I read this thread with great interest (thanks everyone), it is all very mysterious to me. I'll have a listen to Pete's podcast link (though I'm not sure how splendid a physical training goal David Cameron provides )
I'm in my mid 50s. Over the past couple of decades, I've had periods when I've been feeble and periods when I've been stronger. For me it seems to come and go both on a month to month basis and longer, year by year scale too. Certainly not exercising enough makes me weaker but I sense that my body sometimes responds far more positively to exercise.
Is the basis of strength understood? If say an 8C climber has an accident and their arm is in a cast, the muscles etc will waste away. But they will then astonishingly easily recover once they can start training/climbing again. An identical twin of theirs who hadn't trained up, would have to make huge efforts to get to the level of strength that was so easily recovered.
This was really brought home to me twenty years ago after I had had chemo for lymphoma. I was super delighted to have recovered and psyched to get climbing again. I felt well in myself, my hair was growing back etc. My first attempt was at the Matrix bouldering room. I had to summon all my technique and guile and flat out flailing dynamic coordination to get up two (generously graded) font 3s (the easiest problems designed for novices in trainers). I have never had head-to-toe DOMS and stiffness like I did after that session. But then, what flabbergasted me, was that simply by turning up and having a go a few times a week, I was able to get back to re-doing Sardine at the Tor within a month. Zippy told me that was what he expected. Many years before, Zippy had been on holiday with Ben Moon after Ben had a broken arm. Apparently, Ben had gone from full atrophy to 8b+ over the course of the holiday at a time when 8b+ was cutting edge. I was just doing a punter version of that.
My point is that, whilst obviously strength requires muscles and connective tissues etc, that isn't really what it's about. It's about the neural signals that direct the engagement that induce those to be deployed and stimulated to build/recover. How the hell that memory of how strong we have trained to become gets set (and why and what we can do to hack it) is what seems baffling to me. Perhaps this is all very well understood by everyone else and I'm just ignorant though.
I think, I've sometimes got crapper by feeling despondent about not being able to repeat party-piece boulder problems and then having duff sessions ineffectual trying. The way to break out has been to get on something else where I have the excuse of unfamiliarity and so don't beat myself up. My guess is that if I had a better attitude, I could get the training gain from the party piece, but mind tricks are what it's all about.
I'm unfamiliar with weight lifting but by analogy with my personal experience of trying to regain bouldering benchmark capability, perhaps Fiend, try different styles of lifts. Perhaps you having a benchmark of what you think you ought to be able to do is what is taking the fun out and that is sabotaging those mysterious neural strength settings. Perhaps try working up to a personal best in turkish get ups (with a barbell tike in a Victorian circus) or Olympic style lifts or whatever. You would have no expectations to beat yourself up over. Having had a spell away from deadlifts etc would also then give you an excuse when you got back to those. You would make some gains re-familiarising yourself to those and the try-hard momentum from that could spring you on.
My siege on Caviar heavily relied on me deploying such (mind?) tricks and languished before I did.
I totally appreciate that other people on here are far more knowledgable about all of this than me. I'm laying out my (mis?)-conceptions to be debunked as a learning process as much as anything.
I'm in my mid 50s. Over the past couple of decades, I've had periods when I've been feeble and periods when I've been stronger. For me it seems to come and go both on a month to month basis and longer, year by year scale too. Certainly not exercising enough makes me weaker but I sense that my body sometimes responds far more positively to exercise.
Is the basis of strength understood? If say an 8C climber has an accident and their arm is in a cast, the muscles etc will waste away. But they will then astonishingly easily recover once they can start training/climbing again. An identical twin of theirs who hadn't trained up, would have to make huge efforts to get to the level of strength that was so easily recovered.
This was really brought home to me twenty years ago after I had had chemo for lymphoma. I was super delighted to have recovered and psyched to get climbing again. I felt well in myself, my hair was growing back etc. My first attempt was at the Matrix bouldering room. I had to summon all my technique and guile and flat out flailing dynamic coordination to get up two (generously graded) font 3s (the easiest problems designed for novices in trainers). I have never had head-to-toe DOMS and stiffness like I did after that session. But then, what flabbergasted me, was that simply by turning up and having a go a few times a week, I was able to get back to re-doing Sardine at the Tor within a month. Zippy told me that was what he expected. Many years before, Zippy had been on holiday with Ben Moon after Ben had a broken arm. Apparently, Ben had gone from full atrophy to 8b+ over the course of the holiday at a time when 8b+ was cutting edge. I was just doing a punter version of that.
My point is that, whilst obviously strength requires muscles and connective tissues etc, that isn't really what it's about. It's about the neural signals that direct the engagement that induce those to be deployed and stimulated to build/recover. How the hell that memory of how strong we have trained to become gets set (and why and what we can do to hack it) is what seems baffling to me. Perhaps this is all very well understood by everyone else and I'm just ignorant though.
I think, I've sometimes got crapper by feeling despondent about not being able to repeat party-piece boulder problems and then having duff sessions ineffectual trying. The way to break out has been to get on something else where I have the excuse of unfamiliarity and so don't beat myself up. My guess is that if I had a better attitude, I could get the training gain from the party piece, but mind tricks are what it's all about.
I'm unfamiliar with weight lifting but by analogy with my personal experience of trying to regain bouldering benchmark capability, perhaps Fiend, try different styles of lifts. Perhaps you having a benchmark of what you think you ought to be able to do is what is taking the fun out and that is sabotaging those mysterious neural strength settings. Perhaps try working up to a personal best in turkish get ups (with a barbell tike in a Victorian circus) or Olympic style lifts or whatever. You would have no expectations to beat yourself up over. Having had a spell away from deadlifts etc would also then give you an excuse when you got back to those. You would make some gains re-familiarising yourself to those and the try-hard momentum from that could spring you on.
My siege on Caviar heavily relied on me deploying such (mind?) tricks and languished before I did.
I totally appreciate that other people on here are far more knowledgable about all of this than me. I'm laying out my (mis?)-conceptions to be debunked as a learning process as much as anything.