So every week I try to do a least one day of each  type  of  training endurance, intervals, sprints, efficiency/skills training etc.  Most rides are endurance or recovery rides and I’ll have my intensity day either be a race, or a strength session on or off the bike. My favorite is racing or hard group ride for my high intensity day, I get a bunch of hard intervals of various lengths in and some sprints and jumps. The powerfile for races is always very spiky and interval like, something hard to replicate in training, that’s why racing is important training I think. Nothing motivates me more to push myself to a new level of intensity then a good old fashion drag race on the bike!

So yesterday my goal was to do a combined efficiency/endurance day and try spinning at 100rpm+ for my 44 mile 2 hr ride I’ve been doing a lot lately. I wasn’t sure if I could do it esp. since there are a few hill climbs on the way and even in my smallest gear at 100RPM I’m butting out almost 500watts. I usually end up doing 400w something on these couple climbs that take about 7 minutes and my RPM will drop a bit down to 90 something rpm.  So I get to the halfway point in my ride to refill my water bottles and I see that my average speed is almost 21mph average! Normally I do 18-19MPH average even when I’m trying to hammer the whole way. Not only was my average speed higher then ever, it felt easy to do because I wasn’t going anarobic at any point expect maybe for a couple minutes on the one big hill climb.  Only downside was that my butt was noticeably more chaffed, when you pedal that fast for that long you need some seriously good shorts, seat and cham lube or something ahaha.

What I noticed is that by spinning this fast my legs had more momentum, my legs never felt like they where getting bogged down and I was starting to smash. I notice too that my pedal form is better when I spin at high cadence, and when the effort becomes more muscular then cardiovascular I start pedaling in an inefficient mashing style that ignores the hip flexors and lifting and kicking over the top leg muscles. I also noticed that at first it can feel wierd pedaling fater then normal but after a while my legs get use to it and adjust and like it better. The biggest thing I noticed is that I would average a bit slower speed on the flats as I spin and my power would be a little low, normally I would put it in a harder gear and get the speed and power up and the cadence down. But this time I stuck with the 100RPM goal, interestingly every time I’d hit a hill I had a lot more snap and power in my legs and I would spin over it in a fairly big hill and keep my momentum up where before I’d try smashing up it to power over it and my legs would be fried after doing it and I would have to slow way down and let my legs recover.
So I learned that I should  “Rest and recovery and spin on the easy parts, and put in 120% effort on the slow hard parts the hills to keep your speed up” You have the most to gain by doing really well on the inclines. and relaxing a bit more on the flats.

