Losing weight without losing power
- Thread starter tanggoman
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when you lose weight it is inevitable that you will lose some muscle. The real issue at stake is keeping to a minimum that lean weight loss. Taking of fatty tissue is key.
How tall are you? do you know your body fat percentage? As a cyclist you need to remember that you body will look quite different in a mirror compare to a body-builder. Ever seen a picture of Lance Armstrong without his top on? You would find it hard to believe his BF is in the region of 3-6% especially compared to a body of the same weight.
Many of the top cyclist are very light up top and bottom heavy. i.e. all legs. The point i'm pushing is don't go by looks alone. Use the bodyfat scales/calipers to guide you.
In general - it's an age old adage - if calories in are less than calories burn weight will be lost. Follow a healthy diet, keep away from simple sugars (when not on the bike) and try keeping fat at 15% of total calories consumed. Other than that reduce intake so that you are 500 calories down on your daily need and in 10 weeks you will be as many pounds lighter.
I hope this helps.
Tom.
How tall are you? do you know your body fat percentage? As a cyclist you need to remember that you body will look quite different in a mirror compare to a body-builder. Ever seen a picture of Lance Armstrong without his top on? You would find it hard to believe his BF is in the region of 3-6% especially compared to a body of the same weight.
Many of the top cyclist are very light up top and bottom heavy. i.e. all legs. The point i'm pushing is don't go by looks alone. Use the bodyfat scales/calipers to guide you.
In general - it's an age old adage - if calories in are less than calories burn weight will be lost. Follow a healthy diet, keep away from simple sugars (when not on the bike) and try keeping fat at 15% of total calories consumed. Other than that reduce intake so that you are 500 calories down on your daily need and in 10 weeks you will be as many pounds lighter.
I hope this helps.
Tom.
There are a couple of ways that you can do this at home. There are not 100% accurate, however, you will get a good ballpark.
The Accu-Measure as listed here : http://www.sncdirect.com/snc.nsf/Em...43A51BF12303BE480256BFB0058F09A?OpenDocument. These are made in America and so I'm sure you can source them there.
Else get yourself a set of body-fat measuring scales. http://www.tanita.com
Calipers run at about $15-20. Scales $60-200.
Tom.
The Accu-Measure as listed here : http://www.sncdirect.com/snc.nsf/Em...43A51BF12303BE480256BFB0058F09A?OpenDocument. These are made in America and so I'm sure you can source them there.
Else get yourself a set of body-fat measuring scales. http://www.tanita.com
Calipers run at about $15-20. Scales $60-200.
Tom.
... or visit a local dietician. They can also check out your diet to make sure you haven't got too much fat in there, and have got enough protein intake.
From my personal experience the secret to keeping weight low and performance up is to watch the diet, and ride at least 10 hours a week.
You can lose weight and strength...yet still gain power at the same time. This is because when you shed weight...you increase your power to weight ratio. Losing some strength while shedding weight is inevitable....don't worry too much about it. In the end...your power to weight ratio should increase...and this means you will climb better and ride faster. Jan Ullrich was skinnier during the tour de france than at any other time during the season....yet he was also more powerful at the tour than at any other point of reference. Tour riders lose a lot of weight during the three week race...taking on the 'gaunt' appearance....yet they actually get stronger as the race progresses because as I stated already..the power to weight ratio increases. Losing strenght and size should be more of a concern for a body builder or powerlifter....but not a cyclist. Just worry about getting the proper nutrition and sleep in addition to your cycle training.
Best bet is to probably give up weights (weight will decrease with loss of muscle mass) and to up your cycling. Are you riding mid-week?
Ric
Two points:
1) cheap calipers are useless as they are neither accurate or repeatable. If you're going to get calipers make sure they're good one, such as Harpenden (http://www.assist.co.uk/harpenden/HPSection2a.htm). they're about US$400 to 500 last time i checked
2) it's impossible to get an accurate and valid skinfold measurement if you do it yourself. it's highly unlikely that you get a friend or partner to accurately and validly measure you. Accurate and valid skinfold measurements, for trying to estimate body fat% and thus fat loss, can only be accomplished by well trained personnel. it's suprisingly difficult to accurately measure using skinfold calipers
ric
this isn't actually gaining power, just increasing the ratio of power to mass. in most people (e.g. non-elite pros) unless you have a large amount of fat mass to drop, dropping a couple of kg is unlikely to make much percievable difference to your performance unless you regularly race up very long climbs (e.g. ~1-hr). it's far more important to actually increase some aspect of your sustainable (a few mins to several hours) power
it's highly unlikely that anyone gets stronger riding a 3-week Grand Tour. Primarily, this is because cycling has nothing whatsoever to do with strength. It's also highly unlikely that anyone gains (absolute) power either, or increases their power to mass ratio. In well trained and elite riders even a very easy 1-hr bike ride at 50% MAP (~ 60% VO2 max) causes a decrease in power output even when carbohydrates and electrolytes are consumed in sufficient quantities
Ric
I have a pretty old set. I understand that the oldest ones are not accurate for fit people (more than 10 hours a week training) and have repeatedly emailed them for more information (what conversion, if any, should be applied to the readout) and have never had a reply.
Anyone know?
