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Thread: Yard work and lifting

  1. #11
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    • starting strength seminar april 2024
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    Best conditioning I had was a pile of absolutely filthy fill (rocks, glass, beer cans) in the back yard. Two months or so, four hours every Saturday with a pickaxe, shovel, screen, and wheelbarrow to reduce a roughly three cubic yard mound to fill holes and create drainage.

  2. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by DeanT View Post
    I use the HR monitor every time I am on the bike or running. I have used it when lifting and during yard work but don't use it any longer.

    Metrics:
    1) Lifting - weight on the bar so 1rm for the 4 main lifts.
    2) Cardio - body fat percentage and weight on the scale
    3) Yard work - curb appeal

    For the past 2 years, I have tried to use eating and cardio to build the body that I want. I have learned that if you want to get under 15% bf, you need have a training plan...just like getting stronger. If yard work was a significant contributor to metric #2, I wouldn't need so much additional cardio in my life to stay at or under 15%.
    I don't think you and I have a shared agreement of what metrics, cardio, and conditioning mean.

    Here are what I think they mean, plus a few other points we seem not to have in common. At least at our respective points in our lives and our differing objectives.

    Metrics: Hard numbers. In the case of general activities in this discussion, how much weight, how long, how many calories burned, what (if any % of Maximum Heart Rate [MHR]) a given episode of activities might contribute to conditioning objectives.

    Cardio: An activity intentionally engaged in that elevates the heart rate (HR) to levels from 50% - 70% (LISS), 70% - 85% (moderate intensity), and 85% + (high intensity). Now mind you, I'm referring to classification tables that have been around since the 80's. I know there have been some changes since then, like LISS, which was regarded as something lower than whale shit back then when I was in my 30's. But AFAIK, these tables are still the way cardiovascular conditioning is assessed and classified. If you know better, hey, let me know. I'd be interested in knowing about something new and evaluating it.

    Conditioning: Becoming fit enough to undertake medium to longer term continuous or episodic repetitive activities of low to vigorous intensity.

    So how do we arrive at activities that elevate HR that provide an effect on conditioning? We do things. Do those things contribute anything? Maybe, maybe not. So we use sensors and the measurements and the metrics those sensors provide to evaluate the numbers against the classification tables and factor in the time factors needed or useful to produce a training effect. Again, if you know something different, fill me in. I'm going on information I've gleaned, collected, and evaluated over the last 50 years. But then I'm not an exercise physiologist or an SSC. So maybe I'm wrong about this and working on dated or erroneous information.

    You're younger than I am, so you have to work way harder to get your HR into a training range you are looking to achieve. At 67, me? Not so much. My resting heart rate (RHR) is in the mid to upper 60's in bpm and my MHR is 153 bpm (Karvonen Method). This is a narrow gap to bridge especially if you look at the simple math involved. Which goes double when you are not and never have been an ultramarathoner with a low RHR. My RHR was in the mid 40's when I was in my 30's, and so time marches on and such things do not remain the same as you age. As you yourself may discover.

    You seem to be conflating cardio with bodyfat and bodyweight as measured on a scale. Cardio can burn enough calories to lose bodyweight and bodyfat, and from the more recent research I have done, LISS seems to burn bodyfat better than HIIT. But then experts and advocates for both differ and contradict each other. In any event, your focus on 15% bodyfat seems more focused on aesthetics than conditioning. And that's fine too, if that's your primary objective. But it seems to me that cardio is not about bodyfat.

    But when you get to my age and perhaps even well before then, you want to keep your heart healthy for longevity. Then too, I have my balancing act to maintain. Lifting, teaching and learning martial arts, tossing shit in the highland games, and conditioning is a tough bit of juggling at any age. The highland games is mainly for fun and a new challenge in my latter years. The other stuff is to live a good, long life effectively and safely.

  3. #13
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    Sep 2016
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    Cool...I was a bit frustrated/hijacked with your hard work quip.

    I use cardio as a means to an end. For me, the end is: faster MX lap times, faster averages in cycling races, more air when snowboarding, better legs during soccer games and the ability to out run my 16 year old boys. 15% is a magic number with regards to body fat and performance for me. If I can maintain this percentage, I perform better at everything I love to do. If cardio didn't allow me to do these things better, I would avoid it like the plague. Yard work hasn't helped with any of these things in the past 18 years. YMMV

  4. #14
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    My sincere apologies for having given offense. That was not my intention.

  5. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by SteveL View Post
    I found if I do yard work first it messes up my training session. So I train first and then I do yard work. Sometimes that means I don't get it all done but that's okay I got the 1st priority first. I can come back the next couple of days and finish up any yard work I didn't manage to do. I also find I usually can get all the yard work done even if I train first but not the other way around.
    Steve has it right - lift first, yard work with the energy you have left. I have acreage, where I spend a lot of time tractoring, cutting and dragging trees, and many other things. I consider all that to be a demonstration of work capacity developed by strength training. Climbing on and off a tractor, lifting a felled tree on sloping ground and holding it to tie a chain around it, etc., all that work from different angles using less trained muscles develops a kind of fatigue that sucks the ambition to train right out of me. However, if I train first, I'm usually amazed at what I have left for yard work. Probably due to the submax loading and utilization of different muscles. I'll bet you find this true as well!

  6. #16
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    starting strength coach development program
    Thanks for the input

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