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.
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.
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