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Re: Strength training for older athletes [patsullivan6630] [ In reply to ]
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patsullivan6630 wrote:
Any body weight.

I say 225 pounds is good 'nuff because most most men could do it without training but would hurt themselves or the soreness level after the lift would render them unable to do any other sports effectively for a few days. I would expect a novice dead-lifter to be able to hoist 235 pounds at a body weight of 148 pounds. You don't need to be any higher than novice unless you really want to be. It gets bloody addictive though so watch out.

For the bench press I would say between 135 and 205 pounds is good 'nuff for a man of any body weight. Many triathletes, because of the swim, will probably find themselves into this range fairly rapidly. Distance runners have trouble here because for many of them this will be the first time they are truly activating those muscles. As a personal aside, when I was 168 pounds I was bench-pressing in the 280 pound range when I thought that beach muscles were the most important thing in life.

For the hack squat and squat I would say between 225 to 250 pounds is good 'nuff for a man of any body weight. For many triathletes and runners this is probably not going to be seriously challenging, even if it does people tend to go from novice to intermediate quickly in squats, the body responds very well to them.

I did this analysis based on the idea that the athlete would be engaging in multi-sport activities between olympic distance and half-ironman distance races as the primary focus of the athlete. If it isn't then advanced dead-lifting for a man of 148 pounds is 380 pounds so you can see that unless you are extremely light then body weight in this discussion isn't quite that important.

This made me chuckle.

My DL started at 65 pounds and it hurt--adductors especially. My squat started at 65 and it hurt. I guarantee you that this still "untrained man" would have had a prolapse or shot a disc into the ceiling if he tried to pick 225 off of the floor even once. I still probably would. Undoing 20 years of desk work takes time.

But as the 5x5/add 5lbs every lift is working on a linear progression, those targets are within reach. The trick will be to maintain that strength or 90 percent of it on 2x per week once I get back on the bike/start running long. Either way, it's made an improvement in quality of life so I'm going to keep doing it.

owner: world's tightest psoas (TM)
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Re: Strength training for older athletes [rumpole] [ In reply to ]
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Two times a week on an olympic lift is plenty to maintain. In fact, a lot of guys will only do squat one time a week and when the next leg workout comes around they will do other leg exercises. The squat and DL are lifts that, when done correctly at 98-100% of max, shouldn't be attempted again for 4-5 days afterwards. If one muscle system (lower back, upper back, quads, glutes, traps) is fatigued too much the resulting poor form that could accompany that is dangerous when you are playing with heavy weight.

@stop2think: People progress on the DL and squat fairly quickly, it is not a surprise to me at all that your wife can DL 225 pounds. I bet if I saw her in a tank top I would notice her trapezium muscle was better defined than most women's.
Last edited by: patsullivan6630: Oct 30, 14 11:14
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Re: Strength training for older athletes [patsullivan6630] [ In reply to ]
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patsullivan6630 wrote:
Two times a week on an olympic lift is plenty to maintain. In fact, a lot of guys will only do squat one time a week and when the next leg workout comes around they will do other leg exercises. The squat and DL are lifts that, when done correctly at 98-100% of max, shouldn't be attempted again for 4-5 days afterwards. If one muscle system (lower back, upper back, quads, glutes, traps) is fatigued too much the resulting poor form that could accompany that is dangerous when you are playing with heavy weight.

@stop2think: People progress on the DL and squat fairly quickly, it is not a surprise to me at all that your wife can DL 225 pounds. I bet if I saw her in a tank top I would notice her trapezium muscle was better defined than most women's.

I completely agree with everything you said. Anecdotally, when I was active in endurance competition there was simply no way I would have received any benefit from continuing my strength training. Working full time, going to school, etc. I was concerned about fitting in enough S/B/R (and recovering from it) so that I could continue to improve and I think the vast majority of posters are in this boat. But I was in my early-mid 20's and had a very strong strength base so I also wasn't concerned about putting back on that muscle/strength as soon as I stopped tris.

Still trying to wrap my head around a grown man, no matter how "untrained", struggling to deadlift 65lbs. without injury. Is it safe to assume that poster fit into the older (much older) athlete demographic?
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Re: Strength training for older athletes [stop2think] [ In reply to ]
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LOL. No--that poster is me -- and I'm 45. Trust me--spend enough time sitting @ a desk and it's pretty easy to imagine.

Could I have lifted more ab initio? Sure. Maybe a buck thirty-five. Maybe even body weight with proper form. 225? No. What I was most concerned about was learning proper form with light weight so that I was lifting with my glutes and legs, and not with my back. A lot of the adaptation has been w/r/t range of motion, which was initially abysmal. I now can get my legs below parallel easily, and as the squat has improved the DL has as well. And all my back pain is gone.

Learning the DL (and re-learning the squat) led to being very aware of adductors, and I was really sore the next day. Once the soreness went away, the weight went up pretty easily, and my DL sets have caught up to the squat weight and now feel easy. I don't expect that to last much longer as the DL will overtake it in the next week or so, and soon I'll have to go to 3x5 on the squat to maintain linear progress or start eating a lot more protein.

I completed my first half IM distance this year (BOP). I can't help but think how much easier the training, recovery and execution would have been with a good strength base.

owner: world's tightest psoas (TM)
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