The Base - Being Effective

[tjwpower]

Hi All,

First Time Poster, but long time observer.

Currently I'm in a situation where I would like to really improve my bike split over longer course Triathlon (70.3-Ironman). Some background information on myself. I currently use an SRM for my riding and have done so for the past 2 years. The last FTP Test had me sitting at 3.9w/kg (265w) which I would like to improve to over 4.4w/kg (300w) if possible, over how long that will take i a different question? I have about 2 years in the sport, but only taking the past year more so seriously and consistantly where I was riding between 450km-700km/pw with an emphesis on either endurance or threshold . Other than that, I had social rode for about 2-3 years over the summer months (nothing structural or hard/long). The problem is, I was not instructing my own work and I actually only gained about 20w on my FTP for the workload I was given. Maybe a case of too much work, not enough recovery? (I generally run 70km+ weeks and up to 110km) or maybe that gain is reasonable?

A Few question's id like to raise in regards to training and power in the base period are as follow and any opinions would be appreciated.

1. Intervals : I am currently about to start my Base Period off a break, question regarding to this is what is the most effective way to work in the base period? The obvious answer is Z2 Endurance Ride, Build the Foundation, steady state riding etc, but is it more effective to spend more time in Z3 during this period and maybe insert some "Sweet Spot" Intervals at approx 87% FTP to keep it aerobic but also increase FTP at a better rate? Or is this a case of mixing training (remembering much of my racing will fall in upper Z3). Where does FTP/Zone 4 training fall in terms of Base Period Training, should it be non existent and wait until I start to Build.
2. SE Training: I have read the discussion regarding to this but it is more so primarily relating to road racing. In the past I have done SE Work on the bike and found it made me felt "stronger" but does science show there is any physiological adaptations that take place in terms of leg strength (not power) as leg strength is a big factor for myself being have to run for 75mins+ off the bike and running also does oppose cycling leg strength. More Importantly, would it be any more beneficial of doing SE efforts of either 53/11 on flat or big ring climbing during the base period but keeping the power below FTP.
3. Gym Training: My primarily focus on Gym work would not be to build power, but rather for injury prevention and increased economy. Is there merit behind this that to undertake appropriate gym work including work to strengthen Hip Flexors, Glutes, Quads and Hamstrings may improve economy, similar would SE training be more appropriate as it adds more specificity? IF so, where and what would be appropriate way of undertaking this. I have read studies that low rep/high weight is best for strength but I don't think this can correlate into bike strength.

Any opinions or thoughts on the following matter would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Felt_Rider]

Originally Posted by tjwpower .

Gym Training: My primarily focus on Gym work would not be to build power, but rather for injury prevention and increased economy. Is there merit behind this that to undertake appropriate gym work including work to strengthen Hip Flexors, Glutes, Quads and Hamstrings may improve economy, similar would SE training be more appropriate as it adds more specificity? IF so, where and what would be appropriate way of undertaking this. I have read studies that low rep/high weight is best for strength but I don't think this can correlate into bike strength.

My background is a former competitive lifter and consultant to help others in strength related activities so I will throw in my opinion. You are correct that low rep/high weight is best for strength, but it seems you also understand that gym work does not help in increasing sustainable power in endurance sport. Even though I have a great fondness for lifting it would be my opinion for anyone competing in endurance sport to focus on specificity to that activity.

I do agree on the aspect that using the gym for personal rehab/physical therapy post injury is a good choice and especially the use of machines at first because the range of motion is very controlled in the path. As rehab progresses I would then start to use free weight. But, again just personal opinion, to use "gym work" to strengthen areas for injury prevention is something that one cannnot predict as if you knew in advance what type of injury may happen in the future. Something of an example would be a common accident/injury like breaking a collar bone/separated shoulder cannot be prevented with strength training in advance.

I have seen a lot of discussions on these cycling forums with various folk stating they use lifting to help cycling and even coaches suggesting lifting to increase strength, but it seems there is something very obvious that is being overlooked by those making that claim and I will point it out this one time. I have no problem with someone disputing my thoughts. Actually I will state this in reverse in terms a cyclist would understand and then you can turn it around and see how this works for gym work for strength.

