Believe it or not, I’m going to write this month about adding endurance sport activities to your weightlifting training.

First of all, half of you are automatically thinking I’m off my rocker. I’m an Olympic weightlifter.  Almost everything I write is specifically focused on weightlifting.  I’ve also written in the past about the damaging effects cardio training and endurance sports can have on your weightlifting performance. I’m a superheavyweight, so I’m the absolute last demographic in the world that should have any interest or attention whatsoever in endurance sports.

Second of all, the other half of you are wondering why in the hell we would spend any of our time talking about this. You want to learn about better snatch technique, more effective programming, or improved coaching ideas. Endurance sports?  With weightlifting?  Seriously…what the #@*!?

So let me tell you where this is coming from, and why you should be interested in reading this.  First, I need to give you a little personal background of mine that led me in this direction. I’ve been a full-time competitive Olympic weightlifter for 28 years at this point.  I’m 44, so my career has slowed down considerably and I’m just having some fun in the masters division now without getting to insane about training anymore. But I’m still a weightlifter, like I always have been.

Throughout my career, I’ve done no cardio or endurance activity whatsoever. The last time I did any workouts that involved running or serious cardio activity was my last season of high school football in 1989.  No joke, I’ve done basically nothing but lift weights for almost three decades (with some fun stuff sprinkled in, like Highland Games throwing and boxing occasionally).

However, I had to get rotator cuff surgery earlier this year.  I had a full thickness tear of my supraspinatus, and I got it surgically repaired 4 months ago. For those of you who don’t know, the recovery from rotator cuff surgery is very long.  It takes months before you get cleared to do any kind of serious activity with your upper body, and you have to do a ton of physical therapy and rehabilitative work to come back from it.

Needless to say, it’ll be a while before I come back to serious weightlifting. I do plan on resuming my competitive career when I’m back to 100%, but that’ll take some time.  In other words, I’ve been bored out of my mind for the last four months.  The only lifting I’ve been able to do since the surgery is back squats, the upper body stuff I’m allowed to do through physical therapy, core work, etc. I just got cleared to do some light deadlifts a couple of weeks ago, and the OLifts are still on the back burner for now. This has all been better than nothing, but it’s still limited and, like I said, very dull.

Now…this is where the adventure gets wacky.  I’m engaged to be married right now (thank you…thank you…). My fiancée was a professional triathlete for several years who raced pro Ironman races all over the world, and she now works as a coach in the sport.  Throughout our relationship, I’ve been constantly picking her brain about her sport and what it’s like.  This is mainly because I’m a general sports fanatic and I’m interested in absolutely anything that involves a lot of physical skill and serious competition. Triathlon is on the other side of the galaxy from weightlifting, so I’ve never really known much about it. But now I’m marrying an expert triathlete, so there’s some natural interest that’s carried over.

There’s also something else you need to know about me. I have a serious case of sports ADD. This means I want to try absolutely everything I see. When I watch sports, and I mean almost ANY sports (weightlifting, track and field, swimming, boxing, etc.), I usually say to myself, “I’d like to give that a shot!”  It’s actually amazing that I’ve been able to maintain so much singular focus on weightlifting over the years, because there’s a part of me deep down inside that wants to bounce around and compete in almost every discipline under the sun.  Call me crazy.

You can see where this is going.  My weightlifting career is off the radar temporarily, I’m living with somebody who does a different sport I’ve never tried, I’m bored…you get the picture. I approached my bride-to-be about a month after my surgery (when my arm was out of the sling) and asked her to help me mess around with some triathlon training. Swimming, biking, and running. She said okay, so I’ve been experimenting with incorporating endurance sport training into my very limited weightlifting life for a while now. NOTE: Swimming has been limited because of my shoulder, obviously. But I got cleared to get in the pool and do some light activity after three months, so I’ve been practicing since then.

