Category Archives: Cycling training

My ramblings, observations, progress, and training tips about cycling training.

Leg press vs. squatting vs. one legged exercises

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I’ve been weight training my legs a lot more seriously this off season more then I ever have before even when I was bodybuilding. I’m becoming a student of leg training lately trying lots of different leg exercises and thinking about the pros and cons of each exercise. I’ve learned a coupled things recently like

  1. I’m absolutely convinced at the effectiveness of leg strength training as part of well balanced training plan especially for riders not blessed with natural leg strength, I wont’ even waste my time debating with the cycling geniuses out there that say it doesn’t help. Only if your bike touring perhaps would I say the reward might not be the effort, but even for bike touring you could cycling with more comfort and be injury free, so it still has a place even in that example.  It’s pretty neat to be able to hold the same wattage for 45 minutes at a lower heart rate then which you struggled to hold for 10 minutes at your threshold only a couple months ago. Strength training is the missing link, at least  for me.
  2. Single leg exercises seem to put more stress on the knee with the exception of perhaps the box setup.
  3. But on the other hand single exercises seem to be great for muscular endurance phase as it reduces the chance that your cardio system fails before your leg muscles do. When you’re doing sets of 50 or 60+ reps and using both legs like in squats or leg presses etc. the demand of both legs needing oxygen and fuel can easily set you in the red zone and put your heart rate through the rough. I don’t do these sets with baby weights, these are very challenging sets that push your leg muscles to failure and beyond. When doing these challenging endurance sets I’m finding I prefer single leg exercises in particular box setups. Single leg lunges, or single leg smith machine squats all feel like they’re bad for the knee. I don’t like doing leg extensions either as that is not a sport specific motion and puts too much shear stress on the knee.  But I do appreciate the burn that leg extensions are good at inducing.
  4. I haven’t done box setups heavy yet, but I don’t think this exercise would be suited for doing it heavy.
  5. When I do go heavy as in the hypertrophy and strength phases of my off-season training I prefer doing heavy squats and very heavy leg presses. I feel much more secure and stable when going heavy with these exercises.
  6. I like the smith machine squats because I can get my legs more underneath me as I would be when pedaling a bike, I can also get my legs closer together as well as when riding on the bike. Trying to put my feet like this doing a normal free weight squat would having my falling forward.
  7. I also like the smith machine squats because you dont’ have to worry as much about balancing yourself and you can put all your effort into pushing, this is good and bad. Your core muscles and balancing muscles don’t get the same workout, but I’m trying to bike faster by pedaling harder, not winning a strong man competition rolling tires over hahaa.
  8. I find that super slow reps can be especially good during the strength phase as it seems to really dig into your muscle and trigger more motor units. If you’re going heavy and doing reps until failure then your last 1-2 reps will probably be super slow anyway, if they’re too easy then you need to put more weight on. For strength you don’t want to be doing more then 6 reps. If you get to 6 reps then put more weight on.
  9. I bet 80% of your strength improvement happens during the last 1-2 reps where you can barely push the weight and it’s slowly moving, I bet that is when your muscles learn to fire off more nerves and more muscle fiber is challenged. It’s almost like the first couple reps are to exhaust the strong muscle fibers and the last couple reps are to punish the weak that are still standing ahahhaa. This is probably why I had such great success with my rock climbing training when I did negatives and static strength positions, eventually I was able to do multiple one arm pull ups.
  10. I think you can and should incorporate some of your resistance and strength training on the bike itself. I think this works good more for muscular endurance and building up power and sport specific strength. I like doing sprints on the bike trainer, power starts, over gear work pedaling at really hard gears at low cadence. Hills, hills in low cadence gears.
  11. Single leg exercises are great, they are really good for helping to strengthen the shin muscle to prevent shin splints I noticed. As well as help with eliminating dead spots in your pedal stroke.
  12. The days after a really hard leg workout when your legs feel pumped but not necessarily stronger is usually because they’re swollen and healing from training, I like when they feel like this because it feels like they’re growing which they might be, but until that feeling of puffiness goes away I would rest before doing any hard leg session, swelling=microscopic damage=growth, if you train hard too soon then you’re just breaking yourself down again, remember training is the stimulus to improvement, real improvement happens during rest. If you’re not improving anymore instead of first trying to just ride more miles, think of ways you can increase the intensity of the miles you are already riding, this will increase the quality of the stimulus. Make your rests between intervals shorter, ride harder, ride faster, pedal faster, there are lots of things you can do to make your works more intense.
  13. I’m really starting to like doing heavy leg presses, we have two machines one  machine you’re basically lying flat on your back pushing up against the shoulder pads, the other leg press is a sled where you are sitting upright 45 degrees pushing up. They seem to be very different, even though at first glance you’d think they’d be the same.  Since we bike bent over and not standing straight up, I think the leg press sled at 45 degrees is superior, plus you don’t get those nasty shoulder hickeys from going heavy with weight o the shoulders. After doing a couple heavy sets with the 45 degree machine I was left with the impression that this is more sport specific to cycling. Also my legs where finally sore again the next day just like when I first started working my legs 3 months ago.
  14. I still like doing squats and smith machine squats, but I think I’ll be putting more attention to the 45 degree sled from now on. From what I read Lance only does leg presses as his coaches are worried about him hurting his back by doing squats, maybe he had a back exercise before I’m not sure, either that or they realize that his upper body and back muscles are not strong enough to handle his leg strength and the chance of injury is higher?
  15. I think that single exercises can be more sport specific to cycling then double leg motions since when we pedal we don’t push down on both pedals at the same time. That’s also another reason why I like single leg exercises. I think that it helps strengthen the core and balancing muscles that have to be strong when we pedal hard. I noticed that when I keep my upper body quite when riding and hold the trainer handle bars hard to keep my upper body as rigid as possible while pedaling that I notice that my wattage output usually goes up as more power is transmitted to the pedals and not lost in upper body motion and flexing. I think this also proves to myself that having strong core muscles is really important in riding faster especially when you start riding really fast and you’re pedaling with a lot more force and longer. Strong core muscles will help stabilize your body and let you have a none moving object to push off of when you push down on the pedals, as oppose to having something that bends and flexes when pressed hard that absorbs some of the pealing effort. I probably would not have learned this had it not been for training on the stationary trainer while having
  16. It’s important not to hold your breath when lifting weights especially when doing muscular endurance training when you have sets  with a high number of reps, you need that oxygen.