Example:
A lifter wants to increase his aerobic fitness over the winter and properly finds his functional threshold for the starting point. Let's say his FT is 120 watts since he has focused only in lifting for many years. For several months he backs off of the strength training in order to balance recovery time with the cardio training focus within 3 months his FT has improved to 180 watts. But now his powerlifting season is starting so he has to go back to a specific lifting program to compete.

Question: knowing what you know about time away from cycling how long do you thing that 50 watt gain in his FT will remain?

A couple of months? Maybe 4 months? By 6 months was it even worth it?

Same way with lifting. Whatever small strength gains a person will make I promise you it will diminish almost as fast as it was gained so then one must ask would the time have been better spent focusing on specific training through the offseason. In order to keep gains in endurance or strength one must keep up training just about year round.

I forget who it was that used to always write, "you are either training or detraining" so in order for a strength or endurance program to work it has to be progressive in nature. I still train in both lifting and cycing year round and I am talking about a true attempt at strength training not what some call strength training with rubber bands and such. I actually try to train heavy. I trained legs this morning with squats and leg presses and yet I am slowly declining in strength over the past number of years because I cannot train as heavy as I did when I was younger. Plus I am 30 pounds lighter and I cannot handle the load on my back with this lighter body weight.

I added a lot that does not really apply to you because it seems that you know this, but you are looking for confirmation in direction.
If it were me and I was a competitive cyclists I would focus in cycling.

When I competed in lifting I focused on lifting year round. My off season was actually when I trained the hardest and heaviest. Because I had to make a weight class (I competed as a lightweight) I had to introduce cardio and reduced calories and would actually lose a little strength because of that. Off season I bulked up 30 pounds over my weight class and was able to train very heavy.

It was very opposite for me in lifting where cardio was my nemesis and I lost strength, but I had no other choice and had to do it to make my weightclass cutoff. I am a huge believer in sports specific training. Those who compete in cross fit have to juggle both strength and cardio fitness training, but it is still specific to their competition.

 

[tjwpower]

Thanks Felt, Very Informative and you make some excellent points!

In regards to what you have said, I think I practically agree with everything you have said. As you mentioned, strength will diminish very quickly once you stop training it, so effectively, once the heavy training phase comes in where intensity in introduced, weight training will then take the back seat, if not abandoned all together. So realistically, by looking at strength training in the gym for endurance sports, you are;

1. Better off spending more time specifically under going your sport and gaining strength through the specific mechanisms that matter. After all, you may be able to gain significant strength in the gym or on the bike through big gear work [you will not ride like this during racing] but you will not replicate the effort or even come close to the strain on the muscles that is required. That is not to say you wont fatigue or need strength but it is a different type of strength that is require. It is Strength Endurance/Muscular Endurance that you are after (which is a completely different discussion).
2. Not going to gain any slight benefits of bio-mechanic, economy or injury prevention unless you continue to train in the gym all year round. Whilst this may sound good in theory, more than often, recovery and fatigue from training increases and the desire and motivation to go to the gym decreases. Again, is this time spent in the gym going to be more beneficial than time spent training specific.
3. Not going to Increase your FTP/V02/Endurance through gym training. If that's what your trying to achieve, then train to achieve that.

So I think that basically answer's my question regarding to Gym Training, whilst I would be going there for injury prevention (not rehab, power or strength), I am better of spending time training in specific actions that relate to cycling (and in my case running and swimming).

 

[Felt_Rider]

Originally Posted by tjwpower .

Thanks Felt, Very Informative and you make some excellent points!

Thanks....I just read back through the long winded mess I wrote. I am glad you were able to sift through it and find something worthy. /img/vbsmilies/smilies/smile.gif
I am here as a student to cycling so I could only comment on the lifting portion of your question. You seem to be looking at all this with good logic.

best wishes on fine tuning the training plan

 

[Felt_Rider]

tjwpower, it is refreshing to see how you are thinking through this with those 3 points. I would love to think that strength and even resistance exercise would be beneficial or transfer to cycling because I have a lot of years invested in this aspect, but my personal experience I have seen no performance benefit to cycling. If anything I see the two antagonistic to each other. Fortunately in my case I am retired from competitive lifting and bodybuilding and have no aspirations to compete in cycling so I can break the "specificity rules" to either and do what I want with realization I am not going to be good at either.

