I’m having a really great season this year cycling, I’ve made a lot of progress since last year and most of that I attribute to having trained like a machine all winter and spring, I never took off more then a week in the last year and half. Granted I have plenty of scheduled rest days and recovery weeks so I avoid getting fried like I did this spring when I got a little too carried away ahaha.

What I learned this season was I reached my peak strength in about 3x months, after that point anymore squats or weights or power training or intensity wasn’t going to give me much more significant improvement, I tried really hard for the first half of the summer to take my strenght and power on the bike up another level put no matter what I did I couldn’t do more. What I did notice a good improvement on is power endurance I can repeat those short hard race spike efforts over and over where in the winter and spring I could only do that a few times before I’d blow a gasket.

Cycling fast and long requires both strength and endurance. I always thought of myself as having good endurance, and that strength was my limiter. I failed to recognize that yes endurance might come easiest for me, but that doesn’t mean I should only work on strength. Even if it is a strength if you don’t use it you lose it and cycling is 80% endurance and 20% strength unless you’re doing short track efforts. So the 80/20 rule should apply to cycling I think and so do other top coaches I’ve read about. They say 80% of riding should be aerobic sub-threshold training and only 20% or less should be high intensity. Of course depending on your genetics, time of year in your schedule, and target events you may do more of one or the other.

I only started training seriously 1.5 years ago, so I basically really screwed up by going out and hammering on almost every single ride then spending the winter hammer the weights and obsessing over power. Yeah it helped develop my anaerobic system much much better, and improved my VO2max etc. but my endurance was so neglected that it has now become my limiter even though it’s historically always been a strong point for me in running and cycling.

Focusing to much on intensity and not base was a bad mistake also because I don’t have years of cycling and training under my belt, I’m building up from nothing, I could barely ride my bike around the block last spring and I was 80lbs over weight too! Base and aerobic cycling should be the focus esp. the first couple years of cycling or longer as strength and power are built on top of a big aerobic base and synergisticly help your anaerobic system work better.  I was all icing and no cake.

Even though I did mostly group rides last year,  every ride was a race for me as I was riding at my limit to keep up, I was out of shape and over weight, and I suffered the whole summer long, I was exhausted and burnt out by fall and it felt good to ride a bit slower and on my own schedule in the fall. But that lasted about a couple weeks then I was hungry to make a big improvement over the winter. I wanted to lose as much weight as possible and improve strength as I thought that was my limiter. I was only half right though, yes strength was my limiter, but in only 3 months I was much much stronger a rider and my endurance was now dwarfed and now the limiter. But I thought I could keep improving strength more I worked on strength all winter spring and half way through the summer, but never got stronger of faster then where I got after 3x months of focused strength and power training. I should have spent the fall and most of the winter doing lots of aerobic base miles, then did 3x months of strength work in the gym, then more base miles in the spring and early summer while converting gym strength into on bike strength.

I don’t regret what I did, as it was really neat to see my strength make a big jump, and help my riding a ton, as strength was my biggest limiter but not my only. The other limiter was endurance and that you can’t improve dramatically in 3-4 months like you can with strength. Endurance base training is miles in the bank, paying your dues.

I think for a bigger rider like myself having a big aerobic engine is even more important as it’s so easy to go anaerobic on even the smallest hill because of the power to weight ratio is so poor. I think if you’re a lighter rider, you can get away with more as your weight doesn’t trigger you body to go into the red as fast.

So needless to say I’m focusing most of my training now on aerobic training, and throwing in some on bike strength training and racing once a week or so to maintain the anaerobic system. This winter I’ll hit the gym again in January and do that until the start of April, I’m still going to do base miles during these three months but I’ll be cutting down on volume
a bit, but will still do at least one 3-4hr ride a week in to maintain the aerobic system. Then in March I’ll start to do more on bike strength work and start ramping up miles and then in April I’ll be putting the miles on and merging gym strength with bike strength and bike endurance and working on power in the May, then by end of May beginning of June I should be coming into really good form for some A events and I’ll try to carry that form through most of the summer and fall.

But I know now how to build up my anaerobic system and that racing helps build anaerobic endurance, but that the meat and potatoes of my riding in my training schedule for the week, the month and year need to be 80% aerobic and 20% anaerobic.

So what things have you learned from first hand experince in regards to your own base training over the years? Did you skip weight and power training, or cadance and effientcy training and not improve much? Or did you spend your entire winter on the fixie and blow everyone away the nex season. Let me know your thoughts I’m curious.

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.

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.

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.