and maybe you were dehydrated / off from getting to your walking holiday, maybe?
I began a walking holiday yesterday and just going into town for some shopping had me completely out of breath walking up a medium grade hill back to the apartment. It was so bad I began to fear there might be something wrong with me. After a nights sleep we began one of the first proper walks, it was steep going for a couple of hours on tough terrain, but compared to the previous day I was feeling a lot better.
It got me thinking-not always a good thing-but is it the case that the body settles into a groove with maximal loads after weeks of regular 3 day a week training, which essentially puts the body into low gear in order to cope with the heavy lifts. Does lifting then provide sufficient general fitness with maximal lifts in some physiological sense, then it has to shift gears for the totally different sub-maximal effort of hill walking. I'm surprised at how quickly I'm adapting considering that first day feeling like death. Definitely going to try and fit in some conditioning work prior to future walking holidays.
In terms of cardio vascular fitness, just how much can weight training be relied on to provide sufficient fitness to provide a base line for sub-maximal activities given a couple of days to adapt to them ? Or is it the case that if we really need to add that into training ? Is half an hour with the prowler sufficient, or does it require longer sessions of CV activity ?
and maybe you were dehydrated / off from getting to your walking holiday, maybe?
Did you have trouble on your walk? No? I guess what you're doing is therefore sufficient. Many people have made this amazing discovery.
You should not confuse comfort while performing an activity with ability to perform. Ability can be maintained by strength training, but if you want to be comfortable walking up hill you actually have to walk up hill.
Totally agree, but that's not what I'm asking, which is 'is 3 days strength training per week sufficient for a base level of fitness'. I'm still mulling over Rips answer, which is indisputable, but I'm wondering if it's optimal. It's obvious that strength training isn't going to let me get on a bike and compete in the TDF, but is it optimal in allowing me to get on a bike and get through 25 miles at a reasonable pace, compared with training that isn't aimed purely at being the strongest I can be-which is surely making strength excellence the focus as opposed to 'jack of all trades' in which excellence is secondary to activity. Can I prioritise strength and make that sufficient for tackling more aerobic/endurance activities-Rip says yes, because that's exactly what I just did and it's hard to disagree with that observation.
I suppose I've never asked the question in reverse-"Could I have been better at an activity had I bothered to get strong ?" because I just got on and did the activity. As an outdoor type I walked, ran, cycled, climbed and caved- there was never a time I worried that I couldn't adopt any other activity that offered itself up.
But isn't conditioning a component of strength training? At least as prescribed by Starting Strength.
The addition of specific conditioning exercise. As I understand it (perhaps limited) conditioning because an asset as one's lifting increases. But if you're asking if one can just lift and meet a minimum level of fitness to be able to do most additional activities, I'd say yes.
I have always walked as a means of keeping reasonably fit, 3 miles a day at a fast pace, so, although I haven't entirely eliminated walking (I still walk 2 miles a day to the gym and the odd evening/weekend), lifting has become the substitute. I certainly breath a lot harder lifting a heavy set than walking on the flat, so I'm thinking it's closer to HiT as an general conditioner, but not a specific one. I think the answer here is to add a fourth day with rack pulls and prowler as belt and braces.