This is perhaps the most absurd and looney statement I have ever read at this discussion board. [/B][/QUOTE]
perhaps, you'd like to explain why it's an "absurd and looney statement"?
Ric
(hope attribution now correct) Ric, you have made several counterintuitive statements which have been (rather informally) highlighted. Perhaps you should be doing the explaining.
I think you guys are just getting confused by definitions: Ric (the coach) is using words with carefully defined scientific meaning, unfortunately they are the same words that the rest of us use colloquially. E.g. if I say a rider is looking "strong" I just mean he's going well, Ric might say, "what's his strength got to do with it, actually if you look at the gear he's in and the cadence his strength is only equivalent to lift a 5kg weight (or whatever)"
I mean, what RS says is pretty obvious: you can't get more powerful by getting tired after 3 weeks on the road (regardless of what weight you are!). You might depreciate at a slower rate than your competitors and seem more powerful relatively. Jan is lighter at the Tour because he's come off the pies and been training properly before it, no coincidence that his power is also (presumably, but we have no evidence) higher at the Tour.
If you lose weight you will inevitably lose some muscle mass. But since the most effective way to lose weight is through a cardiovascular excercise programme you'll get fitter and be able to produce more power.
I mean, what RS says is pretty obvious: you can't get more powerful by getting tired after 3 weeks on the road (regardless of what weight you are!). You might depreciate at a slower rate than your competitors and seem more powerful relatively. Jan is lighter at the Tour because he's come off the pies and been training properly before it, no coincidence that his power is also (presumably, but we have no evidence) higher at the Tour.
If you lose weight you will inevitably lose some muscle mass. But since the most effective way to lose weight is through a cardiovascular excercise programme you'll get fitter and be able to produce more power.
perhaps, you'd like to explain why it's an "absurd and looney statement"?
Ric [/QUOTE] (hope attribution now correct) Ric, you have made several counterintuitive statements which have been (rather informally) highlighted. Perhaps you should be doing the explaining. [/QUOTE]
Additionally, to the reply from Rob of the Og, I, 2LAP, Andy Coggan and a few others on this forum, use the words as defined by science, as principally we're sports scientists, and exercise physiologists as well as coaches.
The statement has been explained previouly in the thread or in other recent threads on this forum, however, to aid clarification i'll explain further in a different reply (to aid the quoting)
Ric
loosing mass and maintaining power, which is what oneradtec seems to be infering doesn't mean you increase (absolute) power output, you just increase power to mass ratio. on flat roads this will have no effect (unless you lost a *gross amount* of fat). On hills, loosing a few kg (which the original poster mentioned) will have the effect of shortening a climb by a few seconds. generally, a larger increase in performance can be gained by increasing the power that can be sustained up a climb, as opposed to loosing a couple kg and maintaining the same power (and generally, if you loose weight you're likely to loose power as well).
as mentioned in many threads on this forum and others, strength has little or nothing to do with endurance cycling, in as much as elite cyclists are no stronger than age, gender, and mass matched healthy controls. see http://www.cyclingnews.com/fitness/?id=strengthstern
as mentioned a couple paragraphs above, loosing mass and maintaining power will increase power to mass ratio, but unless the climb is long the effect will be small. it's much better to target the numerator rather than the denominator of the power to mass fraction
Grand Tour riders do not loose a lot of weight during the race, there's a few review papers looking at this, principally (from memory) it's Saris and Brouns from about 1990 or 91 (using the 89 TdF) and a study from the Milk Race (authors name escapes me), plus some others. The order of magnitude of weight loss is a couple kg at most.
They're unlikely to get stronger. Cycling has nothing to do with strength, see the article and numerous threads on this board.
Furthermore, short, easy bouts of exercise (~1 hr @ 50% MAP) cause a significant decrease in power output in trained and elite riders, see Passfield and Doust (2000). Thus, it's extremely likely that 3 weeks of moderate exercise, with some moderately high, maximal and supramaximal work will cause significant fatigue and ensure that power has decreased (along with the denominator -- mass), thus ensuing that power to mass stays the same or decreases. additionally, when talking with the riders it's apparent that they're generally fatigued at the end of a GT.
Add in that the riders loose 'some' weight, and it's likely that there's a glycogen depletion occuring, which will decrease sustainable power output.
Therefore, i see no reason why power to mass should increase or why i was making an "absurd or loony statement"
Ric
The quoting on this forum does not work properly and is causing errors. On most forums you can have nested quotes, here you have to do it by hand (the background programming edits them out when replying) and you have to be careful.
I did not say as quoted 2 above that Ric's statement was 'absurd'; this has been mis-attributed.
I did not say as quoted 2 above that Ric's statement was 'absurd'; this has been mis-attributed.
But if you look at the post in question that's how it comes out.
It's not your fault, nested quoting does not work here, but one can construct them properly (as I've also shown above). One has to be careful, as demonstrated by posts here with unmatched
roy,
i'm a moderator here. however, i can't see where you think that anyone is attributing anything to you, other than the bit where you said i'd written something counter intuitively???
anyway, please PM me if you wish to continue on this off topic subject as it's likely to lead the thread off topic
ric
i'm a moderator here. however, i can't see where you think that anyone is attributing anything to you, other than the bit where you said i'd written something counter intuitively???
anyway, please PM me if you wish to continue on this off topic subject as it's likely to lead the thread off topic
ric
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