Weight Lifting & Cycling?? - Page 3

Zakeen I use SRM (as you can see in the *.jpg files. I have also the Polar software and power measurment system. I don't have problems with it. But I have to admit I don't use it often.

Software on my PC is Windows XP proffesional.

The best to you, www.webtrainer.nl

Is the power measurment system for polar good and worth to buy??

Zakeen I should go the forum Cycling Forums > Tech Corner and than Power Training. There you can find links which directs you to info which compares SRM - Power Tap and Polar.

By the way, it is better to train than to discuss.

The best to you, www.webtrainer.nl

I've stayed out of this one for a while since starting the ILT debate months ago. Strength training for roadies is an issue that is controversial to say the least.

Winter is coming for most of us in a few months. The off season is not only the best time to build power, it is the best time for experimentation since there is no race pressure to deal with.

While i'm not a huge proponent of strength training with weights for general road racing, I do like ILT and low rpm tension intervals with big gears on climbs.

Overall, I think weights are good for road riders from the waist up, and questionable from the waist down.

Weights helped my acceleration, sprint, and anaerobic power, but it's hard to tell if they help sustained power. I've been lifting weights on and off since I was 14 years old, and I even have a home gym with a power rack, so I for sure love weights. However, I have not lifted for 3 years now.

On-the-bike strength work is 100% specific, and has worked well for me. Life is short. The time to find out if this stuff is going to work for you or not is in the coming months!!!

Happy strength training (or not)!!!

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For the first time i actually agree with you jmat...have to say that your thread about going flat out for 1km then riding at 23 mph just proved that you did not know what you were talking about.........if you are riding flat out then you should not be able to even turn the pedals at all......or maybe you know better than all the other riders who have given their all in an effort to stay with the bunch and been dropped??????

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I am a firm advocate of resistance training as part of a balanced training diary for a road/TT cyclist. Here are my reasons:

1) Power output during a final sprint peaks around 1200+ watts. The ability to maintain this level of power output over a long sprint is helped by doing heavy squats or heavy leg press. Of course the top sprinters like Cipollini and Petacchi get their main training from doing speed work behind a car. However the most effective way to increase maximum wattage is to work slowly with a higher load. Specifically a load that is greater than the load you would encounter on a bike. The logic here is that a higher 1 rep maximum wattage output will directly increase stamina when working at around 70-80% of that wattage. In other words strength directly contributes to stamina. Of course each type of cyclist will train with different weights depending on their skills. A climber needs a lower maximum power output compared to a sprinter and would use lighter weights.

2) Hypertrophy only appears to be an issue if you stop training on the bike. I've trained for 18 months in the gym with a bodybuilding friend of mine and he explained to me that bodybuilders try not to do too much aerobic training as it inhibits the rapid increases in muscle mass that they want! Sad but true! In my own case I have done 10 reps slow parallel squats of 100kg with the strength benefits that it has brought. Yet my legs haven't visibly grown as a result of pushing those high wattages. To be specific 100kg on my back (220lbs) is about 80kg (176lbs) on each leg when combined with my body weight. This is a 1 rep load that I would not want to simulate on a bike for safety reasons.

3) Cycling is a non weight bearing exercise where as resistance training is weight bearing. By putting a greater load on the joints in a controlled environment like the Gym you increase joint, ligament and tendon strength. This specifically helps to prevent knee and ankle injury while on the bike. Even if I was to disagree with points 1) and 2) this reason alone justifies resistance training for me.

4) Doing resistance training can target non cycling specific muscles in the legs that are not directly exercised during cycling. This may sound irrelevant but by strengthening the hamstrings in the gym you actually strengthen the knee joint. Biomechanically the quads (front of thigh) need strong hamstrings to hold the knee joint in balance. If the hamstrings are too weak to back up the power output given by the quads then you produce less power.

