Insight part II

Insight Part II

It’s February, and the season start is just 3 weeks away. I am starting to switch gears in my training to more interval-based workouts and more specific strength work as well. I’ll go into more detail on the strength work in this post because I think many cyclists don’t visit the weight room as often as they maybe should. As for intervals, get on the bike, pedal hard, pedal easy, repeat. If you vomit, there are bonus points.

Denia, Spain

To pick up where I left off with my last post, I mentioned approaching your goals in a sustainable manner. Personally, I hope to make a career out of cycling, which means my approach to every aspect of the sport needs to be for the extreme long run, hopefully. Thus, strength training is something I do year-round with that ultra-long run goal in mind. I even do my best to maintain strength training during race season with one or two sessions a week.

The test climb

Strength training - it is something that I have been using for many years to gain precious power and endurance. There is a divide amongst cyclists, especially in Europe about strength training and road racing. I suppose it was being part of team RaceClean (a track team) that got me hooked on it. The gains in the gym that I have made this fall have been huge, subsequently, this is the first time that I have done a full program and ventured into heavy weight lifting. In previous years I have done gym mostly as maintenance of strength and as a boost of muscle speed (which I haven’t had a whole lot of). Workouts were mainly plyometrics-based with some work on the leg press.

This year I have been through all the strength phases; hypertrophy - building muscle; strength - heavy weight exercises to recruit more muscles and engage the new muscle you have built and finally, power phase, which is back to plyometrics and fast explosive exercises. Most cyclists would stop at the part where I said ‘building muscle’ and start to worry about added weight and that precious power to weight ratio which is important for mountain climbing.

My face after intervals

My counter to that argument comes in a few parts. First, strength training is a great way to burn fat, while also creating lean muscle. Second, any weight you add that is muscle will overcompensate for the added weight of itself with extra watts. Third, this is a bit more personal, but being the type of rider that I am; I would gain much more from extra wattage compared to wattage-to-weight. This is something that I thought a lot about last year, and what prompted me to take on a full gym schedule.

The training bike, won it in Belgium

For those that like numbers, here are some improvements I’ve made this fall that I would credit to my intensive strength training.

Peak power increases (1 second max power)

2017 – 1200 watts

2018 – 1385 watts

Sprint power (10 second power)

2017- 1025 watts

2018 – 1155 watts

Not to mention a big jump in my 20-minute power as well, which is a crucial measurement for cyclists as it is the measurement we base our fitness on. Another thing that I have noticed is an increase in my abilities on steep climbs, there is just more power in the tank when the climb is forcing you to pedal very slowly.

Climbing high

Another critical point and one that I failed at this week is listening to your body and fully embracing rest. This week I went a little overboard on my training and did some extra hours plus some extra intervals, although I felt like I had the energy to do it, it turns out it was actually detrimental to actually improving my fitness. Last Friday I had a rest day and I was tired, but you should be on a rest day, it’s your chance to rest. The next day however I felt the same, I didn’t recover at all despite doing everything right.

Calpe, taken at 40 kp/h

A quick consult with the coaches showed that my fatigue levels were rising quickly. Now this is where I admit that this is something that I really struggle with. The root of the problem is that I hate to waste time, so when I see an opportunity to make more gains in the same ride I almost always take it, which I am learning can be detrimental to overall increases in fitness. This is something that I really need to drill into my head, and I hope that writing this blog will help me with that. So please if I ever complain about being overly tired, send me back here, to my own words explaining how important rest is.

Quiche Vs Banana bread

Hopefully that brought up some interesting points for anyone looking to get some insight on general training and improving fitness. If you have any personal questions regarding anything training related, or any topics or insights you would like to see in future posts, feel free to let me know.

Thanks for reading.