to do so) at either, in which case you'll have to choose. This is analogous to my response to CrossFitters who say 'I want to be good at everything'...."you can't, period."

[sbhikes]

I guess I will just keep plugging along. The alternative appears to be quit hiking and focus on lifting only, or quit hiking and add intervals or pushing a prowler. When do I get to enjoy my weekends? Sorry honey, I can't go on a trip with you this weekend I have to push a prowler for 20 minutes. Is slow sub-optimal progress really that bad? Maybe my progress should be even slower so I CAN enjoy my life.

[Jordan Feigenbaum]

The alternative appears to be quit hiking and focus on lifting only, or quit hiking and add intervals or pushing a prowler.

That is not what I suggested. I suggested you need to train more effectively for your goals, which will require doing some things a bit differently than your present setup.

When do I get to enjoy my weekends?

Right now? I don't know..I don't typically train on the weekends (nor do any of my clients- even those with higher conditioning requirements) UNLESS there's a scheduling problem, i.e. it's easier for them to train Saturday vs. Wednesday or similar.

Is slow sub-optimal progress really that bad? Maybe my progress should be even slower so I CAN enjoy my life.

You're stating that your progress is slow, sub optimal, and you're not attaining the desired outcomes. To me that means you need some change in the input to get a change in the output. Progress may or may not be faster with respect to strength acquisition with a different training plan, but at least you'd be less sore (likely) and have better weekends, which seem to be pretty important.

The sum of this, in my opinion, is that you're unhappy with your current training's results and thus, an intelligent change is warranted.