strength training and cardio question

Firstly, congrats on your success. That's fantastic.

With regards to cutting down strength training, that's probably the last thing I'd do in your situation. Humans aren't biologically hardwired to be lean - it goes against our evolutionary programming. What this means is that once we become relatively lean and try to get leaner, funny things happen such as a reduction in metabolic rate above and beyond that which is expected with ordinary weight loss as well as muscle loss.

Especially in a females case (as you women aren't hormonally dispositioned to carry a lot of muscle), it's very important to take the proper steps to ensure muscle maintenance when going from relatively lean to leaner. These steps include eating sufficient amounts of protein as well as lifting weights sufficiently.

Doing a lot of cardio can actually be counterproductive for someone in your situation.

I'd highly suggest sticking with 3 sessions of strength training per week. If you do cut it down to twice per week, at least increase their duration to something like 45-60 minutes. If it would help, I'd be happy to take a look at your current weight lifting program.

If you're finding you need to do more cardio than you're already doing... there's probably one of two things going on:

1. Something is off nutritionally, which in your case I doubt since you've already been so successful.

2. You're expectations are a little "off." For someone at your stage of the game... results come painstakingly slow. I can't emphasize that enough. Especially for women, as they tend to hold onto fat and their metabolism tend to vary more than males. Remember, our "problem areas" are typically the first place to store fat and the last place to lose it.

Simply keep up with your balanced approach to exercise, ensure calories and nutrients are where they need to be given your goal and stats, and be patient.

I am responding so that I can re-read this again and again. I am also in my later phases of weight loss and it is really slow. I plan to increase a bit more my weight lifting. You seem to have a really good plan. I think I will make an appointment with one of the trainers at the Y tomorrow to get some better direction! I have been meaning to buy a notebook to keep track and you just motivated me to actually move on that.

Thanks for the post!

DD

Hi Steve,

My question to you is this: I'm currently training for a sprint tri to be done in late April. The training currently is all cardio--swim one day, bike the next, run the next, then basically follow that pattern with one day off per week. While I see significant improvement in performance in all three categories, I still think I should be doing a couple of days of strength training. The trainer disagrees. What would you suggest?

While I am enjoying the improvements I see with my swimming and running, I'm one of those who would like to see results in getting a bit leaner. I've reached a point where I'm not seeing much change in weight. I am 5'6" and weigh around 145, and with all the cardio, it seems like I should be leaner. I do pretty good with the diet, too, so I'm getting a bit frustrated.

Any suggestions would be very appreciated.

Jennifer

Hi Steve,

My question to you is this: I'm currently training for a sprint tri to be done in late April. The training currently is all cardio--swim one day, bike the next, run the next, then basically follow that pattern with one day off per week. While I see significant improvement in performance in all three categories, I still think I should be doing a couple of days of strength training. The trainer disagrees. What would you suggest?

While I am enjoying the improvements I see with my swimming and running, I'm one of those who would like to see results in getting a bit leaner. I've reached a point where I'm not seeing much change in weight. I am 5'6" and weigh around 145, and with all the cardio, it seems like I should be leaner. I do pretty good with the diet, too, so I'm getting a bit frustrated.

Any suggestions would be very appreciated.

Jennifer

Jennifer -

This is quite a common issue I run into - women who are training for endurance competitions who are also interested in enhancing body composition.

Here are some of my general ideas pertaining to endurance training and becoming lean (and remember, leanness is a function of shedding fat while maintaining or ever growing muscle). These are in no particular order:

1. Making a muscle grow requires specific changes in the cellular structure of the muscle fibers - this is related to anaerobic (oxygen-free sugar-burning) metabolism. Protein accumulates under these conditions, making it bigger.

Cardio, on the other hand, triggers muscle fibers to adapt for aerobic (oxygen-burning) metabolism and endurance.

This is an obvious clash as these two variables are mutually exclusive - they tend to cancel each other out. You can't have a muscle that's optimized for being large/anaerobic and to be energy-efficient and endurance-oriented.

The analogy I use is comparing a big SUV to a compact economy car. The SUV is big, powerful, and has horrible gas mileage. The economy car is small and not very powerful, but it'll run for days on a tank of gas.

I'm not saying everyone who does endurance training and competition is going to be soft/un-lean. Common sense and simply looking at the runners at a starting line will tell you there are lean runners. However, if you're genetic proclivity is to be un-lean, chances and not carry a significant base of muscle... chances are slim you're going to obtain appreciable leanness while training for an endurance competition.

Training to optimize muscle retention/growth you need to aim towards the big inefficient muscle. Anaerobic optimization is what allows protein to accumulate, making the muscle bigger and stronger - at the cost of aerobic endurance. Aerobic-trained muscles are going to be much smaller (smaller = efficient) and full of the enzymes and cellular junk necessary for that - which will be at the sacrifice of the contractile proteins that make up the bulk of a muscle fiber.

I should add that this effect is mainly observed in athletes that are trying to do too much at once. I'm not talking about a handful of 30 minute cardio sessions here; you can out-eat that. This does become a concern if you're one of those doing 2-3 hours worth of cardio several times a week.

2. Performance enhancement and high volumes of training require calories. Dieting, and thus improving leanness, requires a calorie deficit. They don't tend to mix.

3. Our bodies are only able to handle so much stress. Think of it like a sink with a drain. The water coming out of the facet is stress, which can be in the form of training, family life, busy work schedule, illness, anxiety, a lack of calories coming in, etc. All these things accumulate. The drain is our recovery from said stress. If the water is coming out of the facet at a faster rate than the drain can get rid of the water, we're going to have a overspill.

This is when injuries are likely, overtraining, lack of motivation, physical sickness, etc, etc. etc, pop up.

So that's a lot of words to say my suggestion would be to focus on improving your performance right now and worry about getting lean later. Make sense?

At long duration type events, weight training isn't likely to improve performance much at all. If you ARE going to institute some resistance training though, I'd make it two brief, full body sessions per week.

Thanks so much for the reply. I get what you're saying, and this brings up another question. I've had to work really, really hard at improving my endurance. When I run, the first half mile to a mile is agony for me. My legs feel heavy and tired. When I bike, my thighs burn for the first ten minutes or so. I don't understand this as my legs have always been really, really strong. I can press huge amounts of weight. My calves, well, let's just say my hubby marvels at how big my calves are. They seem out of proportion to my thighs and always have been. Are some people just not genetically made-up for endurance, and no matter what they do they will never be really good at it?

Jennifer

I was the same way as you with sports: sprinter, explosive. I can play basketball all day long and love doing every second of it. Tell me I have to run a 5k and I crumple on the floor in tears. My resting heart rate, the last time I checked which has been awhile, was 58.

Thank you very much for the feedback. I greatly appreciate it.

Right now I'm not lifting. I went strictly cardio to train for the sprint tri. The trainer who is helping the group advised us not to do strength training, so I'm swimming, running, and biking. I think I should add strength training. Before I started training for the sprint tri, I was doing P90X. I loved it and saw good results with it. Since switching, I've not seen the gains I saw with P90X. Maybe I should start back with the X.