The Wheelsucker at the Gym

After years of being somewhat of an endurance athlete, the wheelsucker’s inability to sprint, big ring climb, or jump have led to a serious effort to put some muscle on. This means weight lifting twice a week, doing Joe Friel’s Maximum Strength (MS) workouts. This is three sets, each of six exercises. The first exercise in each set is legs (leg press, squat or step up) done with high weight and low reps, as is the second (seated row) and sixth (standing row). The remaining exercises are lower weight and higher reps.

Joe Friel has load goals for Freebar squat, leg press, step-up, seated row and standing row that are a percentage of total body weight. The wheelsucker has been doing the MS workouts for awhile and the weights have increased somewhat, but he is nowhere near goal weights yet. Perhaps losing a lot of weight and maintaining current strength could work?

The wheelsucker warms up for ten minutes either on a treadmill or on a spin bicycle, and cools down at a high cadence on a spin bike. The idea is to not lose cadence while building muscle.

The MS workouts are supposed to be done in conjunction with plyometrics, but the wheelsucker’s calf is quite sore and he cannot do the plyometric workouts yet.