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More Time To Get Fit - 2025

Sharxfan said:
Farmer walks for the win. I need to get back into doing those.

My frustration is when one week I can do 2 sets of 8 reps of a weight. Then the next week I can barely do 4 reps, then next week 7 reps then back to 4 or 5 with no apparent reason why I am losing strength.
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As we age our recovery/rebuild times get longer. Maybe you need a little more time between repeat work outs or more variety. I'm watching my 14 year old boy do a set and grow overnight. It's awesome and annoying. :laughing
 
Sharxfan said:
Farmer walks for the win. I need to get back into doing those.

My frustration is when one week I can do 2 sets of 8 reps of a weight. Then the next week I can barely do 4 reps, then next week 7 reps then back to 4 or 5 with no apparent reason why I am losing strength.
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Might be a recovery issue. Anytime you're making gains, you're breaking cells down and recovery either rebuilds or replaces them. Sufficient protein (among other things) is needed for recovery along with sufficient sleep which is when your body actually repairs itself.
 
My lifting everything changes considerably if I’m not consistent. I must do 2 days a week of similar workouts to maintain the rep count, weight, RPE, and soreness resistance - def the soreness resistance. If I miss a week, or do only once a week, or switch to completely diff exercises, I’ll need to build back up to where I was. It sucks. I miss one week and then I have to cut the weight almost in half to prevent getting hit by crazy DOMS. I don’t know why my body does this. Maybe it’s because I’m burning so much recovery doing other things. Maybe my cells just are built like this. Maybe it’ll go away in another year of lifting.

Aside from that…

I’ve spent the fall and early winter working on my hips. I’ve kept up with deadlift in various forms but haven’t really pushed the weight. Today I put on 205#. Last time I did 205, maybe 3months ago, I remember 3 reps at RPE9. Today was 6 reps at RPE7 🥳. It almost feels like free gains. The coach and I both thought my hips were a weak point and this seems to confirm it.
 
Random supplement thing I recently learned.

High doses of vitamin C will probably reduce gains for endurance athletes. Vit C is an antioxidant. Antioxidants reduce oxidative stress. Oxidative stress is caused by endurance exercise and is what causes your body to make changes to get stronger. Less stress can equal smaller gains.

Results in the studies included below were seen at 1000mg/day.

I dosed VitC hard because I was sick for too long. I also remember reading that it improved sleep - so win/win right? Maybe, but don’t keep taking it once you start training again.

 
Oxidative stress is bad stuff though for fueling almost all chronic diseases. From my view (which is, not an endurance athlete), the juice isn't worth the squeeze there. I knew antioxidants were beneficial to reduce stressors, but never thought about the inverse...and knew nothing of the endurance benefits. Tough choice there though.
 
Pretty sure I get enough protein but the thing is I rarely miss chest day but I do miss other days and am wondering if maybe its those days I miss that are causing the issue. Haven't really changed anything exercise or diet wise so its just strange about the loss in lift strength. I did start doing casein protein the nights I go to the gym to try and help with muscle repair but this kind of came out of nowhere. I was making decent gains and then seemed to hit a plateau then was trying to power through it and then it suddenly started going down. now I did have a B-Day recently and hit the big 53 but that was months ago and again nothing major changed outside of that so still wondering WTF. changing routine this week to the whole body workout and maybe will revisit straight lifts in a bit to see if maybe it was just a body adjusted to the workout thing. although Ohio daughter will be down this week and next so it may throw workout routine out of whack as I will be spending a lot of time doing things with her.

love this group as it helps keep me focused and you never know where the next best nugget of info will come from as everyone contributes and I am always learning new things from the peeps in here. Can't wait for the 2026 thread.
 
stangmx13 said:
Random supplement thing I recently learned.

High doses of vitamin C will probably reduce gains for endurance athletes. Vit C is an antioxidant. Antioxidants reduce oxidative stress. Oxidative stress is caused by endurance exercise and is what causes your body to make changes to get stronger. Less stress can equal smaller gains.

Results in the studies included below were seen at 1000mg/day.

I dosed VitC hard because I was sick for too long. I also remember reading that it improved sleep - so win/win right? Maybe, but don’t keep taking it once you start training again.

