I think there are a few people doing StrongLifts as well as TrainerRoad here. I do SL Mon/Wed/Fri and TrainerRoad Tues/Thurs/Sat. Both really tire me, but I’m surprised at the difference in relative energy burn.
I just finished my StrongLifts B workout. I use the same chest heart rate monitor during lifting as during cycling, and my workout looks like this:
Note that Strava gives this workout a mighty 10 on its relative effort scale. That’s less than I get for a dog walk, and my typical TR session comes in at ~65. Training Peaks gave this exercise a 34 hrTSS score.
My question is how to calibrate between the workout types. I appreciate that StrongLifts is short periods of high activity with lots of rest between, and TR is an hour long, continuous-with-variations type of load. But given (a) how tired I feel and (b) that my blood pressure really shoots up during lifting, I think calorie burn estimates of training load don’t work well with weight lifting. Maybe the weight moved is itself the measure of interest, but just curious how other people cross calibrate between the two exercise types.
You can bodge it, and I do, using the ROE scale, if it was easy i give it 4, pretty tough a 6…I havent fot beyond 8 yet. Plug that into the TR calendar with the length of your session and youll het a TSS.
But it is a total bodge. Lifting heavy is not similar to cycling and cannot be measured on the same scale.
Apples and oranges is my personal opinion, and personally think 3 heavy days in the gym is too much for a lot of people to also adhere to a structured TR plan given the lack of aerobic days in the low volume programs. I gym once or twice a week and just add 50tss to the calendar as they aren’t really the same types of stress. Over time it becomes easier to manage both in a week.
Try make your hard days ‘hard’ by doing a bike session in the morn and gym at night to give yourself an extra day rest.
I used stronglifts when I started lifting ten years ago. It’s an excellent program, but extremely taxing. I was exclusively weight training at the time, and it blows my mine that I was for up to 5 sets of 5 at 305 during my workouts. The stronglifts program requires major fueling (calorie surplus for sure needed once it gets heavy), great sleep, and definitely minimal added physical stress. I think it’s a bad match with TR, you’ll be struggling for both.
I still lift, but much less volume then SL 5*5. I have a tough time calibrating as well, I can go for a max DL and feel pretty fresh after, despite 3 seconds of balls to the wall power. I think it’s apples and oranges tbh.
Thanks guys. I think the only metric you can usefully apply to StrongLifts is the weight itself, but I was wondering if anyone had made HR measurements work. For sure, as it gets heavier the HR measurement goes up, but as I said I can get a bigger calorie burn walking my dog.
I’m sure I won’t be able to keep SL up alongside TR for long. I know the StrongLifts author recommends doing nothing else, and I’m beginning to see why. Right now I’m in Lockdown and am just not getting as much exercise as I need, so think doing both will be OK until the new normal comes in. Given my biking plans have been blitzed for this year, I may focus on StrongLifts this year.
I have been doing off and on SL for a two years, With warm up sets and modified 3x5 with Pull ups and crunches added in. Garmin has me of a Calories around 300. if that helps