I want to tell you about what this experience has been like. You should want to read this for a few reasons. First, many of you are already trying to find a way to balance weightlifting with other metcon-type sports activity because you’re CrossFitters or something like that. Second, many of you are coaches, and the nature of the business these days is working with people who want to be weightlifters, but also want to do some other training that gets their heart rate up. Third, you should always want to expand your overall knowledge and understanding of the whole spectrum of physical training. All of these things add up to a situation where it behooves you gain a little insight into the process of incorporating two polar opposite sports.

I’ll organize this article in a very simple way. I’ll break it down into the three triathlon components (swimming, biking, and running) and I’ll tell you what each one has been like, along with the effects I’ve noticed on my weightlifting and strength. Okay, here we go.
 
SWIMMING

What the training has been like- Swimming has definitely been the most comparable activity to Olympic lifting, because it’s enormously dependent on technique, and you’ll never be successful at it if you don’t learn the movements properly. My swim workouts have been limited because of my recovery from surgery, but I’ve been able to do quite a bit more over the last month because everything is feeling fine and I’m not seeing any problems with my shoulder. Workouts have been around 30-40 minutes, and most of it has been my fiancée trying to teach me proper technique. I don’t mind saying it’s been quite frustrating, because I’m not a natural at it. Even though I grew up next to a lake and I was always a good swimmer as a kid, I’ve got no endurance and I tend to kick and flail around like a drowning cat when I’m trying to learn actual freestyle technique. I get pissed off a lot, I don’t do very well, and my heart rate is usually jacked through the roof after a very short amount of work. So…there’s that.

Effects on weightlifting and strength- First of all, you need to keep in mind throughout this article that when I talk about the effects on my “weightlifting and strength,” I’m doing a very limited amount of actual weightlifting right now (just squats and the other stuff I told you about earlier). That should factor into your evaluation of this whole thing. So anyway, about the swimming. I haven’t really noticed any major impact on my weightlifting so far. It’s not making me lose any bodyweight, and my joints haven’t been getting beaten up at all.  My upper body definitely gets tired from the work, but I often feel like the freestyle stroke motion helps loosen up my shoulders and benefit my overall mobility. No problems with the knees, back or anything like that. Hard swim workouts make me tired, but that’s basically all.  Just a general overall feeling of fatigue. Would that fatigue have some negative effects on my weightlifting if I was really training seriously?  Probably, but there’s no way to know exactly how costly it would be at this point. I enjoy swimming, even though I suck at it, so I’m planning to continue it even when I start lifting hard again. You’ll probably have to check back with me in a year for a more definitive judgment.
 
BIKING

What the training has been like- My bike workouts are between 30-50 minutes, usually closer to the 30 minute mark. I do it all on the road, no mountain biking anything like that. Some of my easy workouts are just 30-40 minute spins at a moderate pace where I can chat while I’m riding with my fiancée. Hard workouts are sometimes interval-type training (3 minutes at 85% effort/1 minute easy, repeat 6 times). Sometimes they’re “time trial” workouts, where I pick a specific distance, like 7 miles, and go as hard as I can to get the shortest time possible.  I usually do two rides a week. I like cycling, but the workouts have been major quad burners. I used to bike quite a bit when I was in high school, when I was around 190 lbs. bodyweight. Now I’m 250 lbs, and I can definitely notice the difference. At 250 lbs, everything feels like you’re biking uphill, even when you’re on a flat surface. It’s a lot harder when you’re heavier, no doubt about it. But I’ve been able to do well on the bike because my legs are so strong. It’s been my best discipline out of the three (swim, bike, run).

Effects on weightlifting and strength- Biking wears your legs out, and you feel it in your squats. Absolutely no doubt about that.  HOW MUCH do you feel it?  It depends on how much riding you do, of course. The amount of biking I’ve been doing has made my squats feel heavier, but not to a catastrophe level. It’s not like I went from squatting 475x3 to struggling with 315x3 after three months on the bike. It hasn’t been that bad. Overall, I would say you should expect some extra fatigue in your legs if you add biking to your training regimen, and you will notice it in your weightlifting. But the exact level of fatigue, and how drastically it affects your weightlifting, will be entirely dependent on how much you ride and how hard you’re training. Also, the bike can make your hips stiff if you spend a lot of time on it.  Be aware of that as well.
 