Off season training I can believe in.

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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.

Strength training for cycling, Rambo biker vs. Bill Gates biker

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rambo VS. images

There seems to be much debate in the forums, books and studies about the effectiveness of lifting weights and strength training for cyclists or endurance athletes in general. I think one key point that is always ignored is that we are all built differently and everyone has unique strengths and weaknesses that we’re born with and we should  train in a way that is unique to the way we’re built. Also the length of the event we are intending on competing in should have a bearing on how much and what types of strength training you do as well. So both the type and length of events and also your genetics both should play a role in how your unique training plan. It seems like most people want to make things simple black and white, should I lift or should I not lift weights? But the truth is much more complex then that, but yet I see the same question asked over and over online in the forums etc. Do you think that Chris Carmichael would have Lance doing all the strength training they do in the off season if it didn’t work? And I can tell you from documented first hand experience that for me it has made a huge difference in my riding, weight loss, and overall fitness and well being! You have to make an honest assessment of your strengths and weakness and train to improve your weaknesses and further improve your strengths.

Extreme examples of two possible types of riders Rambo rider, and Gates rider and some things to think about

  1. If you’re naturally strong and have powerful muscles, then making them stronger probably won’t help much with cycling unless your focus is short distance events where you can never have enough leg strength. Now on the other hand if you’re built like a sprinter, but want to race in long events like centuries etc. you’ll probably want to focus more on endurance training to help build up your ability to ride for many hours at a time. But I still think that everyone no matter how they’re built should strength train for cycling, you’ll just need to do less of it. Think of the 80/20 rule, you should be riding lots of easy to moderate miles but still having a day or two a week dedicated to intervals and or weight training etc.
  2. A skinny weak legged cyclist that may have plenty of endurance but not much strength or power will want to do the opposite and spend 80% of his time building up the raw strength and power in his or her legs to meet the demands of riding fast, esp. if you’re intending on riding fast for shorter distances where emphasis is on the muscular system.

It’s very surprising that so many “experts” bad mouth strength training for cycling saying it’s not effective, or even that it will slow you down or injury etc. Lifting weights is discredited by many, probably because the “research” that was done was only conducted on trained athletes for a couple months, which is too short a time span to see any major improvement in fact negative improvement probably is what happens in the first weeks of any weight training program as your body is adjusting and you feel sore most of the time. I found that for myself that I was slightly stronger the first month and a bit more a month later, but after a good rest over the Christmas week I was fully recovered and was stronger then ever, and now after another month, now 3 months later I hardly feel sore anymore after lifting weights and I’ve added about 160watts average to my previous average on my 10 minute TT test I do at the beginning and end of each monthly cycle. That’s a huge improvement, but I think that for me having weak legs and realizing it and making it a key point in my training focus is paying off big.

Here are the improvements I’ve noticed for myself from weight and strength training, I say “strength training” as you can strength your legs with body movements and on bike exercises etc.

