How To Gain Muscle As You Age - Part II

If you are looking to gain muscle and resistance training is part of your regular exercise regimen, you should know that cardiovascular exercise can help you experience your muscle gains faster. I will admit, to someone that is just starting on their fitness journey, this can be a difficult concept to understand. "Why would someone that wants to life weights benefit from cardiovascular exercise?" "How can an endurance athlete benefit from lifting weights?" 

I am sure that anyone that does a lot of resistance training for any amount of time may, too, wonder how cardiovascular exercise might help them reach their goals.

I Studied The History of Triathlons From Three Books
It had been about three years since I studied triathlons. I avidly studied triathlon history. I have always admired endurance athletes like marathoners and Tour de France cyclists. I had been on the swim team in middle school and high school. I was a middle-distance swimmer, and I could not help but have anything but respect for my teammates that swam the longer distances. I guess it was a matter of time before I decided to do my first triathlon.

My goal was to complete an Olympic Distance Triathlon.
When I finally decided to give it a try, I decided I needed to start training for my first Olympic Distance triathlon. I timed myself to see how long it would take me to run a mile. I ran a mile. It took me between eight and ten minutes, probably close to nine minutes as I remember feeling that my mile-time was the average of average.

Of course, since my goal was to complete a triathlon I had know more than just what I read in books. I went to one of my local gyms and started training. I felt that I needed to run a better-than-average mile time to be a half-way decent triathlete. As part of my gym membership, I got one free consult with a physical trainer. My consult consisted of a baseline fitness assessment and an exercise plan.

My Physical Training Fitness Evaluation Sets My Baseline
My physical training fitness evaluation helped me understand my fitness baseline. The trainer assessed my flexibility, strength, and endurance. I remember myself being more flexible than I expected. I remembered that push-ups are metrics for endurance.

My Physical Trainer Tweaks My Fitness Routine.
Although I did not realize it at the time, my physical strategically designed my exercise routine to make me a better triathlete. Usually, on Saturday mornings, I would run 12 miles. I mentioned to my physical trainer that I had issues completing that last half mile of my 12-mile run. I learned that I could improve my endurance by making one tweak to a strength training workout regimen: the addition of bicep curls.

Strength training can improve endurance. How does strength training lead to improved endurance? How do strength gains lead to running endurance gains? I eventually realized something about running that involves upper-body motion and muscular biceps that lead to endurance improvements.

I Notice My Biceps During a 40-Mile Bike Ride.
On a 40-mile bike ride with my local cycling club, I noticed that my biceps were bigger. During the first twenty miles, I had a realization. It was likely that none of the other cyclists on that ride that morning did any different exercise types other than golf. When climbing a moderate-sized hill of an overpass with the other cyclists, I noticed my biceps were more prominent than usual. I noticed I had significantly bigger biceps than those of any other cyclists I had known up until then. Up until that point, most of my training had been endurance-related. The bigger biceps felt like the most significant gains on my triathlon journey up until that point.

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