Getting back to my “Susquehanna Experiment” weight training program, it only took a couple practice sessions to realize that low-volume, high-intensity training programs can get pretty complicated. And it only took a couple reps to see how hard it is!

Here are my thoughts on some parts of the routine:

The 5/5 cadence. Lifting a weight for five seconds and then lowering it down for five seconds, all in the same breath, is just plain hard. There is nothing like a constant load on your muscles to show you how long 10 seconds can be!

Under normal circumstances, I have no problem breathing in for a count of 5 and then breathing out for a count of 5. But when that breath takes place while lifting a barbell, and is followed by another eight long breaths under load, it’s a lot harder to concentrate on your breath!

Counting. Normally I would just count my reps and be done with it. In this experiment, I had to keep track of my reps and my breath! That meant I was counting from one to five twice for each rep.

This is where a spotter comes in handy! Have a spotter count your reps for you while you focus on counting your breath. (Eventually I managed to count my reps and just go by feel for the 5/5 cadence, though.)

The weight. Figuring out what weight to use is tricky, too. Even though this is supposed to be intense, and you are only doing 8-10 reps of each exercise, the amount of weight you lift will be fairly low. Trust me, the constant load on your muscles from the slow cadence is more than enough intensity!

I actually did two test sessions just to figure out the proper weight to start with, and even then I wasn’t positive what was best.

Preparation. I don’t know if there’s anything that could have prepared me for this! I hadn’t been lifting a lot, but I hit the weights every so often since I have some light weights at home. I also did a lot of Cyclo-Core routines and lots of extra push-ups.

However, this “Super-Slow” type of lifting still destroyed me!

Soreness. You better believe I was sore! I decided that once every four days is probably all my body can handle, so I went with a Monday/Thursday schedule.

Number of Exercises. At first, when Tim Ferriss recommended doing only 4-7 exercises each time, I didn’t think I’d be getting my money’s worth at the gym, so to speak. But if you do it right, you’ll be too exhausted to do a seventh set of anything!

High Protein Diet. Even though I’m close to being a vegetarian, I enjoyed the high protein diet. Turkey sandwiches, protein smoothies, mmm mmm good!

Now go ahead and get started on your weight lifting routines!

(And remember, you will be able to see all the details at the official Susquehanna Experiment page.)

Tim Ferriss, author of The 4 Hour Workweek, (a great book, BTW) has a lot of health and fitness advice on his blog. I’ve posted about some of his stuff before, and I’ll take it a step further today.

We’ll start with the craziest post I’ve seen: From Geek to Freak: How I Gained 34 lbs. of Muscle in 4 Weeks

It’s the story of how Tim gained 34 pounds of muscle in just four weeks. The best part is that it took only two 30-minute workouts per week, for a total of four hours of working out. Crazy, isn’t it?

So read that post, comment #122, and this page about the Colorado Experiment. That should give you a good starting point if you want to try this yourself.

However, although Tim gives good general guidelines, there’s not much about specific exercises and routines. Plus you need a really good home gym or a membership at the local gym, because you need serious weights.

So I did some research and found this guide to ‘one set to failure‘ protocol. It seems to be in line with Tim’s guide.

Now to research all of these multi-joint exercises and get some practice. I’ll report back when I’m on my way to gaining 34 pounds in 4 weeks!

Any cyclists out there think this is a good workout??