5) You can exercise leg muscles in a range of motion which is not achievable on a bike. This directly increases the strength and mobility (ability to stretch) of the joints and muscles in a way that can not be achieved on a bike. For example the range of motion of the calf muscle while cycling is relatively limited. By exercising it under load an a calf raise machine you can increase the flexibility and strength of the ankle and achilles tendon while lengthening the calf muscle itself. The same applies to parallel squats and leg curls as the knee is not bent or straightened as much while cycling. Greater range of motion with the increased muscle strength not only prevents injury but directly enable the muscles to function better over the limited range of motion needed in cycling.

I could go on but then I'd be writing a book

I haven't even touched on the benefits to cycling on increasing upper body strength. This is especially true for the back.

For reference check out chapter 12 of The Cyclist's Training Bible by Joe Friel
also chapter 4 of Serious Cycling by Edmund R. Burke
Lance Armstrong goes into some detail in his Performance Program book. He also gives some suggested weights that he works up to in the off season.

Finally some warnings:

Don't exercise up to a 1 rep max as you're asking for an injury. On all leg exercises try to stick to a minimum of 10 reps. If you can't do 10 lower the weight! Don't do heavy leg work in the gym if you have a knee injury i.e. tendonitus, joint pain etc... Get over the injury first or work with very low weights that help to rehabilitate the knee/ankle.

Build up starting from low weights. Pick a weight that you can comfortable do 20 reps with and increase the weight trying to stick to 20 reps as you add weight. Again this avoids injury. Don't overtrain ... you only need to do heavy squats/leg press at most once a week. Don't do heavy squats/leg press while recovering from a race or training ride that has increased the load that your legs are used to. Your joints need to be fully recovered before hitting them with squats etc... This is why it's best to do most resistance training in the off season. Train with a spotter and follow your coach's/healthcare professional's advice on safety and recovery.

RECTOR:

Just because you can't do intervals the way I described, don't say it's impossible. How would you know??? Have you ever tried to train this way???

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My $.02

As I understand it there are a few benefits which cyclists can reap from low weight, high repetition (20-50+) weight training.

Low Repetition weight training primarily targets white muscle fibers, which are the fibers most responsible for generating high power. High Rep weight training primarily targets red muscle fibers, which cannot contract as powerfully as white muscle fibers, but do recover and recontract repeatedly for long periods (i.e. they are endurance muscles).

The other important difference between red and white muscle fiber is that red muscle fibers are very efficient at using fat as a fuel source, while white muscle fibers primarily burn glycogen (carbohydrate stored in the muscles). Unfortunately for the white muscle fibers, carbohydrate is in limited supply (enough stored in the body for about 2 hrs. of intense exercise), while fat is available in practically unlimited supply (limited only by the carbohydrate limit, remember the saying "fat burns in a carbohydrate fire").

As a cyclist (or any other endurance athlete for that matter) it makes sense that we want to conserve carbohydrate while burning fat. So it is logical that if we could increase the power output of the red muscle fibers, we would raise the threshold where the white carbohydrate burning muscle fibers takeover. Requirements for minimal amounts of additional power (a slight headwind, a 2-3% climb, or a slightly faster pace) are now dealt with by the red muscle fibers. We conserve more carbohydrate and burn more fat, allowing us either to ride faster for a given time period or ride longer while keeping speed the same. This is how low weight, high repetition weight training helps!!!

As mentioned before low weight, high repetition weight training targets the red muscle fibers. And while we basically practice low weight, high repetition weight training everytime we ride, the weight room allows us to do something that can't (or maybe shouldn't) be done on the bike - reach muscle failure. Performing an exercise to muscle failure triggers overcompensation during recovery that is much greater than that achieved otherwise. I think this is what THE RECTOR was trying to say when he stated, "if you are riding flat out then you should not be able to even turn the pedals at all".

One last note: You will want to allow yourself upto 48 hours to recover after a weight training session. This is why most trainers recommend using weights only in the winter when the volume of intense riding is reduced. In late winter/early spring you will phase out weight training in favor of things like hill repeats and intervals to increase muscular endurance and lactate tolerance. If you continue to weight train while picking up your volume of intense on-bike workouts you will risk overtraining and injury.