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In regards to high doses of vitamin C, for myself I discovered after 8 years and 6 kidney stones during that time that it can cause, in some people, kidney stones. Never had them before or after stopping taking 2 1,000 mg vitamin C pills (chewable, from costco), it's been 18 years since my last one and after I stopped taking vitamin C supplements.
 
Sharxfan said:
Pretty sure I get enough protein but the thing is I rarely miss chest day but I do miss other days and am wondering if maybe its those days I miss that are causing the issue. Haven't really changed anything exercise or diet wise so its just strange about the loss in lift strength. I did start doing casein protein the nights I go to the gym to try and help with muscle repair but this kind of came out of nowhere. I was making decent gains and then seemed to hit a plateau then was trying to power through it and then it suddenly started going down. now I did have a B-Day recently and hit the big 53 but that was months ago and again nothing major changed outside of that so still wondering WTF. changing routine this week to the whole body workout and maybe will revisit straight lifts in a bit to see if maybe it was just a body adjusted to the workout thing. although Ohio daughter will be down this week and next so it may throw workout routine out of whack as I will be spending a lot of time doing things with her.

love this group as it helps keep me focused and you never know where the next best nugget of info will come from as everyone contributes and I am always learning new things from the peeps in here. Can't wait for the 2026 thread.
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“Missed days” and “try to power through it” seems like it would cause exactly what you are feeling. I have to lower my expectations every time I miss a day.

IMO you may also want to look into your set count and length. 2x8 is what I do with medium weights with exercises that aren’t the focus. I never see gains with 2x8, just maintenance. And if I do heavy weight, x8 gets too close to failure which is unnecessary fatigue. 3x10 medium weight and 3x6 heavy weight are my most common counts for the important lifts of a workout.
 
stangmx13 said:
Random supplement thing I recently learned.

High doses of vitamin C will probably reduce gains for endurance athletes. Vit C is an antioxidant. Antioxidants reduce oxidative stress. Oxidative stress is caused by endurance exercise and is what causes your body to make changes to get stronger. Less stress can equal smaller gains.

Results in the studies included below were seen at 1000mg/day.

I dosed VitC hard because I was sick for too long. I also remember reading that it improved sleep - so win/win right? Maybe, but don’t keep taking it once you start training again.

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Interesting. I don't take vitamin C as a supplement however, I do eat a lot of citrus and other fruits pretty often. A typical in season citrus day is at least 1-2 limes, 1-2 oranges and maybe a grapefruit if i have them. That's on top of blueberries an apple and maybe a couple of bananas too. I never thought there would be a downside of Vitamin C since you piss out the excess. I doubt my fruit bat eating habits will change but that is an interesting find about endurance training and vitamine C.

I got my year in sport. Down in every metric. I'm coping by telling myself that I just train more efficiently now so volume decreases are NBD. :laughing Copium is a powerful drug lol.
 
1 orange is ~70mg of Vit C, nowhere close to the 1000-2000mg that supplements provide. The article says recommended dietary allowance (RDA) is 90mg/day for adult men and 75 for women. The article concludes that people may see negative effects at 5-17x the RDA. I really wouldn’t stress eating fruit.

Year in Sport’s coming soon 🥳
 
Sharxfan said:
Pretty sure I get enough protein but the thing is I rarely miss chest day but I do miss other days and am wondering if maybe its those days I miss that are causing the issue. Haven't really changed anything exercise or diet wise so its just strange about the loss in lift strength. I did start doing casein protein the nights I go to the gym to try and help with muscle repair but this kind of came out of nowhere. I was making decent gains and then seemed to hit a plateau then was trying to power through it and then it suddenly started going down. now I did have a B-Day recently and hit the big 53 but that was months ago and again nothing major changed outside of that so still wondering WTF. changing routine this week to the whole body workout and maybe will revisit straight lifts in a bit to see if maybe it was just a body adjusted to the workout thing. although Ohio daughter will be down this week and next so it may throw workout routine out of whack as I will be spending a lot of time doing things with her.

love this group as it helps keep me focused and you never know where the next best nugget of info will come from as everyone contributes and I am always learning new things from the peeps in here. Can't wait for the 2026 thread.
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Plateau = break/ rest (at our age). It's possible you're headed into a CFS type situation. I'll run into situations similar to yours and seems it's brought on by lack of sleep (quality) and not enough rest in a given fortnight for recovery. Like all of us, I used to obsess over missing workouts, but got used to being ok with missing workouts here and there as it seemed the extra rest period benefited the next workouts considerably. It really took me being okay with taking small breaks. Our bodies don't heal as fast as they used to (on our own, at least), as I've discovered.

