From a feature on Lance Armstrong's improved fitness at the Tour Down Under compared to last year, courtesy of cyclingnews.com:
An image of Armstrong doing weights in his garage was recently released in the rider’s picture book, which documented his return to the sport. Bruyneel made reference to Armstrong’s retirement fitness regime as one of the major changes that has taken place in the past 12 months.
"At the end of 2008 when he started to train again he was a retired athlete who wanted to stay in shape, stay fit, and he did a lot of different disciplines," said Bruyneel. "One of them was weight lifting. It makes you look good at the beach but it’s not the best for a bike rider. Since he started to race [again] he hasn’t lifted weights anymore but of course losing muscle takes a long time and he’s gotten rid of a lot of those bigger muscles in his upper body now which is what makes him look very different."
An OBVIOUS ploy to dupe the competition to stop lifting weights, thus denying them the myriad benefits and setting them up for failure in the grand tours. Puh-LEASE! 🙄
I always find it entertaining how amateur weightlifting types are deathly afraid of doing any cardio because it will "hurt their gains" and endurance types are afraid of doing any weightlifting, because they'll gain so much muscle that they'll never be able to lose it all.
Tony, are you still selling off some of your muscle ? 😄
Ya' mon! You want some??? Got at least 15-20lbs I'd be willing to pay somebody to take off my torso...if only I could get a quick dose of some highly curable muscle-wasting disease that would only affect my upper body - I'll keep wishing...
I'll sell some off too. I boxed during high school and in those growing years my arms and shoulders really bulked up. Even now, at 64 kg, I had a guy on a group ride say, "You're built like a boxer, not a bike racer." 😕
Turned out he used to be a boxer, too.
Anyway, it sucks now because I'm probably carrying 3-4 kg of weight up there that I don't need...and no matter what (dieting, limiting what I carry, etc.), it won't go away.
