Strength and cycling controversy - Page 2

The main symptom of being muscularily stressed- ie too weak to perform a task easily is muscle soreness, followed, by recovery and muscle growth.

The fact that these symptoms occur at the start of training suggests that muscular strength at high reps was a limiting factor in my performance. Otherwise i wouldn't adapt.

Being sore the day after isn't just about lactic acid. It can mean muscle damage as a result of over exertion.

This is okay to happen during training with rest days, but not when you are have a busy racing schedule or doing a two day or longer race- or with a TT as well.

No, actually, it would be an inability to perform the task.

Being sore is about a lot of things, many of which aren't fully understood yet. Saying I'm sore=I stressed my muscles=strength is good is a faulty conclusion. I stood up for a long time a few days ago and was sore. Do I need more strength?

11ring,

The largest problem I can see here is you and Ric Stern (and most others here) use the same word "strength" in very different meanings.

Had you read Ric's posts or his article on cyclingnews.com carefully, you should have noticed that he has repeatedly stated that strength means "the maximal force" a muscle or a group of muscles can exert. Being maximal it's just once. Not infinite reps.

According to him, it's a well accepted definition among exercise physiologists, sports scientists, and professional coaches (this is not to say I don't trust his words. It's just that I'm no expert and in no position to confirm his claim or otherwise).

I'm not sure what is your definition of "strength", but I'm pretty sure it's not the same as Ric's. You need to speak the same language if you want to have a fruitful discussion. Would you agree with me on this?

There's certain words and phrases that have very specific meanings, and that are well defined within scientific literature or a dictionary. For e.g., strength is a well defined word, whose specific meaning has been around for a long time. Efficiency would be another.

On the other hand words such as tempo, or muscular endurance have no 'real' meaning in so much as there is not a universally defined meaning to these words.

You don't need to take my word for it (!), check out page 452 of the renowned exercise physiology text:Exercise Physiology Energy, Nutrition and Human Performance by McArdle Katch and Katch

Ric

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Unfortunately, you've made a lot of assumptions that might be true for steel or a machine or a human with unlimited aerobic capacity. Unfortunately, humans have limited aerobic capacity, which is what limits endurance efforts. Being stronger won't help because it will mean a reduction in aerobic abilities (less mitochondrial density, more muscle mass to spread the oxygen to) as well as mean more weight to drag around.

NONE OF THIS HAS TO DO WITH STRENGTH!

want to add another rebuttal to the strength and cycling thread.
there is an acronym that permeates the athletic community for ALL sports:

SAID - specific adaptations to imposed demands

basically - if you want to ride your bike farther and faster - then ride your bike farther and faster. if you want to squat 50kg thousands of times then squat 50kg thousands of times. there has been proven scientifically and empirically that strength training will do little for your cycling in comparison to cycling for your cycling.

the force necessary to generate an FTP of 400 watts is quite small compared with the force necessary even to run - due to the efficiency of the bike. i can out perform fellow cyclists and endurance athletes in the gym but get my ass kicked when we go for a ride, simply because they can generate and sustain more watts than i can ON THE BIKE! this is due to the training to improve their aerobic engine (ability to sustain force/power for extended periods of time with minimal fatigue) by way of endurance, lactate, and vo2 training.

because your legs are sore, or become painful while working at LT and above has to do with metabolic issues, not because of overall strength and muscular endurance (high rep work).

Doing "strength" work on the bike is to improve your body's ability to work at lower rpm's for extended periods of time i.e. inappropriate gearing for the terrain you racing on - and i would venture to guess that the other coaches on this forum would agree that with all the gearing options out there, that time spent on this aspect of training should be kept to a minimum.

use strength training for injury prevention - in other words to combat the muscular imbalances that arise when doing a rhythmic, steady state activity that holds the body in a fixed position and utilizes particular muscles groups to a greater extent than there antagonists.

strength training is important for cycling but mainly in this manner!

a smart training program will incorporate appropriate amounts of stimulus (riding in your different zones to produce adaptation) recovery (rest on and off the bike), recovery (sleep), recovery (flexibility, neuromuscular re-education ie strengh training), recovery, recovery, recovery! do you get my drift!

mmerchant

To me, the larger problem is 11ring thinking that the ability to repeat a small amount of force production repeatedly is tied to maximum force (strength).

Yes, he said his so-called "fatigue limit" is a "function of strength", but I'm not so sure if his "strength" means the same as ours...

Ride your bike. Ride your bike fast. Done.


Let's stop trying to proclaim who is right or wrong. If you feel strength training makes you a faster rider, then by all means do it.

It doesn't matter what is said on these message boards. The only thing that matters is who is faster on race day.

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The faster you go, the fewer passing cars

Wow. That is so wrong. Those two have absolutely no relation to eachother whatsoever. None. Regardless of who told you. I think if you REALLY want to know, you should take a biology or sports medicine type class...But really, there's no correlation between the two...

That's why sprinters aren't endurance riders, and vice versa, and why a WWE wrestler isn't an endurance runner, and so on and so forth...

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Kev

So, what would the ability to repeat a certain point with increasing forcefulness be tied to?

Also, the "gyming to improve power" thread is not closed, as the OP stated, but rather stickied at the top of the forum for everyone's convenient access in discussing this topic.

Hi there

Just had a quick look, it is closed and hasn't been posted to for almost 2 years.

cheers

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Steve
CyclingForums.com

I like the side of the fence that I sit because I find these strength/cycling threads amusing.

From a weightlifter's perspective I would be ridiculed by my fellow lifters for experimenting with endurance cycling which is like opposite worlds and I have drifted into some kind of alternate world. Lifters typically take the complete opposite viewpoints that are shared here. Why?

Because endurance cycling is devastating to gaining muscular size or to gain in strength competitions.

Now to what I find interesting from my own perspective as an avid weightlifter. If it were true that lifting was minimally beneficial to endurance cycling than my 20 years of extreme hardcore lifting would have given me an edge once I started cycling one would think. However, I recently had to change my 53/39 - 11/23 combination to a 12/27 cassette because I could not rely a sustained strength from my legs to pull some of the bigger hills on the group rides. Even on the last ride guess who were the ones pulling away from the pack once we hit the hills? The absolute skinniest, anorexic looking, 12" arms riders. (just kidding you skinny guys - you can poke fun at me if you see me struggling up the hills)

Seriously though, I could put enough force on the pedals once to snap them off the crankset or damage my handle bars, but what good would that do? What I need to do is more cycling up hills and maybe someday I will be fit enough to pull those hills with the old 11/23 cassette.

Stubborness? Definitely a good trait for a bike racer.

I'd vote for PowerCranks.