Weightlifting *Rly* Needs Support ! <3

Feature Requests
1

I love .icu & David, will remain a supporter forever, no matter what happens on this. I know many improvements just don’t make it to the top of the list, and that’s totally understood and fine.

But… WOWZA… Weight Lifting desperately needs support.

I’m an idiot and only recently learned, from a physiotherapist & sports MD that integrating glute & other posterior strengthening is critical to avoid long-term IT band & other issues. Point: Every cyclist must be doing strength work w their bike work.

David: Please add true WL support. Given how critical it is, .icu should incorporate it into the “fitness world” we have in .icu.

Starting immediately, I’m going to be doing a significant amt of strgth training, and that is going to negatively impact my fatigue & cycling hrs / wk, especially intensity work.

I really would sincerely appreciate it if .icu will help me track & monitor this.

-No field for HR; no HR tracking. Allen, Coggan, and others have concluded irrelevant for lifting, which makes sense; all that matters is weight lifted vs. the athlete’s strength / recent weight training & lifting abilities.

-Load calcs auto from total wgt lifted during that WO, mathematically compared to a custom, athlete - set baseline avg wgt lifted per WO, set in settings. If I usually lift a total of 2000 kgs, and I lift 4000 in a WO, load is doubled. This is super simple, and gives an easy to track metric.

If I suddenly lift double the wgt I lifted last week across three weight lifting WOs, my legs will be twice as tired from lifting, than they were last wk. Simple, easy - peasy.

No complex “Yeah, but how did HR impact it, and how does that relate to how HR impacts during cardiovascular / endurance exercise, how did your time duration impact it vs. if you lifted that total wgt faster, in a shorter time,” etc., etc. All unnecessary noise. Total wgt lifted vs. recent / current avg. total wgt lifted during WOs.

Then plus any cycling load; separate. I can then track total wgt lifted per wk over time, to track growth in my strength.

-Load auto impacts fitness & fatigue; [ this is already setup as custom set-able in settings. ]

-Please get rid of all ‘junk fields’ ; drop the “Distance in kms” setting in below [ the ’ ? ’ field ], drop the watts chart at bottom of below:

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-Please make load in below auto - calc, not entered-by-athlete,

-Please either get rid of steps entry window entirely, or let us just input steps as wgt lifted. Something like:

-SQUAT: 3 X 50 KG
-BULGARIAN SQUAT: 3 X 50 KG
-SINGLE LEG SQUAT: 3 X 60 KG

-Would be amazing if it auto - summed total wgt from this, but no biggie if we have to enter total wgt lifted manually, and above is just txt notes for athlete to follow along WO.

-We shouldn’t see “% FTP”, “Zone Range”, etc., in the entry screens pictured below; not applicable to wgt lifting; zero value.

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Sincere ‘Thank You’ for any consideration you can give this.

[ As always; deep dove search before posting. Nothing identical to this req. ]

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2

Nice idea. Currently I’m creating training plan in a spreadsheet. :nerd_face:

1 Like
3

Hello,

I’d also like to see better weightlifting support in ICU.
That said, I don’t think load calculation is as straightforward if we want it to be comparable to cycling load.

In my view, your method could work, but only if weightlifting and cycling each kept their own separate load values. But then it won’t be included in general fitness.

We still need more research on how to translate weightlifting load onto the same scale as cycling load. If we can figure that out ahead of time, it might make it easier for David to implement.

Regarding the workout builder, a few posts mention Liftoscript, which looks like a promising option.

Just keep in mind that ICU was originally designed for aerobic sports, and weightlifting behaves quite differently.

4

I am in favor of improved strength support as well (although my only wish would be for icu to be able to create structured strength workouts via the builder since the Garmin strength builder sucks massively).

That said. I would like to give a different perspective on the importance of tracking the weight load in icu. The basic mode of weight lifting is progressive overload mostly based on marginally increasing weight, reps or sets, with the overarching goal of getting in quality sets which come within a certain margin of RIR.

What this means in practice is while the amount of mass you are moving around in a session goes up over time, the damage experienced by the body can stay pretty constant mostly, at least within a cycle where you stick to the same exercises. As your muscles grow, the effect of the increasing load on your body is compensated for. You are never supposed to be totally destroyed after a strength session.

You’re never doing wildly different sessions like in endurance sport where you actually need an abstract load measure to compare interval sessions with easy long endurance workouts, for example.

For me personally I treat my lifting sessions as constant, for all means and purposes. The physical load (kg * reps * sets) increases so slowly and mostly linearly or sub-linearly, simply by following the usual progressive overload algorithm that it’s just a blip compared to the load from endurance.

The only hard change happens if you switch exercises between cycles, and best practice dictates that your effective load goes down as you ease into them, every time. So that also should not be significant for the icu load calcs.

I"m not trying to deny your wish (I’m not involved with the icu team, just a guy), but encourage you to view the strength work as a very stable, constant base without many fluctuations.

The proposed UI changes to remove unused fields is cool of course, not only for lifting but for all sports supported by icu.

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