I recently started strength training alongside a trainer road plan. (Im new to strength training). The plan is three rides a week and I’ve split up my strength training into two upper body and two lower body sessions, alternating the other four days. So my schedule looks like this:
Monday - lower body
Tuesday - 1:00 intervals
Wednesday - upper body
Thursday - 1:00 intervals
Friday - lower body
Saturday - 2:00 outdoor ride (low intensity)
Sunday - upper body
I don’t have a full rest day, but I’m assuming that upper body days are essentially a rest day for the muscles I use for cycling.
So far (2 weeks) I get 4 red or yellow days each week. Last week my Tuesday interval ride got switched to a :45 minute endurance ride. I don’t feel exhausted or terribly sore. Will the plan and/or red light/yellow light adjust, am I overtraining, or should I just ignore it as long as I feel ok?
No, I’m not! As I’m just starting out, I’m using low weight, so very few sets are to failure. But each time I can do full reps without failure, I increase the weight, so eventually they should mostly or all be to failure. Is that a bad idea?
The next time you do your strength workout and go to enter the sets, click the “?” next to the words “Working Sets” and you’ll see this, so you should not count sets that aren’t approaching failure. Nate talked about this when the feature was first introduced
There are some schools of thought that say make your hard days your hards day as in on the interval days do your leg strength work them have a full days recovery.
As @Pablo_ie mentioned, you could combine two trainings into 1 day. For example, do you TR Interval workout first, and then do your strength training in one day, and have the following day be a full recovery day.
This is all you need to know. If it’s not interfering with your high intensity work, keep at it.
There are a lot of variables here. Different people have different tolerances for combining lifting with endurance. Some of it is muscle type related. There’s also what lifts you’re hitting and how hard you’re hitting them. Some lifts create more systemic fatigue than others.
Also, will say that you want to be working near failure but not necessarily “to failure.” 1-2 reps in reserve is generally comparable to working to failure on the big compound lifts (squat, DL). The stuff that isn’t risky to fail (eg, pull ups, bicep curls, etc) you should probably take to failure (and this includes technical failure, ie, when your form breaks down).
There is a lot of merit to this. The fatigue on the nervous system is real and doing this for a few weeks will land you in a state of fatigue even with proper fueling, hydration, and recovery.
Though we’re all human, if i plan to train 7/7 days a week I probably only hit 5/7 so it naturally fixes itself anyway. Remember the strength training is supposed to aid your performance on the bike. If the gym work starts to reduce your ability to hit the interval power targets, something needs to change.
‘Pologies if I’m off base here but can you use a TR plan that doesn’t have Z4+ stuff? If you’re new to lifting I think you should make that your intensity priority for three months, learn how to feel your muscles, learn what 1 rep remaining or 2 reps remaining feels like, etc. You don’t want to just go through the motions you want to learn how 6 reps vs 8 vs 12 vs 15 reps feels like physically and mentally. Do the higher intensity riding after a solid three month lifting phase. Something like:
Do what’s most important for you first. I am foremost a cyclist so I ride first, then followed by strength training. Also, not a bad idea to stack up strength training after an interval ride. Helps with durability. I am not a coach but will figuring how I can maximise my time, training, and performance.
Bad, bad idea based on a wrong assumption: you need at least one proper rest day, many need two.
Rest days and rest weeks are an essential part of training, and you should take them as seriously as intervals or a hard strength session.
Yeah, sounds like a bad way to do strength training.
You should periodize strength training and depending on the phase you are in, you have to vary weights (low vs. high), reps and reps-in-reserve. Listen to [episode 21 of the Dialed Health podcast]( Ep. 21: Programming A Full Yea… - Dialed Health - Apple Podcasts ) or look for one of the strength training-focussed episodes of the FasCat Coaching podcast.
This is a tell-tale sign that you are not doing it right: you are basically in the uncanny valley where your strength training has little effect (in terms of improved strength and power), but still leads to fatigue long-term. Just like some sessions on the bike (think VO2max workouts) are meant to leave you feeling fatigued afterwards, the same is true for some strength training sessions (scheduled during some part of your training season).
