Quote:
Originally Posted by kaby
Hi guys,
I currently lift thrice a week, climb twice a week and play tennis once a week
Most often it's like
lift mon/wed/fri
climb tue & sat
tennis monday evening
I can't really do everything at full intensity and lifting is the least important to me. Now I just skip a lift day if I feel tired, but that messes up the habit, so I'd like to go but do less. I do starting strength
What would be best for an easy "keep the habit going" day? 3x5 but at significantly lower weights, or fewer reps at the same weight (2x3 or whatever?), or some compromise of that?
Downside of 3x5 with lower weights is that it might mess up my form/feel for heavier weights, but otoh fewer reps at the same weight might be harder on the body/impact recovery more?
Historically, tons of guys have gotten massively huge and strong training each movement once a week for a single work set. Squatting multiple times a week, or a massive volume of conventional deadlifts or high intensity assistance work, would seem counter towards your goals. However, if you were to go in once or twice a week for 45-60 minutes and perform just a few exercises with warmup sets to one high intensity work set, you could probably continue making gains at those exercises while reducing overall training strain and time.
Another approach would be to keep a 3-5x5 type approach and just reduce everything to once a week. Cut out any stressful assistance and stick to a few core exercises. At that point you could roughly maintain strength, or keep pushing for gains: would be up to you. I would let fatigue determine effort.
Cutting out full deadlifts can help a lot too. Reducing to <5 reps for your max work set(s) could help.
I've had similar problems to yours and ultimately cutting way back on the heavy lifting makes a world of difference. Lots of lifting is pretty bad for climbing too, from everything I've read and seen
Jeff