Strength / Weight Training

Thanks friend

#CryLaughEmoji

Its a start.

Like creatine, its natural. Building blocks to muscle. Shouldnt conflict with anyones sensabilities.

ZMA is also a good idea as we dont get enough in our diets.

In fact, I've now reordered BCAA powder for pre rides/workouts and ZMA.

Latching onto your supplement discussion. Noticing that pretty much all brands prefer selling in powder form rather than tablets. Personally I'd prefer tablets to minimise the amount of faffing around.
Any reason, other than the measuring aspect, that tablets seem less popular?

My experience of good but budget Creatine tablets is that they are huuuge. I think the number of people who are comfortable swallowing large tablets is relatively small. I think the number of people comfortable with swallowing 10 to 20 large tablets per day (loading phase) is even smaller. Works for me but online reviews of creatine tablets are full of complaints that people can't manage to ingest them.

Photo is of a Myprotein creatine tablet. Its 23mm x 9mm x 10mm. Apparently some of the amino acid supplements come in even larger form.

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I know that you don't have to take x 20 of most other supplements, but this is what one day's loading phase worth of Creatine looks like in tablet form. Small brown tablet is a Fexofenadine anthihistamine for scale, roughly same size as a regular paracetamol.

I can see why people lots of people prefer powder. Tablets are fine for me though. Private school gave me a weak gag reflex.

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Ah.... gotcha.

For anyone interested in looking in to supplements, examine.com is a great independent website that reviews the scientific literature on almost anything legal you can think of. Great resource to cut through the marketing bullshit.

Ah nice, will take a look at that later.

I read the examine.com reports on BCAA and creatine and can't see that they mention recovery?
My main interest at the moment would be to find something that prevents the slow and gradual fatigue that creeps in after two to three weeks of daily work outs. Not exactly muscle soreness, I've learnt to stretch that shit away. It's more a kind of omnipresent dullness. Especially noticeable just after I wake up.

daily work outs.

Maybe add some recovery days

Sharp pain in the outside of my knee when coming down in deadlift - sharp enough to stop me deadlifting. Doesn’t happen lifting and weight of bar doesn’t seem to vary it - any clues / diagnoses?

Yeah... before the gyms locked down I did just three days a week. No issues with soreness or fatigue. When working out at home I have tried a few different approaches, but eventually got really great results with a daily routine of 48 - 50 reps of ALL the dumbbell exercises. Rotating them around so that soreness never becomes an issue.
But as mentioned, over time the hangover-like feeling starts creeping in. My best effort so far is three weeks of daily exercise (including cycling on the weekends) and then 5 days of nothing. But surely this could be improved upon?

For me personally, 3 good strength sessions per week is the maximum that my body finds beneficial over the medium and long term. 4 at a push.

I think your body is trying to tell you something.

I've been working out most days while on lockdown (Zwift and kettlebells). Approx every 4 weeks I just feel shattered and every day tasks feel like hard work. When this happens I just take 2-3 days completely off until the thought of exercise feels appealing again.
Most cycling training plans include a deload week, so maybe that's what you need. Pretty sure weightlifting plans do the same. It's all cyclical and you can't just keep working harder and harder, the body doesn't work like that.

Also, are you eating enough for that training load?

Also, are you eating enough for that training load?

Not sure? My thinking is that as long as there remains a bit of podge around my waist it means I average out with a calorie surplus. I could well be wrong here.

Its not so much that your thinking is wrong, its just that it is a lot more nuanced than that.

If your body thinks you're overdoing it or doing too much of the same thing, it will generally become less keen to burn fat. I know its a really tired cliche but "rest is when the good stuff happens" is very much true.

I see it’s already helped you cut through the marketing! It’s not mentioned because creatine doesn’t improve recovery. It improves performance. And, to my knowledge, BCAAs are just fancy, expensive protein powder. Like Examine says, it won’t help you unless you’re already not getting enough protein. If you are eating enough protein, they’re redundant.

90% of recovery is sleep and diet. There’s no magic supplement that can replace either of them (outside of steroids).

It’s not mentioned because creatine doesn’t improve recovery.

Quite correct. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3763311/

But the weird thing is that I am certain that I get less bad DOMS when on a Creatine cycle but there are lots of reasons that could be other than the Creatine itself.

My gym has reopened. For some reason gyms in NI are allowed to open already.

No need to book slots or mask up, will see how it goes.... Sanitizer and blue roll everywhere per their Facebook page.

I'll be avoiding the showers and classes the main area is very large and high so weights should be ok.

I'll keep doing the kettle bells once a week, some exercises seems to help me, my badly executed Turkish getups unlock my hips after a week of wfh sitting.

Finally went back to the gym.

Upper body strength wasn't too affected, but my deadlifts need built back up slowly.

Disinfectant everywhere, and they spaced out the spin bikes into a big room.

I'm sharing this screenshot of my supposed muscle mass according to Garmin scales so that I can warn other people not to buy the Garmin scales.

I've lost a lot of fat and put on a lot of muscle in the last year. The fact that I've put on muscle mass is unarguable. I've been strength training four times per week with creatine and the gains are obvious.

Quite how Garmin can think that I am losing muscle mass is beyond me. They cant even get the trend right. Even telling me that I've lost 2kg of bone mass in the same year

They're good at telling you your weight and that's it. The body composition stuff is just useless.

That dip in muscle mass at Christmas was when I lost 3kg of water weight when I had norovirus. Hopeless!

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Pretty standard tbh. Unless you’re using callipers, getting a scan or using some other kind of volume vs mass measurement, it’ll just be guessing.

I was just hoping that it'd be able to pick up on a trend rather than expecting accuracy. I guess it means that they really do guess based on your overall weight trend.

Unless of course I am somehow losing bone and muscle mass :D