So here is a list of benefits I’ve noticed first hand from riding at higher RPMs

1. Reserve leg strength and power for hills and sprints where you need it most to power over them and keep momentum up.
2. Higher RPM makes it easier to have all of your leg muscle groups join in the circular process of pedaling, you’re more efficient at high rpm
3. It’s easier and surprising at how much more power you can put out spinning faster, or how a high wattage can feel much easier at high RPMs
4. The cardio system seems to have more capacity and ability to endure then leg muscles, shifting as much of the burden as possible away from the muscular system can be very helpful for some cyclist I believe.
5. Spinning helps you use the lifting muscles in your legs more to help on the upstroke and kick across the top.
6. Spinning at a higher RPM helps you pedal easier when you’re going on flats or downhill and recovery, and lets you recover for the next jump or hill climb when you need that leg strength most. Even though it feels very easy and you could pedal harder gears, don’t because it shifts more strain to the leg muscles and takes away their snap for the next hill that is usually just around the corner.  And when that hill or jump comes up you’ll be able to spin a big gear and have the snap you need.
   Even though it’s temping to pedal harder or spin a bigger gear on the flats, it’s best to just spin and let your body rest for a couple minutes before the next roller or hill climb.
7. Spinning at easy and moderate sections of the rides gets your leg motor units use to firing in a certain sequence that’s more powerful, I notice when I spin on a ride that when I need to jump I tend to do it at faster RPM then usual and it’s easier to do. If I was riding on the flats or downhill sections of the ride in a bigger gear lower RPM, my leg muscles/nerves seem to get use to that pattern and changing RPM dramatically to climb or sprint feels very awkward.  So another benefit of spinning is that your legs are use to the timing the firing pattern and you can spin a moderate gear with lots of power much easier then if you would have been mashing previously.  I usually feel a bit weird at first when I spin at 100RPM or higher, once I warm up after 30 minutes or so my legs start to feel a lot smoother and settle into the cadence.
8. I also notice that I’m less tired when I do a ride at higher RPM, if I try to hammer on rides at lower RPM I feel wasted at the end of ride from using the muscles more then the heart and lungs.
9. I notice that higher RPMs make the same wattage feel easier, less anaerobic, less intense and riding fast more enjoyable.
10. I notice too that I loose more body fat riding more aerobically at higher RPMs
11. Since I’m not as tired esp. my legs which often are the thing that determine how much rest I need, I can ride more often and require less rest days which means faster improvement faster weight loss and more miles in the bank.
12. Spinning helps you use more of your legs muscle groups and distribute the load more so they’re less fatigued.
13. Spinning at higher RPM I believe teaches you to pedal more efficiently.
14. Spinning makes you ride more efficient and change gears more often, a really good habit for when you hit the hills. If you’re mashing in general, then when you hit the hills you’re probably beyond smashing and grinding slowly away at 50-70RPM which is less then ideal cadence even for mashers I think.
15. There’s a certain type of momentum you carry up a hill when you spin up and you’re “on top” of the gear vs. fighting to turn over the pedals. I don’t know how to explain this, but going up a hill at 95 or 100RPM vs. a harder gear at my typical 70 something RPM grind, feels like you’re going faster up the hill and able to have less resistance on the up stroke and kick across the top of the pedal stroke, as soon as you slow down everything starts to feel much less efficient. So I think it’s probably critical to keep RPMs up on hills and stay in your power band and optimal muscle firing pattern etc.
16. Spinning also helps you train  your aerobic system more as you can stress and target it more efficiently. If you mash too much and let the effort be mostly muscular your legs may give out before your heart and lungs.
17. I have a theory too nothing I can prove easily, but I believe that when you overuse a muscle or group of muscles in your body your heart rate and pattern spike and make you feel very winded and light headed, not because of the stress on the cardio system but because a hard muscular effort triggers body to be flooded with the byproducts of anarobic energy production and you feel really wasted. For example try doing a bunch of pull ups or squats, you’ll be winded and light headed by the time you max out but in a different way then if you where to run a mile at your fastest pace. I think the body bonks when you overload the muscular system, it makes the cardio system to get overwhelmed and over react or something. So if you are pushing your cardio system cycling up a hard hill and then let your RPMs fall to 70RPM and your mashing and and your legs are getting worked really hard then I think it triggers something that quickly puts you in the read zone. If you would simply just spin an easier gear, yes you might breath harder and your heart might feel like it’s working really hard, but surprsingly you can keep pushing the legs don’t bonk out and your heart rate is high but you don’t get that nasty totally wasted feeling and light headed over-reaction like you feel when do a hard muscular effort in the gym. To trigger that effect cycling means slowling way way down to recover. I wish I could explain this better and in scientific terms, but if you lift weights you know the incredablly winded feeling I’m talking about that seems more like an adreal over reaction of the heart and lungs then the real cardio load you’re going through.

    I think cycling hard should feel like running hard, not like doing squats or something, you’ll have that blown up weight lifting cardio reaction before you know it if you try smashing up a hill vs. spinning.

A final word on cadence and riding at a higher RPM

For all the great things I mentioned above, everyone is built different and some people might have weaker legs but better cardio system where a higher cadence works well for them. Where someone else might be built in a way that they can do more by riding a harder gear at a slower rpm to produce the same power, spinning doesn’t work for them, probably because they’re more fast twitch muscle fiber and they need to feel a certain amount of tension in their legs for all the motor units to be trigger to contract efficiently. But it takes months to get efficient at high rpms, at first it will feel very wrong, and your heart rate will be through the roof but over time your heart rate will drop sometimes by 20bpm at the same wattage I’ve read and then spinning feels much more doable. So give spinning a try you may find it really works for you.

