When I first started getting serious about strength training in high school one of the things that was taken as a given for getting stronger was the idea of “no pain, no gain”. I’m sure you’ve heard this saying before and it implies that without training so hard that it hurts then you won’t be able to get results.

I trained by this motto for a long time, embracing anything that had to do with high intensity training. High Intensity Interval Training and Training To Failure workouts became the norm in a quest to get the best results as quickly as possible.

And while these approaches worked, as I gained more experience I started to learn that there was more to the story. As I studied how high level athletes trained I found that they rarely pushed themselves to their limits and that a lot of their training was centered around building a base with easier training that supported their higher intensity efforts.

And so I adjusted my training and found I started to see better results. I would follow a pattern of starting out with an easy week and building up the intensity until I was pushing the limits on the 3rd week before taking an easy week and starting the process over again. 

With this approach I was only pushing the limits once every 4 weeks or so and it was much more sustainable, especially as I got older and stronger. And again, while this approach works as well, I had a few more lessons in store for me.

The next lesson came from the classic strength training book Easy Strength by Dan John and Pavel Tsatsouline. In this book they outlined a path to getting stronger that was, well, easy.

In the classic version of this workout you pick 5 exercises – a push, a pull, a lower body, a total body explosive and a core movement. You practice those same lifts 3-5 times a week for 40 days and in that time you never push yourself to the limit or come close to failure.

At the end of the 40 days you’ll find that you are stronger in all of the lifts that you were using. So at the end of 40 days of relatively easy workouts you got stronger, which seems to fly in the face of the conventional “no pain, no gain” wisdom.

Through this book and workout system I got introduced to a pivotal concept that has shaped my training programs ever since – if you improve your performance at 80% effort you will also improve your performance at 100% effort. In other words, you don’t have to smash yourself against your limits in order to expand your limits, you can expand your comfort zone to expand your limits.

This idea works in all aspects of training, from strength and cardio training to riding your bike. Every workout or ride doesn’t need to be hard in order to see progress. In fact, that approach will lead to less long term progress than having the bulk of your efforts being in the 60%-80% effort range.

With these lessons learned I was ready for the last one, which came in the form of the Anti-Glycolytic Training workouts I’ve been talking about lately. These workouts are the epitome of “easy strength” and really opened my eyes to how easy workouts can be while still producing great results.

While I would encourage you to check out my post on this training style, at its most basic level you are doing a small volume of work with a lot of rest spread out over 20-30+ minutes. For example, doing a set of 5 KB Swings every 60 seconds, which comes out to around 10 seconds of work with 50 seconds rest.

This pace is very easy to sustain but the volume piles up and you continue to expand how much you are doing every week. At the end of a 12 week training cycle you are stronger, fitter and leaner, all without breaking much of a sweat along the way.

All of this came together for me after reading a new book, Perpetual Strength, in which Paul McIlroy shares his training system for creating strength by using what he calls Comfort Zone Expansion. This is basically the Easy Strength concept with a fancy title, but one that I think does a good job of explaining what the goal is.

By focusing on expanding your comfort zone you can get stronger and fitter without the usual drawbacks that come with hard training. Less chance of injury, fewer aches and pains and less mental grinding through tough workouts all lead to a more sustainable approach to training, especially for the 40+ year old rider.

Now, I want to clarify a couple of points about this type of training. The first one is that while it is based on concepts like Easy Strength and Comfort Zone Expansion, these terms are relative to what most people are used to when it comes to training.

You are still putting in work so just coming in the gym and going through the motions isn’t going to cut it. You have to have focus and intention behind the work that you are putting in.

You also have to be very consistent with these workouts. The individual workouts won’t have as big of an impact on your potential to improve as a higher intensity workout will, so you have to make up for it by accumulating a lot of work at the lower effort levels. If you are inconsistent with your training then you may be better off with a higher intensity approach to get the most out of the little work you are putting in but you also run a higher risk of injury with that approach.

I’m currently working on some new training systems based on these lessons that I am excited to share with you over the next several months. My goal is to create a training system that the older rider can use to make it easier for them to ride for a lifetime. 

In the meantime, though, check out the AGT Workouts post and try the workout I talk about in it. It is a great introduction to these Comfort Zone Expansion/ Easy Strength concepts that I think will spur you to want to learn more about how to use these concepts to drive your training in the future.

And, as always, if you have any questions about this newsletter or anything that has to do with helping you enjoy riding more let me know, I’m always happy to help.

Until next time…

Ride Strong,

James Wilson