question on scheduling these strength training sessions: Do I have to schedule every session on its own or is there a “repeat” option or something like twice the week, e.g. Mo / Thu? Did I miss that?
Still seems like a lot of baked in assumptions (see Nates “you should do working sets to failure”) etc. - but I guess it’s a way to try to get some info on what the athlete actually did instead of just seeing / importing an activity classified as strength training. Can’t say whether it would be feasible / not annoying to painstakingly enter all this info into the TR calendar.
But what if they don’t get imported in the first place? I can’t find any of my strength training workouts imported from Strava (yes, early access is activated and indeed I can now find some hiking/walking activities imported).
So I’m not lifting to failure.
And I do weighted squats every session.
Should I avoid this feature, for now?
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As an aside, I would personally love for TR to implement strength training plans. There is so much information (good and bad) out there, and it would be amazing to have cycling specific strength training, that aligns with you current training plan phase.
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Have you guys played around with adding a RPE or a soreness rating to the working sets? I imagine that may be much tougher to model, but it would make this feature much more intuitive for users.
I would chime in as another one who disagrees that exercises should go to failure.
There are also ways to estimate 1RM without actually getting to failure, and then using that like an FTP to do a 1RM% for your workouts - there are calculators out there based on the amount of weight and number of reps done. This is what I do in the winter months - I do a 1RM estimation workout test, and then use that as a base to set my weights for subsequent months, adding weight as I progress. Something like this would be safer. Going to 1RM for anything is dangerous, particularly for many of us who lift without spotters.
I also agree that squats are important but need to be taught/learned properly. Form is soooo important, not just for squats but for a lot of strength training movements.
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I also disagree with his hot take of saying no one should do squats. Beginners should know they’re beginners and if they get injured it’s more likely from trying to squat too much weight. Sure poor form can also be a cause but it’s 2024 there’s millions of videos for free how to do a squat.
Squatting down to the ground or “ass to grass” should be a natural movement, imo. Humans have done this for thousands of years, up until recently. Where sitting in an office chair for 8-10 hours a day is now “normal”. Causing lowered crossed syndrome and many other flaws in their mobility.
Also going to failure on sets of any body part is a recipe for injury or overtraining. Maybe a better way to explain it would be lift until your form starts to break down.
As I said, if you leave 1-2 reps in reserve that’s probably fine too.
Squatting to failure is hard to do safely. I recommend using a hack squat or pendulum squat (if you have access) if you’re going to attempt this.
In general I think either of those machines are better for most athlete (but not all) compared to barbell squats.
I can talk about all of this more in depth in the next podcast. It will be a couple weeks until it’s out.
If you’re doing like 50% of your 1RM for 4-5 reps, then yah, I don’t think you should use this feature.
If you’re really pushing hard and going close to failure, then yes, use it.
I think sometimes we think we’re pushing ourselves but we really aren’t; especially in leg movements. Just recently I thought I was going to 1 rep in reserve on leg press. I found out I could do 10 more 
.
It hurt so bad but when I took myself to true failure I could go a LOT further.
Barbell squats are hard to take to true failure safely, so you might never know where your limit is because you rack pretty early. All the more reason to use a machine like a hack squat.
JoeX, if you’re not doing very safe exercises that you can take to failure or 1-2 RIR (dumbbell curl, lat pulldown, tricep extensions, machine press, etc) then you are definitely leaving gains on the table.
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That’s tough because soreness doesn’t line up directly with fatigue or muscular gains.
RPE is also hard for the reason I stated above.
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I might not be explaining what lifting to failure means, because it doesn’t directly relate to your 1RM.
I’m not talking about maxing.
I’m saying that you do bicep curls until you can’t do any more bicep curls. Aiming for 5-12 reps. Then bonus points if you do stretched partials but that’s probably beyond the scope here.
IE if you think you can do 3x10 @ 70lbs for bicep curl, and the first set you can only do 9. You’ve gone to failure on that first set.
For squats, I don’t think you should go to failure for the reasons I’ve stated in other posts. You can go to 1-2 RIR (reps in reserve) and get the same benefit. If you leave more RIR than that, you are leaving a lot of gains on the table. There are many studies that show this.
As someone said above, there’s a meta analysis that shows that going to failure has an exponential increase in gains compared to leaving a few RIR. I don’t think everyone agrees with that meta analysis but it’s largely been accepted by the lifting community (take that for what it is).
What I have seen is that your lifting sessions have to be intense. You can’t do 3x10 when you could actually do 3x25 and expect significant gains. That’s what we’re getting at for having failure or near failure (1-2 RIR).
As far as the squats vs not; that’s a different discussion and maybe we should have a different thread on it.
Squats have been the bread and butter for decades. Recently they have gone out of style from body builders to NFL players because of their higher risk of injury and the amount of neuromuscular fatigue vs how much strength/size you get from them.
If you want to do squats and you like them, do them. If you hate squats, don’t feel bad about it. Two great alternatives are hack squat and pendulum squat.
If there’s more confusion about the reason why lifting needs to be intense, or what RiR are let me know and I’ll create a video for this forum thread.
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I didn’t say no one should be doing squats. And Unfortunately, beginners aren’t the only ones who injure themselves doing squats and videos aren’t super effective for getting people to squat with good form.
I think there are superior exercises that offer same or better size/strength while having a reduced risk of injury, neuromuscular fatigue, and require less skill.
But by all means if you like to squat and can do it safley, do them.
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Thanks Nate, not sure if I’m going into a strength focus or not. Bike was my focus Q1 and Q2, now it’s running. Thinking of going into a strength focus mid Nov for two months, then two months swim focus, then back to bike
Look forward to the podcast, looks like you’ve already got a lot of material to cover but would be good to hear you all touch on phasing for multisport athletes.
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@Nate_Pearson until
you bake strength into the training plans, will there be an updated blog post or something to talk about what a pre-base strength block might look like, what kind of bike workouts to do during such a block, and how to maintain that strength throughout the season? If I understand you correctly the “lift to failure and don’t squat” doesn’t really jibe with the old blogposts which weren’t much help on periodization of strength training anyway.
I would enjoy this thread.
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https://www.instagram.com/tv/CerZpTvlfFY/?igsh=c2ZiNHk0MzhtMXdq
Saquon Barkley is only on of the best running backs in the NFL currently. He doesn’t seem to be afraid of squatting.
I would also like to see some post on what’s recommended for training phases and how much strength todo during each. NFL and cycling are 2 different sports obviously, unless you’re an Olympic sprinter on the track.
That’s a good idea, I’m talking to the team about it now.
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It worked for me, or google” Saquon Barkley squatting”
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You’ll need to schedule strength sessions individually right now. We’re working on adding a repeat option.
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Are those strength sessions manually entered in Strava? We’ll import only if the activity was recorded with a device.
You can record directly in the Strava app or manually add your session in TR by clicking on a day in the web calendar (soon in-app), selecting “Strength Training”, then adding the working sets data.
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