In regards to the Facebook poll  on strength maintenance training in the season.

I believe that correct use of weights in the gym that is converted into bike strength makes sense, esp. for guys like me that aren’t naturally strong but have lots of endurance,  i.e slow twitch muscle fiber or poor neuromuscular strength, and for people new to riding or getting back in shape. One of the first things Lance did in his comeback training was regaining muscular strength by weight lifting. Don’t believe me check this out

I was asking cycling friends in Facebook because I’m having trouble fitting in even one strength maintenance session a week, as it leaves me sore and interferes with my bike schedule it seems. I’m concerned about losing strength gains from the off-season if I don’t strength train to maintain it during the season.

My concern is that I would loose what I gained this winter if I don’t continue, but I think what I’m finding is that I’m riding  harder now and that riding itself when you’re hammering  at a new harder level is enough to maintain strength during the season, you’ll probably loose a some maximum strength, but that is probably good as you want to convert it into muscular endurance anyway for the most part, unless you’re track sprinter or something.

The authorities on training agree that you have to do at least some strength training in the season to maintain gains made in the off-season, but I think that if you’re racing and training hard enough, you can get by without it perhaps.

What I’ve been doing is reducing the volume and frequency of strength training in the gym, but I think I need to also reduce the intensity just enough so that I’m not sore the next day, the point is not to break down muscle to get stronger but to maintain it’s ability to generate force, and also to keep neuromuscular coordination efficiency. I think this can be done by doing a weight that lets me do about 15 reps,  and making sure I’m not going to muscle failure, and only doing the minim 3-4 sets and doing it only once per week. I think the critical thing to modulate is the intensity,  and I think it’s different for different people, so I might only need to do 15 reps of 50% 1RM (one rep max) where another person might need to do more or less to maintain. I would decide by how sore you are the next couple days and also when you do your training fitness progress tests, I would check your 1RM and see how much you’re losing, if you’re losing too much you might need to do more? But I think this also has to be taken with a grain of salt as it depends what type of physiology you have, what type of event you’re training for etc.

So someone that is a slowtwich fiber dominant person, training for an iron-man probably can get a away with doing less weight then someone that is a track sprinter. But I believe everyone should be training strength and endurance and maintain it through the season, regardless of their individual specality,  it’s just a matter of how much focus and time you’d put into one vs. the other that matters.

I think mileage is a poor measuring tool in training it can be misleading and cause you to be either be over-trained or under-trained easily, and probably not much faster of a rider either. A mile is not always a mile, ask your body it will tell you. If you ride down by the ocean and it’s flat and you have a tailwind the whole ride and end up doing 100 miles, and the next day you ride 10 miles of endless hill climbs the milage was very different but you feel like it was just about the same amount of effort. I’m training my body not my bike, so instead of measuring the mileage that my bike endured, I measure what training load my body endured. I look at

1. Training sessesion time
2. Average watts
3. Average heart rate
4. Perceived rate of exertion
5. And if you have a power meter, using tools like training peaks software you can measure training load even more accuarately.

There are other things also to think about as well when planning your training load like

1. How much time does your target event take at your projected race pace?
2. What type of intensities occur during this length of event, what energy systems will you be using?
3. What type of event is it, what riding positions will you be in?
4. What are your strengths and weaknesses, how is your body built, dominate muscle fiber type, cardio strength etc.?
5. What specific events and goals are you targeting with your training?
6. How well does your body respond to certain types of training?
7. What types of training methods do you like doing, and can tolerate doing all winter?
8. What types of training in the past have you found helped you most? I think this is a key thing that is not mentioned often. I think for some people they’ll find their bodies react differently then others to different types of training. So it’s important to keep training logs, and also measure improvements in fitness to gauge which training methods worked best for you as an individual, what types of loads, duration, intensity, frequency helped you most?

