Do you lift heavy weights? If yes, how often, and do you lift to fatigue or a set number of reps?

So, Jim, big fan of lifting some weights. I do heavy weights only once a week where I actually get into heavy weights. For me, much of it is based around the squat and leg power, but I have actually changed to do some upper body weights as well, which I never used to. Reps, I do anywhere between four and two reps for a pure strength set, obviously starting off with four and then the heavier I get I would only do two reps and work my way around there. So that follows a long build up of getting there and slowly working my way to peaking about three weeks out from my main events in terms of pure power.

Greg, you shouldn't be asking these questions in between your sets, you're breathing too hard, man. Hey, anyway, I do heavier weights. When I do weights, I want it to be a real load on the muscle, because I do plenty of endurance work, meaning if I do sets of 20 or 30 reps, that's more of an endurance move. When I do weights, I really want it to be something that's going to give me a strength response when I recover from it. So sets of 12 to 15, not totally too fatigue. Rarely do I do totally too fatigue, but I definitely go to the point where, at the end, I'm like, OK, that was enough now.

Hi, Greg provided my own body is over 80 kg heavy. I'm kind of lifting heavy weights. Even when I'm exercising with my own body weight, but more seriously, I'm lifting all year long in the offseason. I'm trying to hit the gym twice a week, even during the season, I do at least once a week, some exercises, even though there are both, are not as heavy as in the offseason, whenever I hit the jackpot. Name, I spent almost two and a half hours exercising. So it's the main purpose is, of course, the injury prevention and also building the ability to keep the form in races lasting from eight hours to 20 hours. So, I'm trying to keep my body injury prone and ready to exercise for a long, long time. I usually start, With core exercises and like planks using T-Rex and all kinds. You can imagine then continue to balance exercises, where I stand on mobile board. I squat on gym ball. So that's the other purpose to keep the body in perfect balance and then I continue to Plyometrics something like Like box, jumps, like jumping jacks. And after this initial part, which is mostly done with my own body weight. I go onto lifting. I usually do repeats of three sets of twelve nine and six repeats. And as the number of repeats goes down. I increase the weight slightly this way. I warm each muscle. Little properly during the set and make sure that the last set which is 656 repeats of the maximum weight. I can do, the muscle is ready for it. And I don't get injured. I, whenever possible I prefer to do one leg two exercises. So it's like squats on one leg or calf, raises on one leg, and I don't do too much for my upper body, except for Of course. So out of the exercises for my arms and shoulders. I'm climbing a rope and that's probably it sometimes. I do running movement with my arms with 10 kg weights at the beginning of each of the session like this. I also warm up with 10 to 20 minutes on a cycling trainer or speeding bike. And I sometimes Times do 10 to 20 minutes of running, leather, exercises or jumping rope. So it's really complex session and it's very hard. It's probably the hardest section of the week mostly in the winter and I always finished it with something really painful. That's I call it pain Fest. And I don't, I don't look for the finish of this session because it's always two kilometers on concept to rowing machine, which I Row in around seven minutes or just slightly under. And that's really the most painful moment of my training week.

Do lift some fairly heavy weight, like triathlete heavyweight, not actual super heavy, because we're all skinny and weak. Nah. Just kidding. Well, sometimes we do somewhat heavy weight. When my coach Aaron Aaron Carson, she, she does strength for a fair amount of Boulder triathletes and really lift to an amount of reps. Always, we don't try to overdo it just kind of build over time. I mean, that's the same Training Concepts as and Swim Bike Run and don't want to get injured or hurt. Our bag. Just trying to increase our leg power and Yeah, just kind of get increase the muscle fatigue over time, sometimes. Yeah, do some shorter reps with the higher weight to really increase that muscle fiber utilization and really use kind of all the muscles in the leg and obviously increase power. So but the only goal of all that is obviously being strong on the bike. There's no point of just getting stronger in the gym to just be stronger in the gym. So I've known through some strength coaches. That some world champion triathletes were really week in the gym. You obviously, it's other things like your aerobic engine and things like that. That make you fast for an Ironman. So even though being strong is important, but it doesn't translate to running or biking faster or something, faster than there's no point.

I love weightlifting. I am convinced that I would not be fast so that weightlifting but everyone's different. Not everyone loves weights, different events, need different types of Weights. Some people need higher reps. It depends on your nervous system yourself, which you can learn a lot about the more experience you have and also listening to a year, wait coach, but I think that personally I love lifting heavy but my weight coaches always say, you shouldn't there's a time to build strength and go ahead. V beginning of the Season, build your strength up, but towards the end, middle to the end of the season. You never want to lift anything slow. So you can put as much weight on the bar, as long as the bar is moving fast for a clean for a squat. As long as you aren't like stuck moving. It really slow. It's all about speed. It's all about power. At least for me and my events and what my nervous system likes. So I definitely different for everyone. But for me personally love lifting weights, I left three times a week and I'm convinced I would be not the athlete. I am. Today without lifting. I love it.

Good question about strength, Greg. It looks like you're about to lift heavy there. I've done a little bit of everything. I've lifted heavy. I've done just body weight, but recently in the past year, or just a little over. I've worked with strength coach, Matt Panola. And he has developed along with Bobby McGee. There are three strength program and I have seen just this approach of basically looking at your full physiology and working on weaknesses, especially Specific to Runners and building up, just a strong core kind of peripheral muscles, so that when you're running your form, doesn't break down and this is we've done everything from like eccentric, concentric strength for downhill running into just even learning how to breathe while you lift. So I give a good kind of overall, understanding of it. But I've just found that through, you know, basically our like, a couple, our sessions a week. Week along with some just maintenance movements. I've seen a huge Improvement on not just like running efficiency, which is the main thing, but even on some bike power and stuff like that when you add in a little bit of plyo, so I don't lift heavy. We do a lot of like like eight. Like if you could give your doing to do 10 reps, as your max kind of leaving it about a seven ish. So you have a three rep kind of Reserve that you're saving two to three reps. So I have a strong belief that strength should always be supplemental to Swim Bike Run. You're not trying to destroy yourself in the strength set because we're not, you know, powerlifting athletes, but you wanted to compliment everything else that you're doing and with Matt pendel and his are three program. I've Just Seen kind of a better overall strength because it's very specific. So and you can see on some of my Instagram stories and stuff. I've gone through some of these movements and we use bands for resistance training and just a lot of things. To make it a very simple movement, kind of complicated, and get a lot out of a relatively short session, which is minimal effective dosing, basically, doing the minimum amount to get the max amount of output. So that's kind of what you have to do, especially when you need to be time efficient. So definitely look into the R3 program if you're interested because I seriously used to completely crumble at the end of my runs and you'd see I would Would have this form. That would basically have like a zigzag line instead of the straight line that you want as your running. Now, I can really hold everything together. So I've seen a great Improvement strength is really important for the triathlete, but for me and for the philosophy with Matt Panola and everything, it's kind of this minimal dosing without, you know, lifting super heavy.