Leg strengthening and overall balance

M

mackabee66

0
Hi there

I am a 47year old male. tall and skinny - typical ectomorph.

Been exercising for the last 5 years.

Current exercise program :- (all done at home on home equipment and dumbells)

Sun - Weights (legs)and stretches (30 mins) then Cardio (spin bike)- (30 mins)
Mon - weights (arms) and stretches (30 mins) then cardio (spin bike) - (30 mins)
Tue - Weights (legs)and stretches (30 mins) then Cardio (spin bike)- (30 mins)
Wed - weights (arms) and stretches (30 mins) then cardio (spin bike) - (30 mins)
Thurs - Weights (legs)and stretches (30 mins) then Cardio (spin bike)- (30 mins)
Fri - rest
Sat - rest

so 5 nights exercise a week.


I still find myself feeling weak especially in the legs.....

when i first started exercising i could feel the difference for a few years, but for the last 2 years or so it is hard to tell any improvement, and despite all the exercise the legs still dont feel that strong.

Does anyone have any idea on good exercises to build up more strength in the leg muscles used for standing and walking ?

Thanks in advance.

Mackabee66
 
As you get older, your body isn't going to recover as quickly as it did when you were younger. Perhaps you're doing too much and not getting enough time to recover. I only do legs once a week. What is your routine like? Be specific.
 
ThankS justin.

Some of my text got missed off..

Currently my leg weight exercises are squats, lunges, step ups and hamstring curls.

The other issue is that I am not putting weight on, despite trying to eat lots of the right types of food.
Is the cardio negating the strength I am building with the weights ? I was told it was best to do the weights first, and then the cardio after.

Specifics on the dumbells :-

LEGS
1). Lunges - 3 sets of 15 lunges with dumbells.
2). Squats - 2 sets of 12 with dumbells.
3).Step ups - 1 set of 10 on each leg with dumbells on small step up.
4). Step ups - 1 set of 5 on each leg with dumbells on higher step.
5). Hamstring curls - 1 set of 20 with dumbell between feet.

UPPER
1). Bicep curls - 2 sets of 12
2). lateral raises - 2 sets of 5 on each arm
3). Overhead raises - 2 sets of 10

Justin - do you think that if you overdo it then you lose strength ?
is it that the repairing of muscles, increases the strength ?

I dont feel that i am overdoing it, but as you say with age, it could be the case.
 
First will cover the main question. Does cardio stop you gaining strength? No it doesn't if in moderation. Running a marthon everyday, would mean your body having to catabolise any muscle it can to fuel your training but 20 or 30 minutes a day will not destroy strength. In fact increasing your aerobic capacity will aid your recovery and make your body more able to get fuel to the muscles when needed for strength training.

Weight gain is predominantly diet, the type of weight you gain will be training. found a photo of me at about 12 or 13 at the weekend, ectomorph doesn't even come close, skin wrapped skeleton was more like it.
Muscle gain is generally at it's best in rep ranges of 10 to 6 using rep max, so if doing a set of 10 and putting the bar back barely worked will gain you nothing, the last rep will need to be the last possible at that weight. Gains will be slower for you because of your genetics and age you are starting to go for gains at, but they will happen if you train for them.
Because you are going to be at your max all of the time you need to be totally familiar with the movements you are doing. If you want to add in some new exercises practice light first for a few weeks then go for it.

Weights first cardio second, I would say heavy first cardio second because you can make weight training cardio, but they are spot on. Heavy weights are higher risk and you have to be able to focus and have the energy to avoid injury, cardio is lower risk so can be done when already tired with lower risk.

The system for weight gain is summed up as hit it hard, hit it fast, leave it alone. You are getting the most common part wrong, not leaving it alone to repair then grow. It feels wrong to do this right, as you will think that you need to be training your body as much as you can. Reality is if the body hasn't finished repairing before you hit it again it will not be able to grow optimally, that is known as over-training. I won't be a hypocrite and say don't do this as I have been over-training for years and loved it, I know I could have gained more without it but I train for the sake of training not to be pretty. It comes to priorities, if results are the main aim leave more rest time, an example would be sun, mon wed, thur instead of your current 5 in a row.

