Once more: gyming to improve power



Felt, if you aren't already doing this, I'd suggest a 1-legged leg press. You get a much greater ROM and it is much more cycling specific. ;)

Felt_Rider said:
It seems like you are on the right track and do not need any advice or guidance. That is why I was just making suggestions of options in case. High bench step ups are not what I personally do, but then again I am a lifting purist and my goals are different than yours. I get plenty of leg strength training through just plain old squats and leg press. Keeping it simple as you say is the best course. Low volume is actually the path to greater strength if you can get warmed up quickly enough. Unfortunately for me I require a lot of warm up sets.


My leg workout yesterday was this: I have a lot of warm up sets before getting to my working sets. Everything I do is full range of motion.

Leg extensions 5 sets (warm up)
Seated leg curls 5 sets (warm up)
One legged leg press 1 set (warm up)
Leg press (4 plates - warm up)
Leg press (6 plates - warm up)
Leg press (8 plates - warm up)
Leg press (10 plates - working set, 6 reps)
Leg press (12 plates or 540 lbs - working set, 6 reps) (fairly easy and felt like 60% of max) :)

Squats (135 lbs x 10)
Squats (185 lbs x 6)
Squats (225 lbs x 6)
Squats (225 lbs x 6)
Squats (135 lbs x 10)

The squats are something I have to work back into because of back issues, but between now and December I will be ramping up if my body holds up (back, knees and no muscle strains).

Keep us posted as you progress. I will be interested to see how it works out for you.
 
Piotr said:
Frost, just make sure that this thread doesn't turn into a "How to Get Injured for Dummies" thread (I think we have one already). Be wise and respectful of your age (which I know is not 18). :)

Obviusly you haven't fortotten me picking on your over weight problem recently :p.

No seriously, I have 20 years history of gym training which is of course good but on the other hand there is a big risk here that whatever I use to do at gym that at least wasn't acutely hurting me and my body had got used to, could now suddenly after a three years break turn out to be something that breaks my unprepared muscles and ligaments. So I try to keep that warning actively on my mind.
 
Meek One said:
Felt, if you aren't already doing this, I'd suggest a 1-legged leg press. You get a much greater ROM and it is much more cycling specific. ;)
This guy thinks so too. It's the Australian national sprint team's "bread and butter". There are some other good insights in there too.
 
You're absolutely right Mitosis, going to the gym won't do anything for my cycling. Now, if I move some weights or ride a stationary bike while I'm there, that might help me reach my goals, but certainly just showing up does nothing, excluding the 3 miles I ride to get there, which probably don't do much of anything for my physical fitness.
Now, in case you didn't read that pdf, I'd like you take take a look at the following snippets and tell me what you think is wrong with them. All emphasis is mine.

"Weight training for enduros - the same strategies apply but maximal strength and power are less critical. All endurance riding, even the bunch sprint at the end, is really submaximal.A little bit of gym regularly helps to maintain the structural integrity of the body, prevent imbalances and prepare you for crashes, but the real gains come on the road. Racing is the best training."
"For strength endurance on the bike, ride up hills in the saddle on bigger gears. That was the only strength work out team pursuit did for the last three years and they won everything there was to win with a bucket load of world records to boot. Incidentally, they are also the fastest starters."

I think you'd certainly approve of all the things I bold-texted.
 
frost said:
There's a rumour telling about building a new velodrome to where I live. Could be or not and probably years away but anyway there is an interest raising in my head about trying track next summer. Kilo would be a natural event because I am too bad with my bike handling skills to ever attend to a group event and probably lack the "heart" for pursuit.

So to the gym I go. I lack in standing start department (best standing start peak power so far is ~1500w and I can put out more in a seated small ring sprint) so extra strength would be handy. Also the sad reality is that with our winter it is practically impossible to do any on bike sprint exercises soon. (I really cannot imagine all out sprinting on trainer). My initial plan is to do plyometrics/jump exercises (one legged jumps, alternate jumps, drop jumps, I have a pretty good routine on these because as a junior I was a highjumper) once a week and hit the gym once. Rest of the time spending on metabolics/FTP/SST-department.