The main thing to keep in mind I think when planning your training load is to measure your duration and intensity, and not to worry about mileage, and to train specific to your own body’s needs to reach your targeted goal’s length and type of intensity.

The thing I find interesting too is that by training your weaknesses you often end up being a better all around rider as well and should be able to do well in a wider range of event durations and intensities. It’s been shown that training your weaknesses can also make your strengths even stronger. The track sprinter, who also does longer rides when training ends up making improvements to his sprints as well, the iron man that lifts weights and does on bike strength training, achieves a higher average sustained pace and experiences less muscular failure and ends up having more endurance because of his new found strength. But of course you would spend most your training time on building up the energy systems that are mostly used for your event. And if your event requires a balance of systems like road racing, then you should be training each system, and in particular the systems that are weakest that would give you the highest pay off if you improved it.

For my own training my goals this season are to build up as much strength and power as humanly possible as I discovered that strength and power are my body’s main weakness and also the thing that I would need to improve the most to be competitive at 1-2hr long events. I naturally have above average endurance, but below average strength. My target events for this season are almost all around 1-3hrs long, and the faster I can ride the shorter the duration of the event will be, the 3hr event will be closer to 2 hrs. if I can make a big improvement to my average power output, even more reason for me to train to get faster, then I can be home in time for lunch this year at my favorite local triathlon ahhaa. I love being fast, even if it’s only for part of group ride or a race, I’m most excited at the idea of riding very fast even if it’s only for a few miles. I want to be able to go 30MPH for a mile or two at least and be able to sustain 25mph for at least 5 miles, with plans to continue to increase my top end speed and the length of time I can sustain 25MPH+. I also want to focus this season more on road cycling and crits then triathlons, but as I mature in my training I will be aiming at ultimately at longer and longer events hopefully eventually getting to where I’m doing ironman races and being competitive. But we’ll see, I’m playing it by ear, as I haven’t trained and raced long enough to know what events I’d be best suited for, and which ones I like the most.

So taking into account my goals, my target event duration and types of events and the energy systems they call on. This season and probably next season I’m focused mostly on becoming fast, so I have something more then just mediocre speeds to endure.  For me to be fast I need more strength and power not more endurance, esp. since I have no problem with endurance. So my current training consists of mostly improving my maximum strength, speed, and power, and also stretching that new found speed and strength out to longer and longer times. So far I’m seeing very good progress, because I’m focusing on my weakness, and because this is the first real off-season that I’ve trained for cycling, I’m sure next winter I will be seeing a 100+watt threshold improvement in a couple months of training like I did this winter. Probably I will see a 20-30w improvement in the next year as from what I read that is about the average rate of improvement for most people in the off-season.

I think after a couple seasons of focusing on being as fast as possible for short durations I should start seeing my rate of improvement decline as I start to get closer to my genetic strength potential, then I will probably get more out of my training by focusing on extending the amount of time I can sustain a fast pace.

Until this year I’ve never trained much for cycling in the off season, but this year is different and I am training straight through the winter and setting goals and meeting them. I’m really happy with my progress so far and I think a lot of it has to do with me doing having clear goals and also studying my weaknesses in depth and then making a plan to target them like a laser beam.

Also this is the first time I’ve employed periodization training methodology into my cycling training , so in the last 4 months meso-cycle 1 month adaptation, 1 month hypertrophy, 1 month strength, and now 1 month muscular endurance training.  I was seeing a big jump in strength and speed towards the end of last month. But now that I’m working on muscular endurance I’m seeing big improvements on my longer tempo training session TT tests that I do. So in the hypertrophy and maximum strength phase I saw a big improvement on my 1 mile TT, but not so much on my 5 mile TT. But now since I’m making big jumps in the number of reps I’m doing per set and focusing on muscular endurance I’m seeing big improvements in both my 1 mile and 5 mile TT, in the last couple weeks I keep setting PB records which is exciting. I’m going to take it easy next week and have an unloading week to regenerate and prepare for another off-season meso-cycle of weight training which will take me up to April. So next month is hypertrophy for 3-weeks, then another full month of strength training, then another month of muscular endurance training, but with a more on bike specialized twist as I want to make sure the gains and improvements convert most efficiently into on bike performance. I have to make sure to listen to my body and not do too much quantity of high end work as that’s a sure way to be burnt out before the season starts.

