The Core

PSA from Dan John: "About two weeks after New Years is the best time to buy lower end gym equipment."

https://medium.com/@danjohn84123/building-your-home-gym-d1a4404b7573

Speaking of rep ranges.... 2016 and 2021 research papers show that for most regular people, high reps can lead to similar gains in hypertrophy and maybe even strength differences are not that great.

Of course, actual strength athletes training to hit a 1-rep-max have to train for that and thus need to lift heavy with low reps, but for most people, especially those who are relatively untrained, even 25 reps will result in gains as long as it is done to exhaustion. That can get pretty tedious working in those rep ranges though.

I have my own rep range;

Yesterdays target was the chest

Dumbbell benchpress

• Warm up - very light weight 6KG - 3 sets of 20 reps
• 10KG - 3 sets of 10 reps
• 14KG - 3 sets of 10 reps
• 16KG - 3 sets of 10 reps
• 20KG - 2 sets of 8 reps
• 24KG - 1 set of 8 reps
• 26KG - 1 set of 8 reps
• 30KG - 1 set of 6 reps
• 36KG (my max) - 1 set of 3 reps
• 16KG till failure

No science, just what works for me - it was recommended by my brother-in-laws brother

I then did an incline dumbbell press and then dumbbell raises - similar sort of pyramid setup

Then a chest finisher with dumbbell benchpress and dumbbell raises using 8KG weights, 6 reps alternating between the two exercises until I couldn't do anymore.

Note* I could probably hit 40 or even 42KG (on the benchpress) and do 2 or 3 reps but I've seen some nasty injuries which I want to avoid at all costs! People just pusing to hard because they think they have to!
Note** Stiff shoulders, chest and arms today - plenty of protein and water to repair and rebuild the chest area

I am not managing to train as often as was suggested here but even so, every once in a while I feel ... different. In a good way. Hard to describe.

My hand weights are a couple of pounds, and I found some ankle weights which I haven't used yet.

My main goal is to get stronger on stairs. Not feeling that yet.

>> have to do some scales

Side comment: When I was a teenager, there was a fellow in the violin section of my city's youth orchestra whose father made him "earn" his TV watching time with music practice. If he wanted to watch an hour-long show, he had to pay for it with an hour of violin practice, ahead of time. He could bank the time; it didn't have to all be on the same day. He ended up as one of our best violinists .... and he also became very, very selective about what shows were worth watching!

>> Piano will have less value

Much musical learning happens inside the head, not just the fingers, so there can be considerable transfer of skills between piano and other instruments, or voice. Developing one's sense of rhythm, developing one's ear for harmony and tonality, understanding different genres, reading music, etc..

It's all good.

>> leg strength

In our area right now things are so icy that even a short walk is treacherous. Maintaining balance to avoid falling is paramount.

I've made a trail in my pasture that I walk with my dogs. It's nice. One of these days I might run it.

That's a lot of volume! 19 sets per exercise sounds like a big mental load as much as physical.

Are you doing all those straight through?

I have modified slightly as I was struggling to much on my heavier weights - I pretty much warm up on the 10KG / 14KG sets and then go straight to 18KG and go up in similar fashion!

I've seen a lot of horror stories with muscles and tendons being torn so I am still not hitting my PBs across all exercises - I can feel I have another 5% - 10% across all exercises but I am conciously not hitting them until I feel comfortable to do so..

My scale is reporting the same number but a few days ago I put on a pair of slacks that I hadn't worn for a while and the non-elastic waist was Too Loose. I'll have to take them in a bit.

I had mixed feelings about that because I wanted to wear my "power suit" that day and couldn't!

I'm chugging on with my little routine, still mostly indoors. I am sooooo ready for spring!

My scale is reporting the same number

I thought of mentioning this earlier, but I didn't want to divert from the conversation on your strength journey, but... the number on the scales is one of the worst metrics of health and fitness and "losing weight" is typically a bad goal. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!!

A better goal is losing fat if you have too much fat (and most of us do, though there are people who need to gain fat to reach optimal health).

One great thing about your weight loss is that you did it very gradually, which means that your weight loss was probably overwhelmingly fat loss. That's a good thing. It is MUCH easier to lose a pound of fat than to gain a pound of muscle.

Many crash diets actually result in losing more than one pound of muscle for every pound of fat lost. Your body essentially eats its own muscle protein in order to fuel the processes elsewhere that require protein (like making blood cells and replacing cells in the heart, which are not optional, whereas skeletal muscle is).

All that to say that if your weight is the same, but your waist size is shrinking (or wherever it was you had to take in the pants), then CELEBRATE!

If you *gain* two pounds without the pants getting tighter, then celebrate again.

As we go into our older age, maintaining muscle is vitally important. Didn't you say you lost ONE HUNDRED pounds? Quick double check

gradually lost a hundred pounds.

I haven't seen you in a long while, but I would guess that after 100 pounds of weight loss which probably was mostly fat but probably involved some muscle loss (in general, if you go into calorie deficit you go catabolic and lose muscle unless you are both taking a lot of protein and doing strength work), adding muscle is probably more important for your long-term health now than losing fat, even if you haven't reached that pre-pregnancy weight yet.

So all in all, steady weight and shrinking waist is exactly the outcome you would hope for. Given how hard it is to add muscle at 70, you should give yourself several pats on the back.