I Neglected Strength Training For Two Years And I Am Never Doing It Again

I have been training since I was seventeen. That is pretty much thirty years now. After that long, it becomes automatic. You have your good days and your bad days, but training is just part of who you are. So when I tell you I neglected strength training for nearly two years, I need you to understand that this is not a small confession for me. It is a big one.

And I am never doing it again.

Here is what happened

My cardiovascular and respiratory systems got to a point where they were genuinely good. Resting heart rate is between 35 and 38 beats per minute. Max heart rate of 182. Heart rate variability is sitting around 113ms. None of that is scientific; it is just what my watch tells me, but it is good.

And when you get to that point, you have to ask yourself, where do you go from there? Because once your engine is that good, there is only one place left that needs sorting. Strength and plyometrics. Everything else, eating well, being roughly the right weight for you, that all matters too, but strength is the one thing that keeps giving you more once your engine cannot.

Over my career, I have had thousands of conversations with people who get injured and have no idea why. You explain what is going on. You tell them what they need to do. And they carry on running, swimming, cycling, running again, whatever their sport is, without changing a thing. Running especially. It is a sport where you go from one leg to the other and need real balance, yet I constantly meet people who can barely do a lunge. Some of them get away with it. I know genuinely good athletes who do. But I do not think you can keep getting away with it forever, especially as you get older. And when that decline starts is different for everyone. I have met twenty-year-olds with no structural stability at all, and I have met sixty-year-olds who are just naturally strong. It is individual. It is not always about age.

Which brings me back to me. I stopped strength training two years ago. Around that time, I had an FTP I was genuinely proud of. I am nowhere near it now. That is not a coincidence.

So here is what I am doing

I am keeping my running and cycling hours exactly the same, and I am adding strength training back in properly, to prove to myself what I already tell everyone else. Strength is not optional. It might actually be more important than smashing out endless easy miles or grinding yourself into a pulp trying to hang onto a chain gang.

The bit that gets me is the denial. I have given people proper, genuinely good advice and watched them talk themselves out of it with an opinion built on absolutely no experience. If you did not want the answer, why did you ask the question? You asked because deep down you already know you need it.

So sort it out. I am sorting mine out. You should sort yours out too.