I’m still deciding on how I’m going to train and maintain during the main season. I think since I’m not worried about being that competitive this season since I need to lose more weight and build up more power this year, I’m probably going to continue my “off season” training over the main season and only compete in a couple races and only do 1x group ride per week where last year I was riding 3-4 times a week with the group and doing weekend races and events. I figure if I pay now by missing out on some group rides and events and races and focus on my individual training goals and needs then in 2010 I should be in much better condition then if I would only just maintain strength gains over the summer and riding lots. I find that excessive group riding just interferes with my training schedule, I try to work it in, but if I have an easy day and ride with the group and they get a wild hair and start doing one hill climb after another my whole week’s plan is screwed up. I think the whole summer I was on the verge of over training from doing to much group rides and hammering all the time, I don’t plan on making that mistake this year. My goals are to keep reaching new levels of performance and speed, not just to be in group riding shape. As much as I love group rides I know I have to make a choice in how fast or slow I want to reach my potential.

Anyway just wanted to say that I am seeing the results of my off-season training big time, esp the on and off bike strength training I’ve been working hard on. It’s very satisfying to see the rewards of hard work paying off, it’s motivating me now to set yet higher goals to reach for then I thought possible.

Had a little bit of breakthrough today on the espresso bike, I was a little sore and tired today and was planning on just taking it easy lol. Funny how on the days I really tell myself to back off that I end up feeling great on the bike and end up having a breakthrough session, today was no exception as I set a PB personal best for my 5 mile TT course, when I was suppose to be “recovering”.

What happened today was that I warmed up, and then I remembered something I read, that you should try to find your optimal cadence by seeing which cadence gives you the most watts for the lowest heart rate. Normally I try to keep things above 80RPM usually around 85RPM.

I’ve been trying to emulate Lance Armstrong, spinning at a fast RPM, I just figured that since I have lots of endurance and not much sprint that I must be a spinner not a masher. I’ve been doing high RPM spinning drills the last month or so to break the habit of mashing. Today I tried something different, I thought let me see what happens if I crank the resistance up to gear 30 and pedal at a very slow RPM, and see what my watts and heart rate do in reaction.

So I pedal along slowly increasing the gears and resistance,  so I try pedaling slower while watching my heart rate and wattage. I noticed my legs burning more, but my heart rate wasn’t going up through the roof, and my watts where higher then what I could hold at an easier gear and faster RPM. So I ended up with having a 20watt higher average on my time trial today coming in at 330Watts for 11 minutes. A couple of days ago I did 314watts as my best average. I was even able to push at almost 500watts for the last minute, which surprised me. I was popping as my heart rate was about 98% MHR when I crossed the line. I’m feeling less like I’m on the verge of death when riding at my limit at and above then when I started last spring. If I would stay at 175BPM for more then a couple minutes I was really hurting to where I thought I might puke or really pass out or something. Now I can hang out there for much longer and I feel much more composed even when at 90%+ or my MHR.

