Questions on Combining Exercise and Exercise Variations

Some questions I came up with. Have a pretty good understanding of diet. Have a decent understanding of simulating muscle. Not sure how to combine the two, or what form(s) are best.

Cardio and strength training: Doing both in a day/week or alternate doing one at a time?

Type of cardio: Sprints vs Kettlebell vs Jog

Thoughts on bodyweight fitness/Convict Conditioning vs Freeweights.

How does age factor into all this? If age is a factor, can diet or rest overcome age issues?

I am naturally stronger than most folks despite minimal weight training. If I excel in strength should I focus more on cardio?
 
I'm gonna quote Mark Rippetoe and hope that's adequate:

“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general.”
 
A little vague, but I’ll bite. So you want to be strong/train to get stronger? Strong is pretty relative and subjective, what constitutes strong to you? Set the end destination up and one can reverse engineer pretty easily to get there. How long have you been training? If your training age is pretty young you can hop on a linear progression program and you’ll get strong(er) guaranteed. If your training age is in the 5-10 year range then you may need more variation-a more specialized program may be in order such as one of power athlete’s templates.

Standby switching to my laptop to type this out better.
 
Hopefully you see this before you type out the response on your laptop.

I do not want mass - I want strength and power. To elaborate (since I might be using the wrong words): by strength I mean the ability to pick up a heavy thing. By power I mean to throw said heavy thing across the room.

I also want the conditioning to be able to use that strength for longer than a set of squats. I'd also like to be able to do endurance-strength stuff like indoor bouldering/rock climbing.

"what constitutes strong to you?"

Fuck I don't know... Strong enough to lift a Honda Accord high enough to let a trapped person be dragged out.

"How long have you been training?"

I haven't consistently trained in anything for longer than a year. It's usually been on and off with me. Kettlebell swings and TGU's, dabbled in Starting Strength, back in high school/college I thought I wanted to be a body builder.

EDIT: Added some more, new text in italics.
 
Diet and nutrition are all over the place. What do you have access to? What does your body tolerate? What does it not tolerate? CrossFit does a really great job with their general dietary prescription in Glassman's World Class Fitness in 100 Words "Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat." Before you lose your shit about CrossFit advocacy and MuH KiPPinG pULLups, this is a dietary guideline not an advocacy of the program (although I believe whole heartedly in CrossFit). John Welbourne's Talk to Me Johnnie blog has some really good nutrition articles as well. He has plenty of Paddles and Plaques from capable groups hanging on his wall to affirm his legitimacy in the tactical s & c world. For what you have said regarding "combining stimulating muscle and diet," think of diet as your foundation that you're building your house on. If your foundation is dog shit the house sinks and gets fucked up. Caloric deficit will make you smaller/leaner, caloric surplus will make you gain weight. Calculate your basal metabolic rate that is what your body burns doing nothing. If you have an accurate body fat % from a scan that helps immensely with accuracy. Theres your baseline for being in bedrest to maintain your current self. Now you need to add or subtract from that your activity level and desired outcome. Consistency in your tweaks and amount of time you maintain them will drive your adaptations.

Seeing your new post meow---

If you want to get strong enough to lift a Honda Accord etc, your journey starts with a barbell. To continue the Rip quotes (because Rip is the fucking man) "There is simply no other exercise, and certainly no machine, that produces the level of central nervous system activity, improved balance and coordination, skeletal loading and bone density enhancement, muscular stimulation and growth, connective tissue stress and strength, psychological demand and toughness, and overall systemic conditioning than the correctly performed full squat."

Train the big 3- squat, pull, bench. Probably hop on a Linear Progression. Add in some O-lifts which will replicate your throwing heavy thing across room. Do sprint work on ergs, on the road, and with sleds. Avoid over complicating it, by what you've said your training age appears young. There are some solid programs out there catered to just this, I go back to fan boi-ing Power Athlete, but Gym Jones used to have some solid strength/endurance templates as well (F giving them money now, since Mark left they are stagnant cancer). Your body has the ability to ride these adaptations for a bit unless you're missing a testicle or some shit. Mass moves mass homie, if you want to get stronger and apply force to objects and things your frame will start adapting to those imposed demands over time. Myofibrillar hypertrophy is king and results in more contractile potential which= more ability to lift shit. This growth weighs something, but its usable mass. Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is primarily fluid volume generated by large sets of things, but a huge percentage of the gain is unusable to create contractive force.


Lastly, how to combine or how often? Some people advocate lifting and metcon on every training day. Some recommend lifting one day metcon next day. Some people train daily, some people go 3 on 1 off 2 on 1 off. It all "works," but it depends on what exactly you're doing. Everything costs something and we all must pay is something a mentor of mine often says. This cost of training comes in the form of degradation to your CNS and your musculoskeletal system. Every one must pay the man for that cost. Sleep is your biggest ally, diet falls in line closely behind sleep (gear is really number 1 or 2 here, but I digress), then you have all sorts of modalities to choose from that provide some what of an impact tertiarly to sleep and nutrition. SOO, how you mix them depends on what you're doing exactly and how YOU respond to the adaptations and how well YOU can recover from them given your daily tasks and routine outside of training.
 
Micro stess eventually adds up to micro adaptations. Which is how you get stronger/fitter/faster. In between those two states exists recovery. If you push too far in favor of stress it can eventually become more like an injury. Think of it like a good camp fire. Contained within a fire ring, it keeps you warm, you feed it wood and it continues to burn. You're cognizant of the size of the fire and never let it get large enough to be out of control. If you leave it unattended though it can very quickly catch the surrounding things a blaze. Then pretty soon your forrest is cooked. Pay attention to your fire and it will keep you warm.
 

Ross

Newbie
Quantified Performance
The best thing I can do is offer up resources as everything is dependent on your goals. I will also give you some advice that Ive experienced and things ive read/found extremely over my last 8 training years

-Physical fitness/diet is a lot of trial and error

-program design is a very deep subject that is hard to wrap your head around. It is best to follow a program from a REAL coach (not some rando social media person). Also, follow good program AS IS. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO CHANGE PROGRAMS. The writers have the experience and knowledge to program it all correctly.

-look up hybrid athlete and conjugate training method for good examples of how strength training and cardio are scheduled together and how they effect each other

-cardio is extremely important and will help with all things lifting

-best advice for cardio, don’t do sprints unless youre a sprinter. You would be asking for a pulled hamstring (ask me how I know)

-long slow cardio in zones 1-2 should make up the bulk of cardio and active recovery. Good choices are walking, slow running (nasal breathing), biking (airdyne), and rucking (or weight vest walks)

-all the HIT cardio was a fad and did more harm than good. Though it does have its places (but maybe only 10% of cardio training)

-your focus for longevity should be: strength, cardio, mobility, recovery

-sleep is paramount

-people dont overtrain, they underrecover

-recovery is dictated by your aerobic cardio base, diet, sleep, hormones, chronic daily stress. Just know that if you every try and do a “fat loss” that your recovery goes down...so plan for it

- best resources Ive found and have really stuck to is Wendlers programs, Ripptoe is good too. Kelly starrett for mobility. Breathing exercises for recovery.

-best programs Ive come across and that I use is Wendlers 5/3/1 (Krypteia specifically), and SOFLETE (love soflete)

-diet is pretty easy, just dont eat like an asshole. Keto is a fad diet and not for performance. You need carbs to support your training

List of people to follow and research:
RP Mike Istratel
Lyle Mcdonald
Jim Wendler
Dr Jon Rusin
Alan Aragon
Ripptoe
Strength Sensei
SOFLETE
Mountain Tactical Institute
Precision Nutrition



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