... when you're older.
I've been working on getting ripped for my 62nd birthday in August. I set strength goals and was hitting the powerlifting hard. For example, one of my goals was 70# dumbbell curls. For my 60th birthday, I hit 60# curls, but in doing so, I wrecked my body so badly that most of the next year was spent recovering.
Not being one to learn from mistakes, I set out on the same journey this time. About 6 weeks ago, I was using the rowing machine and decided to jack up the weight from my existing max of 205# to a new high of 220#. I managed 10 reps and felt good. Progress!
Two days later, I had a long conversation with the middle of my back. It informed me that it would no longer function until I had taken at least two weeks off from the gym, consumed large quantities of pain killers and struggled to move without a lot of ouchiness.
Our youngest son, who is much smarterer than I am, had switched to hypertrophic lifting. That's where you max out at about 70% of your absolute max weight and then do as many reps as you possibly can, working your muscles to exhaustion. You give yourself 30-60 seconds to recover and then do it again. In powerlifting, you typically pause 2-3 minutes between sets.
Since you're not lifting anything even close to your max, the chances of injury are essentially nil. You can lift every day, too. The most I could do powerlifting was 6 days in a row, but after that, my body needed a couple of days to get ready to go again.
Assuming you do 10 reps when powerlifting and 15 when hypertrophic training, the total weight lifted is nearly identical.
10 * 1 = 10
15 * 0.7 = 10.5
The workouts are much shorter, too. The delays between sets add up. Most days, I do 9 exercises, 4 sets each. The time spent waiting between sets works out like this:
Powerlifting: 9 exercises * 4 sets * 2.5 minutes between sets = 90 minutes.
Hypertrophic: 9 * 4 * 0.75 = 27 minutes.
I wasn't waiting 2 1/2 minutes between sets when I was powerlifting, but you get the idea. I was shocked and felt a little guilty to get my workouts done so fast with hypertrophic lifting until I worked out the math in my head.
So I'm lifting just as much weight, spending less time in the gym and not getting injured.
Winning.
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| It's better to lift 7 cats 15 times than it is to lift 10 cats 10 times. |
1 comment:
I think you are on the right track. An exercise that you can do regularly and rapidly without hurting yourself, but that doesn't make you quite as strong, beats an excercise that theoretically gives you peak strength but in practice injures you so that you can't exercise at all for extended periods.
At our age (it looks like I am only about 3-4 months younger than you), I think we are well past the strength competition stage, and what is more important is maximizing endurance and keeping our various joints in good shape.
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