The core of the gym routine would be jump squats, lunges and deadlift. The questions that came to my mind:
- does it sound reasonable at all?
- how deep squats? All the way or mimicing the cycling angles
- how much weight to use? (during my gym days I read anything between 30-80% of 1 RM for explosive training)

I'm not a trackie - never have been, probably never will. I rode the Kilo once on an outdoor track. I'd argue that it was the hardest thing I'd ever done in my life. A good part of it has to be mental - it's fecking brutal. If you sucked like I did and do something pedestrian like a 1min 16 - go do an all out effort for 1 minute and plan on finishing at 1 minute. When you finish that one minute get someone to count down that last 16 seconds backwards. I swear stuff happens in slow motion, it'll be the most brutal 16 seconds you've encountered short of riding your bike at speed into the side of someones house - been there, done that, killed the helmet...

... if you chose that as your primary focus - more power too you. I don't 'get it' - you're going around in circles putting yourself through a terrible effort. At least on the hills you see why it's hard. LOL

Here's a little nugget from Chris Hoy... He's 'fairly handy' on a track bike at the shorter distances.


In terms of trying to increase your speed how much of that work is done in the gym?
Gym? It's been a very gradual thing. I haven't improved much, I've kind of plateaued. You always improve a lot at the start. It's like anything, you can have a steep learning curve. But from sort of 1999 onwards it's just been like every year, maybe five kilos, two and a half to five kilos gain in the squat, one rep max. So I think the initial strength you have, if you've never been to the gym before and you have a good six months, or 12 months of quality training with the right technique and the right advice, then you do see a difference. If you like - your bottom end curve. You come out of the start gate and you can really kind of have a press and pedal hard at that speed. Obviously it doesn't always transfer across to your top end speed. You see some guys that are built like stick insects that can pedal like anything and you don't need to have massive big legs to pedal fast at top end, but at the same time it does help with your start, yeah.

hoy_natart1.jpg
Image copyright Rebecca Charlton

In the gym is there a lot of core work and upper body?
We try not to do too much upper body, I used to do upper body when I was younger. You can put muscle mass on quite easily and you don't train to get big because you can get big quite easily so yeah, it's more the frontal area it's just your aerodynamics. If you've got big shoulders and big arms then it's a lot of air compression. You're trying to be as small as you can but at the same time you obviously use your arms doing cleans or even when you are squatting you're holding the bar. For dead lifts as well, and just riding the bike. When you're doing starts you're kind of holding in that strong brace position. It's an isometric move, you're not moving your arms - it's isometric strength so you do use your arms and inevitably you will put that mass on but you try not to do too much.

World Champion Chris Hoy: INTERVIEW - RoadCyclingUK Features
 
Swampy, so for someone like me, who never did any leg workouts, doing some exercises will definitely help me out. I mean, I did not have any strength in my legs before I started riding, and just from this season alone, my legs gained most of the muscle, strength and endurance. So I plan to do some normal weight and cardio exercises this winter at the gym, not to try to gain muscle but just to get a little stronger and ready for that initial start.

Thank you,
-Greg
 
mitosis said:
Go to the gym if you want to but don't expect it to help your cycling.



I should qualify that - for track work there are some advantages. Posted before I read the whole thread. Too late to edit.
 
We all know that by now and several thousand threads later that gym work doesn't do anything significant for 99% of cycling. However the 1% it does make a difference in is 'starts', as Hoy alluded to in the post above. Frost, the OP, wants to do a kilo, which begins with a 'start' and therefore gym work is relevant to him. Frost already has a strong FTP and probably decent 30 and 60 sec power (all which help him finish the kilo). Working an aspect of the 'ride' that he doesn't train (starts) and doing a little gym work where he is going to make quick initial gains is smart.
Frost, get close to the strength plateau that comes very quickly (several months), reduce poundage and do very explosive movements in the gym and on the bike and watch your times decrease...:)
The Aussie thread, while some maintain is dated now, is still good advice. For more information contact a great coach.

FWIW When doing the gym work at max efforts and explosive efforts you will be taxing your CNS(Central Nervous System) very hard, whether you know it or not. Make sure to rest, eat well and sleep well even if you don't feel like it and work your way up the volume ladder and make sure you don't 'fry' yourself.
My 2 cents.

-Meek
 
Wow, a lot more interest in this thread, thanks guys!

Steve_B said:
This guy thinks so too. It's the Australian national sprint team's "bread and butter". There are some other good insights in there too.