Here are my observations attempting to do true strength training and true cycling training and this has played out just as I expected when I first started cycling in 2004. I use the word "true" in both cases because in strength I still attempt to stimulate strength with progressive heavy loads and I train in cycling using a power meter with the metabolic adaptions in mind when training and not based on perception for either activity. I have true marks that I attempt to hit in both activities. I will be honest and say that I fail at hitting those marks due to juggling both, but I continue anyway.

If I have a good leg training day and hit those goals in the gym with squats and leg presses the result toward my cycling training ~90% of the time I am unable to hit anything above L3 and do well to hit L3 for 20 minutes because my legs have not recovered. If I were to wait until my legs are recovered from the gym work I would end up just doing easy intensity weekend rides.

If I have a good cycling training week than I am 90% unlikely to hit the goal in the gym on leg day for progressive training. I am too fatigued to handle the heavier loads.

So if we were talking numbers (and I do find the PMC / CTL to be worthy guides) my CTL is somewhat flat because my legs are sharing recovery time between the two activities. It seems that endurance training is winning slightly in the battle and that is mainly due to my age with declining hormones and not being able to support the heavy load that stimulates strength gains. In someways it may appear to others that I have a strong appearance, but I know the reality is I am slowly declining and strength is slowly losing the battle.

Another observation to me showing that not much "strength" is needed in cycling is that I am becoming weaker in squats and yet cycling performance is improving, but there are so many valid examples all around us to prove that strength is not necessary in cycling. A child coordinated enough and not many years after learning to walk can ride a bike. I cycling with women (competitve road cyclist and triathletes) that can not only drop me on the hills (watts/kg), but are near capable of dropping me on the flats and yet probably not able squat their own bodyweight. These women are frail in appearance and some of the guys in my cycling circle are very frail in appearance as well and none of these ever do any type of strength exercises. The ability to control a bike in general takes very minimal "strength."

Strength training for injury prevention. I think in the terms you are speaking may be different in what I am thinking. Most of my injuries current and in the past are generally a result of strength training. I have had more than 6 significant strains / micro tears as a result of training heavy. It is common for me to live with tendonitis. I currently have it in both elbows at this very moment as a result of training at the gym. I have injured my back twice in the last month. One was pretty severe over a month ago, though I continued to train, and then I did some damage mid back last week racking the weight after doing shoulder shrugs. I have impacted my ulnar nerve and strained fingers on many occasions while having a heavy bar resting on my palms during lifting making it very painful when cycling. It seems crazy that I would continue to do these things, but to me the benefit of lifting outweighs all of these injuries. At 49 and compared to other average guys in my age group I seem to be far more durable in everyday type activities. My goal, even though my strength is declining, is to fight the good fight and take as much strength with me into my elderly years. When I crashed in 2007 and separated my shoulder I was able to regain strength in my upper body without surgery so I think that lifting for rehab is a good thing, but not so good if one desires to climb the competitive ranks in cycling.

In the world of cycling where on other forums folks are talking about how aero a Cervelo P5 is compared to all other bikes, it negates all of this when someone is built like me and has a wide frontal area. I am fairly lean and yet outweigh my cycling friends of equal height and skeletal frame size by 30 lbs or more. I was behind a guy not too long ago that was on a TT bike and this guy looked almost as narrow and aero as his TT bike. Me, I probably look like a moose on my TT bike and I know I catch a lot of air because I can feel it.

I will say though in my years of consulting others in strength sports that most guys and gals that are true ectomorphs do not gain size anyway regardless of training program and only on a few occassions a handful of ectomorphs (typically noted in slang terms in the gym as hardgainers) do well in powerlifting and in most cases they are in the lightweight categories. So if we were talking the typical successful cycling competitor they generally tend to be ectomorphs. The threat of size gain may be a minimal factor so when I make a statement on a cycling forum about not doing strength or gym work it is typically because of how the recovery time interferes between the two and the potential for significant injury risk that comes with aggressive/progressive training.