Weight training doesn't work for endurance cycling, because endurance cycling isn't force limited. Very little force is required at the pedals.

For an overview on it, please click here http://www.cyclingnews.com/fitness/?id=strengthstern

This doesn't mean that high power outputs aren't required, and nor does it mean that sustained hard efforts aren't required, because they are. it just means the force requirement isn't very high.

practically anyway (age, gender and health matched) can match the power requirements of even the best pro cyclists. sustaining the efforts is the difficult bit, and this can't be trained with weights.

Ric

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Ric, I read your article and what I could find of some of the papers you reference, and I think there is one detail being overlooked between what I explained and what you are trying to convince us of. That is the differences between the different muscle fiber types, what role they play in cycling, and how they can be trained.

For Example, in The effects of strength training on endurance performance and muscle characteristics (Bishop, D., Jenkins, D. G., MacKinnon, L. T., McEniery, M., & Carey, M. F. (1999). Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. 31: 886-891) the researchers were basically looking for a correlation between a 1 repetition maximum (1RM) and endurance. A 1RM movement will be performed almost exclusively by the white muscle fibers, which admittedly have little use to an endurance cyclist except in sprints, bridging a small gap quickly, or topping a very short hill.

What IS important for a cyclist (among other parameters of course) is the power output of their red muscle fibers. The more powerful your red muscle fibers are, the faster you can go before your carb-burning, non-aerobic, quickly fatigued, lactic acid producing white muscle fibers must takeover. The more you dip into the power reserves of your white muscle fibers the more you limit your endurance capability for any given ride. This is due to the white muscle fibers high carbohydrate consumption, which will eventually starve the red muscle fibers of the fuel needed to even burn fat.

Low weight, high repetition weight training performed to muscle failure WILL improve the power output of red muscle fiber quite effectively. Is it the only way? No. However going to muscle failure WILL more effectively improve power than sub muscle failure efforts, which is why on-bike training is at a disadvantage.

At the end of the day every athlete's body responds differently to various training methods. The only way anyone will know for sure how much weight lifting will help them is to try it for themselves. Ideally you will do this by maintaining a training diary and conducting periodic performance tests, which will help you correlate the results to the various training inputs.

Ric, I would like to hear your thoughts regarding the characteristics of red and white muscle fiber, how the power output of each type relates to muscle recruitment patterns, and how those patterns effect endurance. That was the point of my initial post, and you really didn't address my comments in your arguments.

BTW, I realize that BOTH red and white fibers contract on each pedal stroke, with varying levels of fiber recruitment and power generation depending on the demands of the effort. In other words, a sprint is not 100% white muscle fiber, and a 20kmh "bike walk" is not 100% red muscle fiber. So I did generalize a bit in my discriptions above.

Originally posted by robc, i reply with >>


What IS important for a cyclist (among other parameters of course) is the power output of their red muscle fibers. The more powerful your red muscle fibers are, the faster you can go before your carb-burning, non-aerobic, quickly fatigued, lactic acid producing white muscle fibers must takeover. The more you dip into the power reserves of your white muscle fibers the more you limit your endurance capability for any given ride. This is due to the white muscle fibers high carbohydrate consumption, which will eventually starve the red muscle fibers of the fuel needed to even burn fat.

>>The important parameters for endurance cycle racing (i.e., road races, track endurance, TT, MTB etc) are power at LT, TT power, and power at VO2max, and to a (much) lesser extent peak (sprint) power.

>>as you point out below, in terms of recruitment etc., it's very much a continuum as opposed to an on / off idea.



Low weight, high repetition weight training performed to muscle failure WILL improve the power output of red muscle fiber quite effectively.

>>I'm not entirely sure what you mean here? Isn't cycling itself a low weight, high rep effort? what could be better than cycling for improving cycling?

Is it the only way? No. However going to muscle failure WILL more effectively improve power than sub muscle failure efforts, which is why on-bike training is at a disadvantage.

