What's the minimum weight training to maintain muscle

[Nashtide]

The most neglected aspect of strength training and muscle building is the idea of intensity. How hard are you working when you're in the gym? Are you truly busting your butt? Are you resting too long between sets? I heard some really good advice. Find the hardest working guy in the gym and out work him.

 

[DragonBits]

Interesting thing that you're a cyclist. Let me guess, you go into the gym and do squats or leg press and then you can't walk the next day because of severe soreness.

No, I don’t get that at this time. Though I have been a gym rat for 43 years, for sure I have gotten this sore at least twice. It typically is really bad when you aren’t well conditioned, do a lot of exercise and get dehydrated / electrolyte in-balance. In one epic basketball game, we played for 4 hours in 93 degree heat, one guy went to the hospital, I couldn’t push down on the clutch on my car, we never did that again.

I was really super sore about 18 months ago, not sure why, maybe not well conditioned and electrolytes and low TT.

Now days, what will happen, if I do a lot of leg (weight) work I will be weaker for the next couple of days and not be able to bike very long. And I think too much bike riding would interfere with recovery from leg work. I still do some leg work, but try and avoid the quads / glute when I am focusing on biking.

Think of a bicep curl. Lifting weights involves concentric contractions (lifting up) and eccentric contractions (lowering the weight). Did you know that soreness only results from eccentric muscle contractions.

Biking in particular is almost a completely concentric activity. While one leg is pushing down, the other is getting a free ride up, so to speak. Cyclists can have huge legs and yet get destroyed in the squat rack because squats are largely an eccentric activity.

Likewise, most stories of athletes coming down with rhabdomyolysis end up doing it on the bike, in something like a spin class. Because there are no eccentric contractions involved, untrained athletes can push way too hard on the bike.

I never thought about it in those terms, but you are right, I don’t get the typical DOMS type pain from biking, though I do get a low grade pain / tightness around my IT band quad / muscles if I bike too long too much too often.

I never do classes of any sort, I don’t think I have ever gotten into the level of muscle damage to call it rhabdomyolysis .

But I digress. Getting back to upper body mass:

You have to lift enough that your body can adapt and grow stronger, if "more" of something is your goal (more strength, or more muscle). Adaptation means the cycle of stress/rest/recovery has to be built in. There has to be "enough" of all three of these things for the process to work. Not enough stress, you won't gain anything. Not enough rest and recovery, you won't gain anything either.

Some people love 2 hour workouts, some people want to get in and out in 30 minutes. For fast workouts you're forced to do compound exercises like squat, deadlift, cleans and presses etc. If you want to hit biceps and triceps and shoulders and low back and upper back all individually and separately, with special movements for each one, it is going to take 2 hours.

You'll get stronger if you lift very heavy with low reps (you fail at 5 or less). Powerlifters train this way.

You'll get bigger muscles if you lift with lower weight and do more reps (you fail at 8-10). Bodybuilders do this for size gains.

I usually spend 2 hours, but it’s really ~`70-80 minutes actual gym time. I have done all kinds of different routines, though never really done a HIIT type weightlifting with 30 seconds or less between sets on the same body part. More typical is 2-3 minutes on the same exercise, or at other times go from an incline press then 30 seconds later to a leg raise then 30 seconds later to a lat pull down, then repeat.

I tend to focus on strength, I would guess I am stronger than 70-80% of men in my age group. One of my weakest lifts right now is the bench press, and I have been working on my upper traps / posterior deltoids. My legs /abs tend to be very strong.

But most often I don’t do free weights and use machines, and currently I was only looking to maintain muscle/ strength, my main focus is losing weight aided by cardio.

You'll stay the same or get gradually weaker with age if you do a bunch of upper-body machines and leg presses and crunches in the gym once per week.

I hate to break it to you, but no matter what your routine, you will get weaker with age. I will change that tune when I see an 80-year-old Olympian competing. Best you can do is slow it down.

Thanks, you raised an interesting thought about biking being an almost completely concentric activity, I hadn’t fully considered that.