 

[danfoz]

Originally Posted by Felt_Rider .

In the world of cycling where on other forums folks are talking about how aero a Cervelo P5 is compared to all other bikes, it negates all of this when someone is built like me and has a wide frontal area. I am fairly lean and yet outweigh my cycling friends of equal height and skeletal frame size by 30 lbs or more. I was behind a guy not too long ago that was on a TT bike and this guy looked almost as narrow and aero as his TT bike. Me, I probably look like a moose on my TT bike and I know I catch a lot of air because I can feel it.

Yeah, but we love guys like you towing us through the headwinds to the final 250M drag /img/vbsmilies/smilies/wink.gif

Ps. Keep the long posts coming. I once edited a post I felt was too long winded, a little self concious that I was monopolozing the response, only to later realize someone had given me a thumbs up for all the detail.

 

[swampy1970]

I think the best way of being effective is finding where your weaknesses are, figuring out a way to train those whilst minimizing training stress as much as possible. Doing all the training for the different sports will add enough stress as it is... I personally don't see a place for gym work for endurance cycling. Doing it places a large amount of stress on your body for little to no return in power for anything over a minute. Put into perspective, the usefulness of that extra lean mass would have ended half the way through a kilometer time trial on a track for the likes of you and I. If you're recovering from a long term injury and require gym work as part of the therapy then fine - otherwise for cycling, no. For Strength Endurance work I'd do some just to get used to hammering a bigger gear in a race than I'd normally do uphills in training, especially when cresting a hill. That leg wobbling effort that requires one to chuck the bike it a big gear and give it your last ounce of strength (and then some) to hold onto the wheels of the fast lads... I wouldnt advocate doing 20 minutes up a long 5% hill in 52x12 - but I found getting used to those shorter efforts out of the saddle in a big gear to be useful. Specificity... As that kind of effort isn't likely to be required for a Tri bike split i'd give this one a miss too If you're doing base training then lots of L2 with some short sharp work, some L4 but not for overly long periods and even a minute or two of L5. Definitely not 5+ minutes of L5. If you always face on a tri bike, train on a tri bike. Use similar pedaling speeds, use the same position become very comfortable on your bike in your race position during training. Learning to be somewhat relaxed on a bike in your race position isn't an easy task and given that training in that position will (a) make it a more relaxing experience when racing and (b) might allow you to move to a more aero position then it's worth doing, IMHO. Plus, being able to eat and drink in a full tuck whilst not feeling like you're gonna puke chunks cause you're feeling more squished than usual is nice. With the other sports you'll have more than enough on your plate without the added demands of weight and SE training. They'll make you sore and tired for all the wrong reasons.

 

[tjwpower]

Swampy - Thanks, and more so for your take on the SE work. As by now I think the Gym work is clearly obvious thanks to Felt.

My main aim through my base is to continue to improve my aerobic capacity so once I hit my build I will not have any limiters in place. I am thinking along the lines of intervals that will require efforts at V02 or 115% of FTP with maximum rest and also the inclusion of some SST Intervals. The reason I have included V02 in my base over FTP in terms of Aerobic Capacity as V02 gains a lot more than FTP and FTP does not give a lot more than SST (in regards to Aerobic Capacity). It will also allow me to then concentrate on FTP and Lactate clearance whilst in my build which will allow me to be training more specifically for my racing which will spend more time in L3 and L4 rather than L5 but also will allow me to do L5 efforts with short recoverys. My only negative thought is that with this type of strain being placed on the body (by completing V02), will it be a matter of too much too soon?

I have also recently read a study that Hunter Allan mentions in his book about the effects of 4-7 very short (30seconds) maximal sprints and resulted in the time to exhaustion from these efforts at 80% of V02 increased 100% (It did not actually raise v02, just time to exhaustion at 80%).

SE I guess that it may be appropriate the end longer rides of 3-5hrs with a set of possibly 3-4x5min big gear hill reps at submaximal-to-maximal FTP power? as being in a slightly depleted/fatigued state rather than doing it fresh as often you don't need the so called strength when fresh..?

Am I along the right lines?