I could swear this has been covered on the pod before, but I can’t recall the conclusions.
I have mix of activities I do. I’ve taken up swimming this season. Aiming for 4 training sessions/practices a week. I’ also bike, backing off a bit to focus on swimming. But aiming for 2 high intensity sessions a week to maintain.
On top of that I’m doing one of the beginner templates. On week 3, looks like around 3 days a week, 3h (little less).
And, of course, you need rest days. I try to get at least one or even two a week depending on how I feel. Inevitably, this means I’m often doing a weight session after an hour or more of endurance training.
Clearly I’m often doing weights in a somewhat fatigued state. I do try to put at least 6h or so between the two workouts. But it does have a noticeable impact on RPE and absolute lifting.
For example, my OHP sets yesterday. On the last couple of sets, the weight that I pretty comfortably hit 2x10 @ 8 on when fresh I petered out around rep 6.
Ok, so here’s the questions:
What impact does this have on the effectiveness of your lifts as far as strength gains?
Should we “dial back” the weight to meet the RPE or push to hit what we know we should be doing at the risk of coming up short?
First question is just out of curiosity. Second seems more important though. Like, should I adjust down the weight of that OHP so I can do the 10 @ 8 RPE for my current fatigue level?
I would favor doing your lifting before the endurance training, as it likely works better for both applications, e.g. better adaptations and performance in both compared to doing it in reverse. The calculus may change when the training load of endurance work becomes much higher.
I think you should ALWAYS adjust weight (up or down) to match the prescribed RPE, unless the weight is fixed and other variables (like reps) are supposed to change. For example, I’ve programmed 5 @ 7, do 3 sets w/ the same weight to RPE 6 before. In that case, the weight remains the same and the reps are variable. In your case however, yes, lower the weight (or raise it) as needed.
Good to know. This could take a bit of scheduling adjustment since I’d have to hit the weights quite early.
What’s the science behind “getting more from both” by doing weights first?
The topic of weights vs endurance first comes up a lot, particularly in endurance training. Usually people come down on the side of doing the endurance first. I think it’s seen as harder to complete a hard 1h+ endurance session if your legs are blown out form weights.
We don’t really know, but time after time, evidence shows better outcomes for both modes when RT is done before AT. Perhaps related to motor unit recruitment, but not really sure.
I don’t think people should be doing 1hr+ of hard endurance training very often, but that duration (or longer) would still fall under this guidance.
I do between 2-3h of higher intensity training. More during a VO2Max build, less during a base. But it’s not all dialed up to 11. I include sub threshold, but sustained work in that bucket like sweet spot. And interval threshold work. . . . subtracting out warm up and cool down time, it’s probably closer to 30m at threshold.
I’m trying to sort out “order of operations” b/t swim, cycling, and lifting. Sounds like lifting first thing in the morning is a good thing to try. Swimming coach said they’ll work around the cycling. So maybe try to get the cycling HIIT work in first, then let the coach know it’s a skills day in the water.