What is aerobic weightlifting? Weightlifting is an anaerobic activity.

Power lifting can quickly become anaerobic, when you run out of oxygen. But, weightlifting is used for more than just peak power. Many activity's benefit from pure strength, but most people are trying to improve both power and endurance.

Longer cool down periods (3-5 min) helps build strength faster and let's each set be more anaerobic and higher weight, but short cool down periods and slightly lower weight adds endurance and strength, plus more repetition.

The other benefit of aerobic weightlifting is you can better learn to minimize anaerobic activity. Full power all the time seems great, but being dead on your feet in 30 minutes is rarely useful.

If you're not in into the anaerobic zone, I don't think you're really weightlifting. You're dropping the weight so low that you're just doing cardio.

There is plenty of Oxygen to handle a single lift. Just not a rapid full set at near max weight. The specific transition point varies based on a wide range of factors,mbit simply waiting between each individual lift is enough to stay aerobic.

I'm skeptical about how aerobic weightlifting can be before it isn't really weightlifting, but also not too interested in arguing. Some weightifting protocols such as German volume training do seem like they must contain a decent aerobic proportion.

Humans are about 25% efficient, so feel free to multiply any number with 4 to get actual expended energy.

That doesn't change the calculus, obviously. I can easily sustain 150W for an hour on a bike, I can't lift 225kg half a metre against gravity 500 times (the equivalent).

(The idea here is that you try to back up lofty claims with some science numbers.)

Don't forget to add your body weight. Lifting ~110kg 6 feet (4 times 1/2 meter) 25 times in about 3 minutes ~= 6 mintues @ 150W on a bike. Plus whatever lifting your body weight from a squat adds up to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_and_jerk

Start playing with the numbers and Weight lifters can get into crazy high energy diets.

PS: Works out to around 110kg / ~.82 ~= 135kg max lift. At 230 lb the record is 246 kg so it's not that unreasonable a goal for a fairly large guy.

Serious bodybuilders have to eat like it's their job. At a certain point, regular food fails to provide enough calories so they have to reach for liquid diets.

These are maximal efforts that are not sustainable for any period of time.

Meanwhile, you can do 150W on a bike all day, just keep adding CHO.

if you want to maximize sustained burn you need to use more muscle groups. Being limited to how much oxegen you can supply to your legs is a major limitation.

Rowing is a good example of this, but as 110kg is easily twice the power output of biking you can drop down to 50% max lift range and be limited by oxigen not mussel damage.

Or put another way top weightlifter need to eat significantly more than top bikers who top out at around 8k cal per day.