palewin said:
Boy, I hate having responses that differ from Ric's, but at the same time I hope that my coach at CTS bases his workouts on something factual! Both he (and Carmichael's book) have several "power building" workouts: Stomps (12-20second seated sprints in a big gear, around 53x13, from slow start speed (7-10mph); PowerStarts (essentially the same thing, but out of the saddle); MuscleTension (10-12 minute steady climbs in a gear big enough to keep you at 50-55rpm - seated - with a relatively low HR). The premise seems to be "big gear and either slow start speed or climbing = resistance." My schedule was loaded with these over the winter, as a substitute for gym work, which my coach doesn't recommend.
Part of the issue here (that is to say, daring to contradict Rick) is that you need to keep in mind just what we are discussing...
Strength, power and muscular endurance are all different aspects of performance and as such are defined differently.
Building strength requires a workload that causes fatigue within 1-~15 repetitions, depending on your strength training background. This never happens during a road or mtb event.
Once the repetitions get much beyond 15reps, you are primarily building muscular endurance (the ability of the muscles to lift the same load/generate the same amount of power many, many times, as in cycling or running).
W/o getting into the math, power has strength as part of its definition, but there is also a time element to it. In road cycling, the strength half of the equation is very low (i.e.: one does not need to be "strong" to be powerful on a bike); which is why Ric commented that increasing your strength does nothing for endurance cycling performance.
RST has similar workouts to the ones you describe that develop power on the bike, but we prefer to focus on the ranges of cadences that are inherent to road performance (or whatever your event is). We do not, however, advocate training your legs to generate endurance levels of power while pedaling abnormally low rpms (the kind of rpms that do not occur during road cycling). Although such 'muscle tension' exercises do potentially recruit more muscle fibers (though they do not build *strength*), we would argue that there are better ways of doing that....enough said there.