My thought is to try taking a few days off for extended rest, then go back and hit it again in a few days. Without enough rest, your gains won't materialize IME. I've been where you are (sounds familiar).

stangmx13 said:
“Missed days” and “try to power through it” seems like it would cause exactly what you are feeling. I have to lower my expectations every time I miss a day.
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As I've gotten older, my experience has been the opposite; "missed days" have proven more beneficial than not. "Powering through it" isn't something I do anymore very often as it's easier to get injured when tired/ fatigued and then, it's even more time off. Also, consider that your gains will best ours given your start date with resistance training. IIRC, Sharx has been at this for years and we're in the "muscle retention" phase...(which I hate admitting).
 
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In track, we have what we call mesocycles which last most commonly 4-6 weeks, then knowledgeable coaches have a recovery week to allow the tissues to recover, then we start on the next mesocycle with each week seeing an increased intensity. Track athletes often plateau if they don't get recovery weeks and such a condition often leads to injury due to overtraining.

A recovery week doesn't mean you stop, it's a reduction of the destructive forces that you put on your body. Stopping for more than 3 days starts moving you backwards. It's common to do a full warm-up then to keep the load light but it could be a 15 minute recovery run for explosive athletes or a 20 minute recovery run for endurance athletes.
 
Climber said:
In track, we have what we call mesocycles which last most commonly 4-6 weeks, then knowledgeable coaches have a recovery week to allow the tissues to recover, then we start on the next mesocycle with each week seeing an increased intensity. Track athletes often plateau if they don't get recovery weeks and such a condition often leads to injury due to overtraining.

A recovery week doesn't mean you stop, it's a reduction of the destructive forces that you put on your body. Stopping for more than 3 days starts moving you backwards. It's common to do a full warm-up then to keep the load light but it could be a 15 minute recovery run for explosive athletes or a 20 minute recovery run for endurance athletes.
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I try to look at the natural patters I fall into during training (its really easy to do when you track everything). There are defiantly weeks that I drop off after a few consecutive good weeks. The drop off weeks feel like its impossible to do much of anything. Over time I have learned not to freak out and just do anything little thing I can to move and feel good while I'm recovering. I have come to realize that the down week will end if i go easy and when I get the rest I need, I will WANT and be able to push again. We think progress is linear. Its not, like you said it cyclical.
 
I recently got on Strava and find it interesting that after a particularly long and hard pedal, it told me to REST. So I did an HR zone one mellow row the next day. As someone who can push herself too hard those reminders are much needed. I look forward to walking being more accessible to me soon (i.e. not hurting or exacerbating tendinitis) so I can do a bit more of that on days I need a mellow activity.
 
Holeshot said:
Well said Mike/ Brett.
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I've put in a lot of effort to become the best track coach that I can be, and that includes understanding training theory inside and out and that includes the science behind it, mostly from the sports science 40 lecture hour course I took.

I like to help others by sharing my knowledge on that. It was hard earned but beneficial for my athletes and the sprinters I help and train.
 
That rules Brett...keep giving it (free) here! I'm always a student...
 
Climber said:
I've put in a lot of effort to become the best track coach that I can be, and that includes understanding training theory inside and out and that includes the science behind it, mostly from the sports science 40 lecture hour course I took.

I like to help others by sharing my knowledge on that. It was hard earned but beneficial for my athletes and the sprinters I help and train.
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I appreciate the heck out of you. :love
 
lots to think about here and that's why I love this thread.

I have been doing more or less the same exercises for awhile now probably plateaued on them. Hopefully this new workout will spark some growth. I am looking to put on more muscle as I have slacked during my best years and need some now because dammit why not got look hot in that swimsuit. :ROFLMAO:

I might off cycle some things I have been doing for a log time to see if that switch helps also.
 
i invaded @holeshot’s gym today. it’s nice and after four days of not working out, i really needed that attitude adjustment. i get cranky without my fix. i used his rower, which says i rowed 3995 m in like 21 minutes :wow and pedaled on his stationary bike.

i got sweaty. i was gross. i loved it.
 
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