Getting stronger “without training”?

Getting stronger “without training”.

The title is strong and maybe even a little provocative but it starts from a real experiment I conducted on myself and my way of training. Taking cues from some provocative and groundbreaking scientific studies, I tried to tweak my workout routines and see if I could get stronger without following structured training. Let’s see what happened and if you can get stronger “without training”.

The starting situation

Where did the decision to undergo a small scientific study and to change the way I train come from? Like everyone, they are a person in the prime of their work and human activity. I am 37 years old, have a family, a son, a job as manager of the company’s “Health” department Bikenomist and in my spare time I practice Judo. In addition to this, I get around by bike every day, practicing a dose of bike to work every day.

I was used to getting up early in the morning to train strength but in the last period, thanks to Judo and an increase in the work to be done in the company, the motivation to get up at 6:00 and train strength it has failed. However, in order not to lose the habit of training muscle strength – an aspect that I love and which is functional for avoiding injuries while cycling or practicing martial arts – I had to find an alternative method.

And I started studying.

Getting stronger “without training”? What science says

In my research I came across several studies that want to give a precise answer to this question: “To improve your fitness, is it necessary to undergo structured workouts?”. The question arises from the fact that a sedentary lifestyle is increasingly widespread worldwide and the population is finding it increasingly difficult to find the time to train. If it were possible to obtain beneficial physiological adaptations even without structured training, it would be possible to improve the physical fitness of billions of people around the world. And so I came across some very interesting studies.

Cardiovascular adaptations: the “exercise snacks”

A theme raised by the Canadian physiologist Martin Gibala is the concept of “exercise snacks”: is it possible to obtain improvements in performance without training in a structured way but only by carrying out anaerobic sprints throughout the day? In the studio “Sprint exercise snacks: a novel approach to increase aerobic fitness” (European Journal of Applied Physiology, 2019), a group of people was divided into two groups. The former performed high-intensity interval training in a structured way, the latter performed the same number of intervals at the same intensity but diluted the volume across the whole day. Up to 4 hours could pass between one sprint and another. At the end of 6 weeks, improvements in cardiovascular efficiency were similar in both groups.

Blood glycemic balance: soleus push-ups

While listening to neuroscience professor Handrew Hubermann’s podcast, I learned of a decidedly provocative scientific study. In the studio “A potent physiological method to magnify and sustain soleus oxidative metabolism improves glucose and lipid regulation” (Iscience, 2022), researchers had sedentary people do soleus push-ups while sitting at a desk. The soleus is a deep muscle at the level of the calf, made up of purely oxidative fibers since it is a postural muscle. People involved in the study had to do nothing but lift their toes repeatedly while sitting at their desks. This activity reduced the post-lunch glycemic peak by 52% and there was a 60% reduction in hyperinsulinemia. Basically these people did not practice any structured physical activity but were able to keep blood sugar levels under control with simple exercise.

Hypertrophy without structured training

One of the world’s leading experts in strength training and muscle hypertrophy, Brad Schoenfeld, during an interview he spoke of the possibility of “spreading” strength training over several sessions during the day. In the interview Schoenfeld argued that the body doesn’t care if the exercises are performed one in a row or if there are much longer breaks, the important thing is to make sure that the training volumes and loads to be lifted are always the same , whether you build a structured workout schedule or lift weights throughout the day.

Getting stronger “without training”? The test on myself

Intrigued by these scientific studies, I decided to change my strength training method and to stop training with structured sessions of 30-45 minutes and instead disperse the training sessions throughout the day. I start from the assumption that I am lucky because in Bikeitalia I was able to build a small gym with a barbell, bench, dumbbells and kettlebells, which therefore allows me to train even at work.

I decided to focus only on 5 exercises:

• Squat
• Off the ground
• rematore
• Flat bench press
• Military press

First I did a calculation of my max for each exercise (I weigh 68kg).

From there I decided to dedicate 8 weeks of training (November and December 2022) to a type of strength lifting that I had never tried before. Every 45 minutes of work, I went down to the gym that I built in Bikeitalia and performed an exercise, taking 10 minutes in total to perform all the series and repetitions that I had set myself to perform. In essence, to perform a workout that used to take me 40 minutes, now it took me 5 hours, only that what had changed were the recovery times between one exercise and another, which had gone from 2 to 45 minutes.

I trained like this for 2 months, for a total of 8 weeks, with 3 training days per week. I didn’t change anything about my bike to work, I didn’t change my diet and I continued to take two Judo lessons a week.

I focused on increasing the training volume, that is, on increasing the series and repetitions performed, without significantly modifying the weights I lifted.

The training volume, as can be seen from the graph, was adapted for each exercise, given that in some exercises I was more performing (squats) and in others much less (flat bench).

The final result

After 8 weeks I re-calculated the 1RM, i.e. my ceiling. And the situation is as follows:

My ceilings have increased with each exercise although I have not performed any structured sessions but have simply concentrated on performing physically active work breaks.

Getting stronger “without training”? What do we take home

Obviously my test is affected by several biases which we cannot fail to mention:

• My strength level is lowso any type of training would increase this basic level, so it is not said that an already trained person would obtain the same benefits.
• The ceilings are calculated with online software based on repetitions at a defined load, because I don’t like doing 1RM tests.
• Furthermore I am a single person and there is no comparison to another person who has trained in the traditional way, so it is not possible to say whether this training methodology has made me earn more or less than a more structured training.

What can we cyclists take away from this article and from this experiment of mine? Is it possible to get stronger “without training”? The answer lies in one physiological principle called SAID (Specific adaptation to imposed demand). In essence, the body produces adaptations that are consistent with the stimuli to which it is subjected. And if the stimulus is in any case identical, the body will respond with functional adaptations, even if this stimulus is more spread out over time. Because our body, in a nutshell, doesn’t care if the training is structured or not, it cares that the stimulus is congruent, constant and progressive.

I must also say that training in this way has allowed me to never miss a day of practice, to sleep more in the morning, to have fun and to break up the time spent sedentary at work with active and invigorating breaks.

Unfortunately I already know what you are thinking “I don’t even warm up on a bike in 30 minutes, if I don’t pedal for at least 5 hours I won’t get any benefits”.

Depends.

As I have already written in this article, the bike to work favors more stable physiological adaptations than the long one on the weekend. Furthermore, our body improves only if the training stimulus is progressive, constant over time and practiced with the right density (i.e. respecting recovery times). Our body doesn’t give a damn if our training is specific on a racing bike or performed with a gravel bike to go to work, it only cares about responding to a stimulus.

And if the stimulus is organized correctly, it is possible to get stronger even “without training”because in the end it’s enough to move.

PS: we are talking above all about health and maintaining adequate physical shape and not about sporting performance in itself, which requires a more structured approach.

Become a Stronger Cyclist

roamed more kilometers con less effort con only one hour of training per week.