"RK" <[email hidden]> wrote in message "]news:[email hidden]...
Quoted message said:Back to power and weight lifting: If hypertrophy accounts for 10 to 20% of the strength increase,
isn't that sufficient to justify some amount of traditional weight training in conjunction with
cycling specific exercises?
When a moderately active individual takes up strength training for a few months, the typical
increase in strength averages around 25%. If we go with your assumption that 20% of this is due to
hypertrophy (and 80% is due to neural factors), then that means a 5% increase in muscle
cross-sectional area, and thus the potential for a 5% increase in maximal power. Realizing the
difference between 25% and 5%, that the 5% is only a potential (that needs to be trained via,
e.g., sprinting), that that gain is accompanied by an increase in mass (which needs to be
accelerated and carried up hills), and that there are other ways of increasing maximal power (such
as by simply riding a bike), you then have to decide whether/if weight training really fits into
somebody's program.
To put it more simply: non-endurance track racers better be lifting really heavy weights, to grow
big muscles. For anybody else, weight training can't be considered a requirement (or even
necessarily useful).
Andy Coggan