One other thing I am wondering about looking at your post is repetetive training. Ideally you want to change the weight training program every 8 weeks or so to avoid the body becoming too familiar. The changes don't have to be drastic where exercises and reps are changed, it can be shifting from 3 sets of 10 to 10, 8, 6 with the same exercises etc.
As someone who runs the same route 4 times a week this is a bit rich but I would suggest varying your cardio if practical. I don't know which of these you enjoy but swapping some of the spin bike for rowing, jogging etc. will be useful.

Final critique is that your training is very uneven. You are not working your torso much at all. I know squats work virtually the whole body along with lunges to an extent, but you could do with involving a lot more core (not the body part) movements, bench press, deadlift etc. Deadlift in particular will work the main postural muscles you are interested in improving.
Is there a reason you have settled on your current program, injury, lack of equipment availability etc? There is a good post by goldfish http://training.fitness.com/weight-...efficient-split-maybe-read-first-3-34522.html which is sensibly balanced and good starting point. If it isn't practical let us know why, we'll do what we can.
 
Dammit Tony, you know I'm the go-to dead lift guy! 5x5! But really, Tony said everything I would have, only much smarter sounding. Any good weight routine sound focus around compound lifts, ex: bench press, dead lift, squat, overhead press, power cleans.

You do need to change your routine up every 6-8 weeks. Even if it's something as simple as doing the same exercise, but changing the weight and reps makes a world of difference.

And you can definitely burn yourself out overworking your muscles. Just imagine peeling a scab off of a cut every day. It'll never heal. I would recommend doing each body part once a week. Personally, I'm about to start a routine where I'm going to hit chest, back, shoulders, arms and legs over a period of 8 days, with a rest day in between each, in that order, then repeat. Maybe 2 days off at the end of each cycle, I'm not sure yet, but you get the point. When it comes to weight lifting, less is better.
 
The joy of being able to ignore 7 day cycles. I remember doing 555s then simple sets years ago working on 6 day cycle squat, bench, rest, deads, 2 days rest. Gained more power in that 4 months than at any other time I remember. I followed it up with pyramid on week rota so I was used to single reps ready for a contest. Unlike goldie I didn't win, or even come close to, but still got a national ticket and enjoyed it.
I should think my English is better than yours, we stole the language, you lot just had it handed to you! Now go say herbs 50 times and explain where those 'h's disappeared. While you are doing that I will uncover the justification for the spelling of through.
 
Thanks very much Justin and CrazyOldMan for your replies. Very helpful indeed.

I half figured that my routine was very samey - I have been pretty much being doing the same sorts of weights exercises and cardio (spin) for the last 3 or 4 years !
I also am aware that i need to focus on other areas - such as torso.

The reason I am in this routine is mainly equipment. I do all my exercise at home - i dont really like gyms.
I just have dumbbell weights (8kgs on each dumbbell) and a spin bike.
I am thinking of getting a rowing machine. This will give me that extra variety then for the cardio that you mentioned.

I also half guessed that i might be overtraining. I do 5 nights (sun to thurs) however there is usually the odd week or 2 a month where i dont do 1 weeknight due to social commitments etc...
I like the analogy Justin about the scab not having time to heal.

One thing i couldnt understand though was, I thought if i was overtraining that i would have sore muscles. where in reality they are not sore, just they still feel weak and i thought that regular weights should strengthen them.
Would you both say that over-training can actually cause muscles to weaken not strenthen ?

Anyway you have both given me plenty to think about and I know that i have to change my training program.
My key aim in all of this is to be fit and healthy with strong legs (i dont care how big i look) - i just want to feel healthy and strong.
(I used to have Chronic Fatigue syndrome for a long number of years and my exercise has made this a thing of the past thank god !)...

Cheers
mackabee66
 
The reason you won't be feeling sore is your body is so used to your routine it would be virtually impossible to achieve overload. I do squat, bench and deadlift every routine set but in different rep ranges etc. to get overload. The rest of my session changes every 8 weeks or so.
You have very limited kit but there are a lot of bodyweight exercises you can do, cue link from Justin, and there are other things you can do to increase variation and intensity.
Strong legs are not as easy as many will think. They are large muscle groups and need a lot of weight/ intensity to overload them and increase their strength. I train at home too but as you can see in my profile pictures of the play area there is more than a set of 8 kg dumbells, actually there are no dumbells but you'll get the idea. Intensity without weight can be large jumps, short sprints etc. but weights are, in my opinion, more effective so I go for them.
You will have people telling you that because your legs are working all of the time you need high reps to make them stronger, as opposed to arms which need low reps. Zoom in on either of the two and the muscle is a bunch of identical looking fibres, further, right down to the actin and myocin level they are identical and need to be treated the same, rep ranges 5 and below are explosive power, 10 to 6 are growth etc. Muscle is muscle and needs to be overloaded in the same way regardless if you want the same results.