Yes, that (among others in FGF) is very good read. Obviously for a "bit" more advanced level than I am, a rookie, just playing with idea not even having a track bike. (nice comment about Pilates :D )
 
Meek One said:
Frost, the OP, wants to do a kilo, which begins with a 'start' and therefore gym work is relevant to him. Frost already has a strong FTP

weeell, strong in absolute numbers, mediocre if you think my size...

and probably decent 30 and 60 sec power (all which help him finish the kilo).
30s is pretty good, haven't tested it lately but I usually do a couple of standing 30s at the end of the sprint workout and those are ~1050w (after 4 flying 5-10s and 4 overgeared 5-10s uphill standing starts) so I think properly rested it could be close to 1100w.
I had a target of hitting 10w/kg for minute at the beginning of the season which was based on my last year best 820w (uphill) but when I started doing flat standing starts I very soon realised how big is the difference between doing it on flat with most of time seated vs. uphill standing. I doubt I can ever hit 10w/kg on flat, but then again, this year to podium in nationals here was ~1:09 and M30 (there wasn't M35) winning time was 1.11,63 so maybe a bit less can get atleast somewhere.

.
Frost, get close to the strength plateau that comes very quickly (several months), reduce poundage and do very explosive movements in the gym and on the bike and watch your times decrease...:)

So you're saying first strength then explosion? I was thinking of starting with explosive movements right away but that could make sense, especially could save from injuries, perhaps.

FWIW When doing the gym work at max efforts and explosive efforts you will be taxing your CNS(Central Nervous System) very hard, whether you know it or not. Make sure to rest, eat well and sleep well even if you don't feel like it and work your way up the volume ladder and make sure you don't 'fry' yourself.
My 2 cents.

-Meek

Yes, that's why only once a week (+jump exercise once) and of course I don't want to lose the hard earned ftp :).
 
swampy1970 said:
I'm not a trackie - never have been, probably never will. I rode the Kilo once on an outdoor track. I'd argue that it was the hardest thing I'd ever done in my life. A good part of it has to be mental - it's fecking brutal. If you sucked like I did and do something pedestrian like a 1min 16 - go do an all out effort for 1 minute and plan on finishing at 1 minute. When you finish that one minute get someone to count down that last 16 seconds backwards. I swear stuff happens in slow motion, it'll be the most brutal 16 seconds you've encountered short of riding your bike at speed into the side of someones house - been there, done that, killed the helmet...

I think Alex said somewhere that you may try to pace and save yourself at the beginning of the Kilo but it doesn't make a difference, you'll die a horrible death at the end of it :D.
I haven't hit anyones house (how can you do that btw?) but I hit a pothole in a downhill going 60kmh and somersaulted straight to my head. I like wearing a helmet, especially after that. It didn't hurt right away but the coming week was erm... bad.

... if you chose that as your primary focus - more power too you. I don't 'get it' - you're going around in circles putting yourself through a terrible effort. At least on the hills you see why it's hard. LOL
Probably not my "primary focus", I don't even think I have a focus, just trying to have fun, try new things and see where it gets, but I do get your point, especially that I am not a teen anymore, have a decent job and can choose what to do :rolleyes:.

Here's a little nugget from Chris Hoy... He's 'fairly handy' on a track bike at the shorter distances.

So little gains and how far he's got? Tells quite well what makes the difference when someone is really good!
 
Steve_B said:
There are some other good insights in there too.
I thought it was interesting what he said about "speed endurance": basically you need to get up to speed and work on being able to hold it for longer and longer. IIRC, Arthur Lydiard said something very similar about max efforts and he was a running coach coming at it from kind of a different path.
 
frost said:
I don't want to lose the hard earned ftp :).
That may be hard to do and do all the gym work. You think about all the work that you had to do to get the FTP that you have now and presumably you are now going to divert some of that time to gym work. I'm not sure how you can maintain FTP and recover from the gym work. You may have to accept a temporary decrease in FTP.

On top of that, FTP work and strength generally don't go together well from what I have read. (I'm not an expert, just quoting others.) In fact in the Aussie document that I posted, Rodgers says something like "volume kills your speed" and that's why his elite sprinters do very little endurance riding. Too much volume of any kind kills speed in his opinion. Now, of course, keep in mind that we're talking about the very elite level athletes who are focused on one thing, not people like us that hack at a few different aspects of cycling. However, my understanding is that it can be hard to build strength at the same time that you are trying to recruit muscles to work aerobically.

Another thing I have been told is that your riding will be awful while trying to build strength through weight training. Once you back off the weight and let your body recover (requiring 4-6 weeks), good things can happen.
 
I got interested in this stuff a few years ago when I realized that my top-end (30 sec-3 minute) power was not what I would like it to be. I consulted a local coach (Ph.D. in Exercise Physiology, former pro team director). He feels that the best way to improve short-term power is to increase the density of Type II muscle fibers. The best way to do this is to build muscle through weight training. The weight work is not to increase force generation and strength (as primarily roadies, we don’t need that), more a question of other things. I thought about it and I put the idea on the shelf because I wasn't interested in the time investment and increasing the girth of my quads.