>>You can quite easily go to fatigue or failure on the bike. on the other hand it's not that difficult to recruit type ii fibres during road training


At the end of the day every athlete's body responds differently to various training methods. The only way anyone will know for sure how much weight lifting will help them is to try it for themselves. Ideally you will do this by maintaining a training diary and conducting periodic performance tests, which will help you correlate the results to the various training inputs.

>>with the exception of one study (using trained or elite athletes) there's no evidence whatsoever to show that weight training will work. on the other hand, in untrained or purely recreational riders weight training will most likely improve bike performance (as would any exercise). However, almost certainly the improvements won't be as good as by bike training itself.



Ric, I would like to hear your thoughts regarding the characteristics of red and white muscle fiber, how the power output of each type relates to muscle recruitment patterns, and how those patterns effect endurance. That was the point of my initial post, and you really didn't address my comments in your arguments.

>>Unfortunately, i don't have time to write to lots of work. if you want to read about recruitment and fibre typing (it's type i, iia and iib etc) then you're best bet is to read a good physiology text, such as McArdle Katch and Katch or Astrand and Rodahl.

>>none the less, at higher (relative) power outputs more type ii fibres will be recruited and a lower outputs more type i. fatigue, cadence, power will affect this

>>finally, when training, the adaptations occur at specific joint and angle velocities, and as most people pedal at > 70 revs/min, this is going to far exceed the velocity of movement when weight training. it's also highly likely going to be at the wrong angle.

Ric

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IMOHO I think weight training DOES affect cycling ability in a positive way. I am not a professional cyclist, etc, but I came from other sports where weights were used effectively in enhancing performance.

I think the discussion needs to be the type of lifting, however. If you do 3x8, supersets, etc, like football players, you are probably going to change your body shape to match that of a football player.

If you do higher reps with lighter weights, especially like hack squats or calf raises until failure, over time, my guess would be that most people would increase their LT level. Now, granted, I am probably much heavier than anyone here posting (215), but I found one of the problems I had early on in road biking (and mountain biking for that matter) was in the hill climbs, my O2 level seemed to be fine, HR within acceptable levels (10-15 beats below MHR), but my legs would be on fire, even at higher cadences. All of this is probably due to how much I weigh. I noticed however, it was similar to the burning feeling when I used to run 100, 200m sprints. The solution to that was weight training, so I applied some of the same techniques and exercises to the biking with very good results. I've increased my hill climbing ability 10x, or at least the length of a hill I can do without crapping out. Here in North Carolina there is always a bigger hill to test your skills out on it seems!

So, to sum it up, maybe it is the *TYPE* of weight lifting you are doing, or a specific muscle group than a more general "weight training" day.

Recently, for all of you other heavy hitters out there, with my riding group we did the three hump ride here, which is a metric century (62 miles) starting at hanging rock, going to Sauertown mountain, then Pilot Mountain and finally back to hanging rock. Total ascent was over 6,000 feet and most of that was on the three mountains. YOU CAN DO IT TOO IF I CAN!

Thoughts from the collective?

Originally posted by brandonbrown, i responded with >>

If you do higher reps with lighter weights, especially like hack squats or calf raises until failure, over time, my guess would be that most people would increase their LT level.

>>in trained riders it won't increase LT or VO2 max, or (endurance) bike performance as this is limited aerobically and weight training doesn't affect these parameters (except in untrained people, where any exercise helps)

So, to sum it up, maybe it is the *TYPE* of weight lifting you are doing, or a specific muscle group than a more general "weight training" day.

>>weight training will increase strength (this isn't a limiting factor in cycling). it won't have any effect on your aerobic ability if you're trained (e.g., you race or you can ride with people who do).

Ric

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I have not done much weight training and had been considering adding it to help my cycling. My thought was to go high rep/low weight. I do not race, but like to hang with the faster guys on group rides (that's me hanging on for dear life at the back) and I enjoy training for single day event rides like the Triple Bypass, Assualt on Mount Mitchell, etc. I was figuring that the weight training would improve my leg strength and by virtue my endurance or ability to handle bigger loads.

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