RUNNING

What the training has been like- And now we arrive at the big kahuna…the dreaded RUNNING.  Fortunately, the person who’s designing my “running workouts” is very intelligent, and she understood from the very beginning that we were going to have to be extremely careful with how we incorporated running into my life. As we’ve said, I’m 250 lbs and I haven’t run at all in over 25 years. I’ve also had ACL reconstruction surgery on each knee. So we decided to ease me into running with elliptical trainer workouts and uphill hiking. These have been between 20-30 minute workouts at a “challenging but not crazy” pace. On the elliptical trainer, I do some interval workouts that look very much like the bike workouts I described earlier. The uphill hiking is 30-minute stuff, exactly what it sounds like. After about a month of this, we started putting some easy runs into my workouts.  I started with doing 15-20 minute runs once every two weeks, and then we moved me to once per week. The longest runs I’ve done have been two miles, which usually take me around 20-23 minutes because I have to walk/run them (that means I run for 50 steps and then walk for 15 steps). So currently my run training is one 30-minute elliptical trainer workout per week, and one 15-20 minute run per week.

Effects on weightlifting and strength- As you can probably guess, this one has had the most impact on me physically.  I feel the pounding quite a bit in my joints, and I’ve had some minor hamstring problems when I run, even though I’m doing a very easy shuffle-step with almost no stride length. The elliptical trainer and hiking are no problem, and they’re not causing me any injuries or physical issues. But the actual runs have been dicey. We’ve had to pull back on the amount of running I do in training a couple of times because…well, I just can’t handle a whole lot of it.  How much has it affected my weightlifting and strength?  Quite a bit, and I’m not even lifting hard right now.
 
So don’t misunderstand what this is all saying…

Let’s get the disclaimers, warnings, and overall evaluation statements out of the way, shall we?  Actually, I think a question/answer format will be the best way to do this.

1) Do I think endurance sport training will do anything to make you a better weightlifter?  No. Weightlifting training makes you a better weightlifter.

2) Can you add endurance sport training into your weightlifting program without completely destroying your weightlifting career?  Yes. You just have to be very careful and sensible about how you organize it all. And more than anything, you have to have a clear understanding of your goals. If you want to make the Olympic Team in weightlifting, you have to commit your entire training life to weightlifting.  There won’t be any room for endurance training in there. But if you’re not training to make the Olympic Team in weightlifting, and you want to find a way to balance weightlifting and cardio training in your life for health, fun, etc., it can be done. It just requires levelheaded planning and careful monitoring of the physical results when you start trying it.

3) Which form of training has the biggest impact on your weightlifting?  In my opinion, running has the biggest impact. Swimming has the least. Biking has a little more impact that swimming, but nowhere near as much as running.

4) Are you all going to have the same experiences as me?  Of course not. You have to remember that all of this information is just Matt Foreman’s experience. There’s no way of knowing how any of this stuff will affect you unless you try it. Hell, you might be able to run like a champ with no physical drawbacks at all, but swimming crushes you. I can’t know for sure, and I’m not trying to act like I have the definitive word on any of this. These are just my personal observations, to be used at your discretion.
 
All of this has to start with you taking a personal look at what you want to accomplish in your sports life, and setting up a system that’s consistent with your priorities and goals. For you coaches, you might want to keep some of these words in mind when you think about what’s going on with your weightlifters, and how to effectively respond to them if they ever approach you with questions or interest in the kind of training I’ve described here. I’m not telling you to do anything, and I’m not telling you NOT to do anything.  I’m simply giving you some personal input on a fresh topic, and encouraging you to approach the things you do with clear objectives and organized planning. Best of luck to you.