I had been planning to go for a longer ride but had to take kids to a birthday party mid-morning so did the 2 hour endurance session on the turbo. My feeling is that it should be complimentary to short sharp thrashes on the singlespeed commuting to work since it’s a steady higher cadence for a prolonged period of time. Dunno if that’s true or not though
Tried my 10 sec spaced push ups before the party… Nup. Had to reduce to 20 secs for the last few.
Slipped a bit on diet quality mid-week due to travelling for work, and again yesterday due to not planning for healthy lunch. Don’t think I’ve lost any weight this week…
Not strictly. You need a strong core for squats as the weight goes up. With body weight it’s a good habit to get into to use a start up sequence which includes bracing your core for each rep.
Haven’t been to a physio for a over a year but they gave me some light exercises to do with bands, which didn’t do anything. Once I did good mornings to strengthen my lower back (against their advice) it felt much better.
I’m just aware of it again so don’t want it to get to where it was as it was very painful at times. I want to build a foundation of muscle (and carry on lifting) that can see me through more years pain free.
I should look more into the mobility side of things and will do some stuff from the Kelly Starrett link you posted a while back (though that’s not to do with sciatic pain so I could look into that also).
I was thinking, I’ve not really warmed up before doing the push ups, other than when I did them after being on the bike. I guess it’s better to warm up, even just by jogging on the spot for a bit?
I got my wife a pull up bar for her birthday (I know…romantic bastard). She tried it out yesterday. I was pleasantly surprised, I could manage 3 pull ups in a row- I was amazed I could even manage 1!
I don’t think you necessarily need to be warmed up but definitely not cold. Saying that a habit I’ve fallen out of is 5’s - one set straight out of bed, one set before a cup of tea/ breakfast, another set just before getting in the shower, another just out of the shower and before getting dressed.
Great, I love pull ups. So are you doing pull ups as in palms out, or chin ups which are palms facing you? Form I use is chest to bar, flex your arms and back and then lower down slowly - all the way to arms straight, and then next rep. Don’t get into the habit of swinging legs or catching the pull up with your arms on the way down and so not going full range.
Now you can do pull ups you can superset these with your press ups and you have the perfect bodyweight push/ pull combo. You can use your on the minute rest reduction on pull ups too.
5 sets of 5 push ups. That way you have done 150 push ups per week.
Yes you do one set of press ups - head straight to pull ups, then have your timed rest before the next superset.
You can tune pull ups to hit your back or arms differentially. I tend to keep my core stiff and hinge at the hip and bring my feet together and slightly in front of my body. This also stops any swing creeping in.
I am so much slower on the bike than I was early last year
I’m hoping that it can be explained by the history of how I trained (or not) last year, and there’s nothing underlying (asthma related for e.g.)
I was the fastest/strongest I’ve ever been in March last year.
Then…I got a bit carried away and by April was feeling pretty burned out. Backed off for a few weeks but never really felt like I got over it. Then, hit by a van early May which threw me a wee bit. Got the singlespeed to keep me riding while the geared bike was out of action and with hindsight was still pretty fit. I struggled a bit on the club weekend in Yorkshire still did a decent pace.
After middle of July I only did slower rides and avoided high intensity, then I think when I switched to the smaller gear on the singlespeed I probably wasn’t getting as much exercise, since I was probably only working half the time or less. Then last two months before christmas didn’t make it out for any longer rides, and just did my commute to and from work and also put on ~5 kg.
So, was probably subsisting on residual fitness from May to July and then slowly detraining to various degrees from then. Hopefully…
I’ve always thought that cardio conditioning has a ‘shelf life’ of about 2-4 weeks - ie you can build a decent amount of it up in that period as well as lose it in that period if inactive.
Strength on the other hand tends to last longer - lets say 3 months for arguments sake - yes your 1 rep max can go down slightly in 2 weeks if inactive, but the rest of your strength which is built into muscle fibre diameter and neuro firing adaptation, goes down much more slowly.
