Squat! Heavy!

I recently came back home from a biz trip and while transferring flights I bought a triathlon mag at the airport. The mag was cool, lots of solid nutrition and training info.

But one thing sucked: the recommendation for strength program. It was a typical recommendation for triathletes: bodyweight lunges, step-ups, side lunges, bodyweight squats, etc. Usually 3 sets of 12-20 reps.

All these bodyweight lower body exercises are useful and necessary in training but sorry, they will not build strength. They are very useful, for unilateral work, eliminating imbalances, local muscle hypertrophy, hip mobility, etc. But they will not build any strength because the load is simply too low.

The aim of strength training is to build stronger muscles. Stronger muscles when contracting recruit higher percentage of muscle fibers and produce more power. Strength training thickens tendons. Applied to triathlon training, strength training means lower risk of injury, less fatigue throughout the race, more powerful muscles, more muscle activation, higher CNS activation.

But it has been proven both in science and in weight rooms, strength is best built in the 70-85% range of your 1RM. So if your squat estimated (or tested) max is 100kg (220lb), your best strength building poundages are between 70-85kg, give or take.

So doing endless bodyweight lunges and bodyweight squats will produce lots of useful things as mentioned above but not strength, sorry. You must lift. And quite heavy.

So, what might be a good lower body session focused on strength, unilateral work and muscle imbalances?

squat: 5 sets of 3 with 75-80%
glute-ham raises: 6 sets of 6
bodyweigt lunges: 3 sets of 20 each leg
dynamic side plank: 3 sets of 10 (for core work)


cheers :-)