Then this past summer, I was in a pretty bad race accident* and I have been doing some of my rehabilitation work at the gym. Since I’m not racing cyclo-cross this Fall and since I’m a naturally curious person and will be racing more track next year anyway, I figured I’d give 4-5 months of strength work a try and see what happens. I mean, I’ve tried a lot of other things with only limited success, why not try something I haven’t done yet, you know? So I’ve been at it and I’m just starting the heavy weight phase now. I’m curious to see where this goes.


*a fellow competitor was sprinting from way too far back and rammed me from behind at >45 kph. I fractured three ribs, fractured a bone in my back and I have a grade II shoulder separation. It’s the type of thing that isn’t supposed to happen in masters racing. Except it did.
 
Steve_B said:
That may be hard to do and do all the gym work. You think about all the work that you had to do to get the FTP that you have now and presumably you are now going to divert some of that time to gym work. I'm not sure how you can maintain FTP and recover from the gym work. You may have to accept a temporary decrease in FTP.

I am right there in that mode, but then again I am a lifter that enjoys cycling so for me lifting comes before cycling. However, because I am also in my 2nd week of a strength periodization (I train with weights year round, but now I am into this phase) my legs are still sore from training on Monday.

I tried to do some indoor training on the spin bike, but I could not muster up much more than 0.5 IF.
4 days later and all I can do is a few minutes of cardio this morning to warm up my legs just so I can spend some time stretching.

Now imagine that I train moderately heavy year round and for the past 27 years and yet even with all of those years of adaptation my legs still get sore on occassion. What I expect (based on years of experience) is in a few more weeks of moving into this concentrated strength training cycle that recovery will go a bit faster.

Bad thing is I am leading a group ride with a bunch of aggressive cyclists on Saturday. In my ride notice I state this it is not a "no drop ride." Can you guess who is likely to get dropped. Good thing that I know the route. :)
 
Felt_Rider said:
Now imagine that I train moderately heavy year round and for the past 27 years and yet even with all of those years of adaptation my legs still get sore on occassion. What I expect (based on years of experience) is in a few more weeks of moving into this concentrated strength training cycle that recovery will go a bit faster.
That's why I am being very careful with this. I want to be able to walk too, you know?

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Oz coach said that the sprinters do as much as 33 sets (12 or them warm-up sets). I guess when you have all morning and aren't trying to ride (hard) much otherwise, it doesn't matter.

Felt_Rider said:
Bad thing is I am leading a group ride with a bunch of aggressive cyclists on Saturday. In my ride notice I state this it is not a "no drop ride." Can you guess who is likely to get dropped. Good thing that I know the route. :)
I guess you may not be leading for long. :)
 
Steve_B said:
Then this past summer, I was in a pretty bad race accident* and I have been doing some of my rehabilitation work at the gym. Since I’m not racing cyclo-cross this Fall and since I’m a naturally curious person and will be racing more track next year anyway, I figured I’d give 4-5 months of strength work a try and see what happens. I mean, I’ve tried a lot of other things with only limited success, why not try something I haven’t done yet, you know? So I’ve been at it and I’m just starting the heavy weight phase now. I’m curious to see where this goes.

That's exactly how I approach the thing too, keyword being "curious" of how things work and how my body reacts. I don't have any goal of winning, I couldn't actually care less, it's only about winning myself and learning something in the process.

For ftp part, I think I am so far from "the very elite level athletes who are focused on one thing" that a day of gym and another one of plyos should not hurt ftp-side (too much) especially that I am just starting my third year of structured training so in principle it's not on the "edge" yet (hopefully I am right).
 
Steve, I think he was referring to the old school 4-6 hours of mindless riding as volume type of work. Since Frost and others now focus on the shorter 2x20s and the such there is much less of a chance of losing that much speed especially if he is training it. Speed can be gained and lost very quickly though as we all know from our L6 and L7 work, FTP is harder to gain and to lose. Frost may have to take a minor hit in the FTP dept, but then again he may not. Probably will depend a lot on current workload and his ability to recover.

FWIW I bet Frost could already ride a 1:07-1:08 under favorable conditions on a fast track.

Steve_B said:
On top of that, FTP work and strength generally don't go together well from what I have read. In fact in the Aussie document that I posted, Rodgers says something like "volume kills your speed" and that's why his elite sprinters do very little endurance riding.
 

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