The interesting thing I’m learning in my latest TT efforts is learning where my threshold is where the exact point is where I blow up and have to slow down dramatically. I think right now it’s around 175BPM for me, if I go above that and stay there more then a couple minutes lactic acid builds up faster then I can clear i.e anaerobic threshold. I’m learning how to back off right before I blow a gasket and let my heart rate drop a couple beats per minute slower so that I can get tip the scales of lactic acid production back in my favor. It’s a crazy thing to to ride to a point of near death and have the mental clarity and sensitivity to know when to ease up just a little. I’m starting to be able to do it now, it’s like I’m getting use to being drunk and doing math lol. I can hear myself now talking to myself, focusing on one thing at a time, since you can’t focus on more then one thing at a time, so I watch my watts oftentimes, telling myself, keep it above 330, don’t let it drop lower. Or I notice something and then I try an experiments as I ride. Like trying to mash and increasing the force of your pedaling more toward the bottom of the stroke don’t just apply force evenly, as I notice that if I add a little pop to the end of my pedal stroke it can have a big improvement in watts then just pushing with constant pressure. Not sure if this would actually help on a real bike outside, or this is a trait of the espresso training bikes, I bet it is. Or it could be that it helps because you have more leverage the more extended your leg is, so it makes sense to push the hardest the farther your leg is extended. This might be good mashing technique, but pushing through into the ground and the end of the pushing phase of the pedal stroke is the opposite of what you want to do if you’re spinning as it wastes energy, you want to be light yet powerful on the pedals when spinning, you dont’ want to “stretch the crank arm out” ahhaaa.

I also think this flirting with your AT is great for training as it helps stretch and push your capability out just a little bit more then the last ride. If you ride over your AT you blow up and have to slow way down and let your body catch up with the lactic acid conversion.  Then since your legs aren’t pumping as hard it’s actually moving the lactic acid out slower I think. Kind of like when you drive a car hard in the summer then stop, that car can overheat as the heat keeps building up for a while even after the motor has stopped. If you ride to slow it doesn’t challenge your system enough. But if you ride right below that spot, and keep your effort there for longer and longer lengths of time, I think that is what increases your LT lactic acid threshold and also your aerobic threshold, and increases your heart stroke volume.

Speaking of heart stroke volume, did you know that the volume of blood your heart can pump is the main thing that improves when you do “cardio” workout? There are other adaptations like increased blood volume, bigger lung volume and more capillaries in the leg muscles, and mitochondria etc. But stroke volume is the biggest improvement. From training surveys I did I found that most people said that interval training was the thing that helped them get faster on the bike more then any other training method, ie. High volume cycling, weight training etc. I believe that one of the adaptations besides skeletal muscular strength improvements from interval training is that it is like “strength training” for the heart or weight lifting for the heart. So really to ride faster longer you need to not only strength train your legs and core muscles for cycling but your heart muscle as well. Think of it as your fuel pump and your legs the engines, they both have to be strong to go fast. Riding hard and getting your heart rate up high challenges your heart muscle, not just raising your LT. They say you should limit the amount of high intensity training you do, as your cycling can improve with moderate intensities. I agree that you can increase capillaries, lung volume, mitochondria density etc. by riding a million miles, but it takes lots of very hard riding to make your heart work hard enough that it will grow bigger and thicker and be able to pump more blood in one stroke. Just like your leg muscles need rest days after lifting weights your heart muscle does too after doing high intensity training. So you don’t want to make sure you’re fully rested when training at your threshold.

I’ll make another blog post about “strength training and the heart”.

But getting back to today’s training session, I’m starting to think that I might be a masher, even though I’ve been working on spinning more, and I can see my spinning improving a lot, when I need to go as fast as possible it seems like mashing works best for me. It depends on the terrian and distance and if I’m TT or in a group. My heart rate goes through the roof if I spin a hard gear, but if I mash an even harder gear, it seems to work for me, at least for shorter distances. I think that the extra 20watts I gained only help me for a TT, if I was riding in a group, my low RPM and high gearing would make it impossible to jump and react and keep up and tire me out faster, and I couldn’t sprint as fast at the end either I think. Time trials and group riding are two different things, and I think a lot of riders pick slightly longer cranks and tend to mash more when time trialing. If it where a long time trial i.e like a 120 mile iron-man etc. anything more then an hour or so I would tend to mash less and spin more as I’m sure my legs would be fried after mashing for that long. So I think in the right situations mashing can work for some riders, but in other situations spinning is better. A rider that can do both well might have an advantage over a rider that can only spin or mash.