  1. My recovery time is much faster now, before I’d have sore muscles for days after a hard ride, now I only get sore only if I have a particularly grueling weight session with heavy weights and or high reps or a new exercise.
  2. My running speed is faster, I feel like I have a much stronger stride now when I run, and that I can run faster.
  3. My endurance has improved I don’t tired as easy, and most important my power endurance has improved.
  4. My metabolism is higher, I’m losing weight faster now then just cycling or running alone.
  5. I feel stronger, esp. from squats as they make your whole support system feel strong you can hold yourself up easier you feel more athletic
  6. I also ski in the off season and I’ve noticed that I feel much stronger and have better muscular endurance and don’t have to stop in the middle of the run now, my legs don’t burn as bad.
  7. Injury prevention, by having strong muscles, tendons and ligaments it helps reduce your change of injury
  8. I think that by having legs that are strong and match the strength of your cardio system, your legs can drive your cardio system even harder so that your cardio system can improve even more. If your legs are weak and fail before your cardio system does then you won’t get as good a cardio workout. I notice now that I can feel my heart muscle really working where before it was more like my legs just burned up and I’d have burning legs and an overall feeling of fatigue but not really out of breath, it just seemed to start with the legs and then my whole body was in distress. Now with my stronger legs I can pedal big gears for much longer times and I get the intuition that my cardio system is getting stronger too in an effort to match what my legs can dish out.
  9. They do say that your legs act as a second heart helping blood move around during the contraction of your legs. If that’s the case that would also reinforce perhaps the theoretical advantage of having a high RPM pedaling style of a rider like Lance Armstrong. Perhaps having stronger legs helps push the blood out of your legs better?
  10. I think that from strength training my legs are more powerful meaning the motor units i.e the nerves can fire more synchronize and deliver more force in a shorter time.
  11. I also think that from strength training I’m able to know spin much faster then before, I can get up to 150RPM now where 130RPM was about limit, I felt like my legs where going to just fly off if I went any faster.
  12. I’m sure my sprint has improved now, we’ll see once I start riding outside.

Anyway, it just blows my mind that so many cycling “coaches” tell their riders to avoid weights, here are some common myths I hear

  1. Weight training will make you get huge muscles and add extra weight then that will cause you slow down.
  2. Studies have proven that strength training has no benefit in endurance tests.
  3. Look how skinny pro rider John Doe is
  4. It will make you’re pedaling stroke bad
  5. It will make you rider slower and weaker
  6. There is no benefit from strength training
  7. I’m sure there’s more I haven’ heard or I forget about too

Cheating in cycling training can be good.

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I was training hard as usual today but I felt off since I woke up, at the gym the feeling didn’t go away and after a couple sets of weight lifting I felt weak and jittery. I decided to cheat on today’s session and left early. Normally I would not do this but I”m starting to listen to my body and be flexible with my schedule. I mean we’re not robots, somedays we would be better off resting and recovering. I’m sure tomorrow I’ll feel great, so it doesn’t bother me to backup on days when you really feel like you should back off.

I could have pushed through it, but I knew the smart thing to do was to call it a day as I would have probably felt even worse the next day if I dug too far into my reserves on a really off day.

Box step-ups for strong cycling legs!

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It’s not often I see someone doing box step-ups in the gym, but I think they’re an excellent exercise in certain training situations. I’m finding them to be really be effective in my muscular endurance phases where I’m doing high reps of 50 reps per set or more,

  1. The focus of strength training in the gym is not to work your cardio system but to inflict as much hurt and burn on your leg’s muscle fibers so they get stronger and bigger and can tolerate more lactic acid etc.  Since the goal in the endurance phase is to do high reps with light or moderate weight, I noticed that with a single leg exercise like box step ups I can work on one leg at a time and put more focus and intensity on it then when squatting or leg press. I also notice that my heart rate goes through the roof when doing high rep sets with dual leg exercises like squats. I felt like the limiting factor in doing more reps is not muscle failure but cardio exhaustion, which isn’t my goal when training my leg muscles. With box step-ups my heart rate still gets up plenty high, but it’s manageable at 85% MHR, and I can do many more reps and get more of a focused burn on my legs. I’m able to do it for a while to the point where the 30lbs dumbbells start getting hard to hold onto.
  2. I can isolate one leg at a time and get it to really burn more then any other way.
  3. I think the movement is much more sports specific training. I think that is important in the endurance phase and during the early and main season that any muscular endurance work tat is done
  4. It feels much less stressful on my knees then lunges, lunges feel weird to do right now, also leg extensions are often times bad for you knees.

As much as I like this excellent single leg exercise, I find that I like using squats and dual leg multi-joint exercises for the hypertrophy and strength phases of my leg training, because it feels safer and more stable with both legs, and I can push more weight all together with both legs then with leg alone. I don’t think it would be smart or safe to do heavy weights with single leg exercises.

I guess I’m a masher not a spinner?

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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.

How it all started

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Hi my name is Stijn, I started cycling 9 months ago, this is how my training began. I wanted to get into shape so I started riding around the hills of Scranton, Pa.  I had been out riding the back roads for an hour or so, it was about 6pm and starting to get dark out. I was coming over the top of a hill when I heard a loud whining noise above me. Suddenly I was paralyzed with fear as the road lit up before me even though there where no street lights around. The next thing I know I’m dusting myself off on the side of the road, I wasn’t sure what just happened, but when I looked in my bicycle helmet’s mirror and saw that my face was green and my hair was all gone, I knew that my life was forever changed.

I rode home, afraid for my life, I felt a little dizzy, but for some reason I had more energy then ever before, my legs felt like hydaluic jacks, my lungs felt like I could suck in enough helimum to talk funny for an hour, my heart pounded in my chest like the engine room of a large cruise liner. I looked down at my speed I was biking home faster then every before I thought my cycling computer broke, 52MPH , but that’s not possible I said to myself. I looked down at my power meter’s display as well, it read 3547watts!

This is where it all began, some dusty back road in the middle of an abandoned mining town, one man, one bike, and an alien friend known only as Ashtar.