I have a rower at home, it gets used sometimes for warm ups but I prefer running in the open air. Check out what you are buying thorougly, ours has a nice movement, but many of them don't.
 
CrazyOldMan said:
You have very limited kit but there are a lot of bodyweight exercises you can do, cue link from Justin, and there are other things you can do to increase variation and intensity.
Click to expand...

You rang? Your link, sir.



I have a rower at my parents house that is older than I am, and it's great. They don't make them like this one any more. I would love to bring it to my house, but I just don't have the room right now. When I lived at home with my parents, I would row 45 minutes every morning. If there's anything I miss about being obsessed with cardio is doing that every day.
 
Last edited:
thank you very much Justin for the link.

Do you have any recommendations for rower machines ?
I see that they do ones that fold up now - more practical space wise i guess.

Cheers
 
The ones with the hydraulic cylinders are more common, but the ones with cables are better for your joints. It's not such a forced motion with those.
 
Hi CrazyOldMan

You mentioned above about my training being very uneven and i am not working my torso much.
Now you mention this i can see this is definitely the case. I have been so focused on leg strength that i am missing the variety of other parts of the body.
You mentioned bench presses and deadlifts but i dont have this equipment.
Can you recommend any torso exercises where i can use dumbells ? I am now going to be doing the following plan :-

Sun - Leg weights and cardio
Mon - Arm weights and cardio
Tues - rest day
Weds - Torso/core exercises and cardio
Thurs - Leg weights and cardio
Fri/Sat - rest

the only thing i have to work out now is how to vary the cardio as at the moment it is all resistance on the spin bike which will be working the same muscles every day.

any ideas ?

Cheers
mackabee66
 
Routine timing is fine, might swap wed and thurs as most torso works arms hard but is good. Giving exercise suggestions will be interesting. You do have seriously limited kit which is not going to make this easy. Kind of hard to overload with 8kg dumbells but will give it a go.
Bench press is easily replaced with push ups and you can make this harder by going to your toes and putting thme on bench, sofa, bed etc. to elevate the weight of your body. There are so many body weight exercises that are a variation of the good old push up. To max out after 10 reps you can always use a rucksack with weight in it too.
Deadlift not so easy as there isn't really another version of it. You can do deadlift with 16kg total and it's still deadlift, but you would fall asleep before overloading the body. I do remember an old mate who used his furniture as weights, and he used his bed with things stacked on it for deadlifts, wouldn't have wanted to be his downstairs neighbour. It worked to a point but you really need a lot stacked on most beds to make this heavy, and it's a bit difficult with a divan.
Working the back can be done with pull ups, rowing or pull up rowing etc.

There are ways of cobbling weights togerther, scafold poles and buckets are a classic. Some will look downt their nose at this now but it was good enough before the shiny plates that would have been considered pointless excess years ago. I also tend to find gym snobs don't train as hard either, maybe having to work harder and think outside the box makes for more grit I don't know.
 
Cheers Crazy for the advice.
i must sound like an amateur to you ! I am thinking of getting more weight plates for the dumbells.
Currently as I say, only 7.5kg on each dumbbell - i am sure i can up that to maybe at least 10kg on each one.
Thought about getting barbell but my house isnt cut out for this (unless i do it in the garden)! - the ceilings are too low.
Will definitely give the press-ups on bench a go. I already do 50 push ups every morning - but i could do more in the evening too i guess.

I have been focussing more on the core exercises now like crunches and plank/side plank.

I had my rest night last night. To be honest i missed the cardio aspect. Dont feel as fresh in the head as i do normally after cardio the night before. I am sure its all for the greater good. As you say I have to let those muscles heal in between sessions.
Cheers
Mackabee
 
Comes down to priorities. If you feel better doing cardio daily and are happy to accept the slower gains, do it. I have overtrained for years and gained slower because or if, but thoroughly enjoy what I do. It's personal choice.
 
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