Guten Abend.
Has anyone tried doing single-set heavy weight training back-to-back after their bike workouts? How did that work for you?
Here’s the background: the back end of last year has been pretty exciting: we bought a house in September and got a baby in November. Even before we moved and the baby arrived, my training suffered - primarily from emotional stress and life changes related anxiety. My primary (training-related) problem now is that I can no longer do double-days with strength work and bike workouts. It’s just too much. Now, I tried switching to a low volume masters plan and organised my week like this:
Tue - off
Wed - bike hard
Thu - strength full body (15 work sets + core work)
Fri - off
Sat - bike hard
Sun - bike endurance
Mon - strength full body
This is me trying to be sensible - it didn’t feel good: a) I felt like my bike training didn’t progress b) I missed the stress release I get from riding (I like lifting, but it’s simply not the same). Also I’m gaining/retaining weight if I don’t change the amount of food I had consumed on a higher volume plan… Some of the weight visibly is muscle mass, but there is also some belly fat that wasn’t there before.
So, what I want to try now is doing single-set weight training in combination with a mid-volume training plan. My impression is that single-set training does not have a huge toll in terms of muscle soreness and fatigue on me (I’m not telling anyone to do this). The training effect is hard to gauge though. I looked for articles on single-set training, and they were promising in terms of the effects of single-set training on strength gain and muscle-growth. The problem is that these articles did not focus on athletes and certainly not on the back-to-back combination with bike workouts. Still, I think this is worth running a little trial on myself.
The plan now looks like:
Mon off
Tue bike hard + strength I (5-10 reps squats, 5-10 reps deadlift, twist with rotation)
Wed bike easy + strength II (dips and chin-ups to exhaustion (ridiculously low), standing twist)
Thu bike hard + strength I
Fri off
Sat bike hard + strength III (TRX push-ups, TRX row wide, cycle crunches)
Sun bike endurance
The heavy lifting, squats and deadlift, is done till proper form cannot be maintained (let’s call it failure). My trainer lives next to my squat cage - so no additional time is invested in going to the gym etc
I want to monitor the following:
- long term maintainability
- on-the-bike performance
- will I effectively stop lifting altogether when I do “very hard” and “all out” workouts and have to skip strength training? (I’m only in base now)
- will it be possible to maintain the current level of strength?
- (how) will my motivation to train change?
- body composition
If any of you have tried something similar, I’d be interested to hear what your experiences have been.