Wake up feeling really good and oh-so grateful for that, and a really good day almost always follows.

As you get older, however, it becomes less likely you wake up this way because it becomes more likely you wake up with minor aches or major pains. Or feeling just as tired as when you went to bed.Either can create an early-morning malaise that can adversely affect the rest of the day.All the good and bad mentioned above factor in to why last week you read that I'm lifting heavier weight for fewer repetitions in the gym. While other things have also contributed, I see this change as the linchpin to not only riding the bike better but also waking up feeling really good (about nine days out of 10) and oh-so grateful.Because I feel as if I'm 35 instead of 55.And although I've felt this way for nearly six months, I will make no prediction about how long this good feeling will last. What I will explain is how to lift weights in middle age if you want your workouts to counteract sarcopenia and probably improve your quality of your life.But first let me state that unless your form is so poor that it increases the incidence of injury, there really is no bad way to exercise. What there is, however, is a best way to exercise for the goal at hand.If your goal is to fight sarcopenia, which causes you to lose muscle and hastens your body's natural inclination to age, you must invest far more energy - though not that much more time - than someone who works out for less ambitious reasons. Newton's first law of motion suggests why: "An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force."To effectively battle sarcopenia, your weightlifting workouts must be the "unbalanced force" that disrupts the status quo. When you do this sort of weightlifting in your teens or twenties or thirties, males can get as big as a house and females can look like a million bucks. When you do this sort of lifting in middle age, it's more like house maintenance for men (to keep the house from dilapidating) or financial investing for women (to keep from losing too much money due to inflation).Unless you are genetically blessed, moderate workouts will not be enough to counteract sarcopenia. In most cases, you need to become that unbalanced force, which means your workouts need to briefly leave your comfort zone.Since most weightlifters tend to lower the weight and increase the reps as they age, that means you need to do the opposite. I know, I know, I didn't like the thought of struggling with a weight that would cause my arms to quiver and quake by the sixth rep, but I loved the outcome about a month later.Let me use my situation to elaborate, but first a caveat. I don't know your medical history. If you think what I'm suggesting could be dangerous for you, seek out professional advice before incorporating any of this.For years, my first warm-up set for any body part would total 25 reps. The weight would be light, naturally, and I'd use less than a full motion at first to warm up and protect the muscles for the first six to eight reps.By rep 10 I'd be performing the full motion. By rep 15, I'd be adding isometric tension - squeezing the bar with all my might and keeping a constant tension on the muscles throughout the motion - to each rep. By the last rep, veins would be popping out all over the place and the muscles would be taxed, yet ready to do the next set at a slightly heavier weight for 25 reps of isometric tension.Then I'd increase the weight again and strive for 12 to 15 reps for three more sets.That's the sort of sequence for my chest, back, delts, biceps, and triceps that allowed me to keep some muscle on my upper body while I seriously cycled in my 40s. It didn't work so well in my 50s, so changes needed to be made.Now, the warm-up set is still 25 reps, but it's not nearly as intense. I simply get the muscles prepared for the "heavy" work.Set two calls for an increase in weight - enough weight that I struggle to do eight or 10 repetitions.By struggle, I mean that there's almost always a point where I don't think I'll be able to reach the targeted number. Sometimes that means my arms will quiver and quake. Sometimes that means I'll have to cheat a bit - shorten the motion or lock out at the top - but somehow I hit the targeted number.In fact, having to cheat a bit in this instance is good. It's a sign that I've gone outside my comfort zone. I do the remaining three sets in a similar fashion.I'll do two or three upper body parts per session, do abs, calves, and stretching instead of taking a true rest, and I'm done in 60 minutes. (Note: Workouts for my hamstrings, quadriceps, and gluten only begin when the race season ends.)P.S.: Because I won the 15th race of my cycling season after five second-place finishes, I wrote last week's column about the effectiveness of using heavy stymieing sarcopenia. On the day I finished this column, I won my next race as well.Contact Kevin Kolodziejski at

kolo@ptd.net