Training & Nutrition - Your thoughts on new weights routine?

Still feeling like a beginner because of all the breaks I had in between. As you may remember, my goal is to become a stronger cyclist (get stronger legs) and develop strength in my (to my idea) pathetically weak upper body, though things are progressing really fast now!

Friday , Nov 22 I started all over again after a planned 3 week hiatus due to a 2,5 week cycling holiday with dear brother. He hadn't cycled for 23 YEARS. I was stronger than he was, esp. uphill, but felt traditionally weaker in the 2nd week (not eating enough?)

I have decided to start combining the ketodiet with a 4-day split rather than with Body for Life. The 4th day also serves as a depletion workout day (needed for the carbloading). The main reason was the ongoing conflicts with spinning sessions when I'd done legs the previous day..

It will become:
All exercises (unless noted otherwise) have 2 exercises for each muscle group and will have the sequence : 10-6-5-4 (started with the idea of 8-6- 4, switched to 10-8-6-4 and decided to go with 10-6-5-4 instead).

Monday quads - hams & abs plus in evening aquajogging
Tuesday: chest - triceps - biceps - wrist (because of a chronic ailment to wrist) - calves
Wednesday: spinning
Thursday: back - shoulders - abs
Friday: light cardio
Saturday : spinning , gluteus (3 ex) - hips (2) - calves (2) and upper body WO for chest-back-shoulders-tri-bi (1 set each: 12x)

I have already noticed that esp. Saturday's gluteus exercises were very taxing for the hamstrings as well and I'm not yet recovered for Monday morning's hamstrings exercises.. since I don't want to postpone things too much, I am thinking to do 1 of 2 things.
- skip aquajogging and do the morning WO in the evening. Dis is that I severely dislike cycling to/from the gym in the dark (it's nearly 14K away), while the swimming pool is just at 2K distance.
- move Mon WO to Tues and Tues WO to Wednesday.. yeah, that's what I will do..
And of course, add the gluteus to the Mon WO which is good as it is the day that my muscles will be loaded with glycogen after the weekend carb loading..

But thoughts and suggestions are welcome!

This may not be a specific response but generally speaking here are some tips to remember:

Most muscle groups will require at least 48 hours to fully recouperate from a serious weight workout.

The first few weeks you WILL seem to be sore for longer durations while you condition your body to the weight routines. Start easy to get things rolling.

Your program sounds very well thought through so you will probably get the results you seek.

Originally posted by SamDaBikinMan
This may not be a specific response but generally speaking here are some tips to remember:

Most muscle groups will require at least 48 hours to fully recouperate from a serious weight workout.

The first few weeks you WILL seem to be sore for longer durations while you condition your body to the weight routines. Start easy to get things rolling.

Your program sounds very well thought through so you will probably get the results you seek.
Thanks.. I'm hanging out at Body builders forums now most of the time.. but these are not specific to cycling.
Generally speaking most men would like to almost completely ignore the legs.. it is women who are more leg obsessed... especially the cyclists like me... Now why would that be so?
At least i'm moving away from the deadly boring 3x12/15 approach that I was always told to do ... as women shouldn't build muscles you know...
Well, sets from 4-8 reps seem to generate more strenght than build muscles and 12-20 on endurance..
I will train my endurance with spinning.. the only thing I could do, is to have 1 day like Wed in which I spend an additional 30 mins on a home trainer and focus entirely on spinning speed. The spinning lesson is a bit too much focussed on strength, which is OK, but doesn't bring the desired fast rpm I would like to develop again!

When I didn't go to spinning lessons yet, I would spend about 30 mins of almost each and every visit to the gym by making trapeziums of 85-90-95-100-105-110-115 and all out spincycles... could try that again!

The hill climbing thing reminded me of the fact that I need to work on cadence too and esp. on improving my aerobic threshold as well as being able to keep my heart rate around that threshold for longer periods.

The spinning lessons I am doing and which are quite nice, don't provide me enough exhaustion.. I mean, since I started weight lifting, I seem to either be TOO tired from the exercises to really push hard enough. It also has to do with my almost carb free diet.. it is not really good for high speed stuff!

In the past I had good results with doing ladders (?) on a simple gym bike .. doing 80-85-90-95-100-105-110 for each 30 seconds and then pedal easy at 60, and raise again for the same time and even try to improve the cadence like 85-90-95-100-105-110-115..

There is indeed such a thing as difference between anaerobic capacity and aerobic capacity. You need both and perhaps need to train them separately?

:confused:

I actually came into cycling from a powerlifting background in the military and have recently decided to get back into the weight room myself. It has been a shock after nearly 10 years of no really serious weight training.

I prefer to do all my cycling work on the road or mountain bike. I detest stationary trainers. Fortunately the weather in Atlanta Georgia allows year round cycling for the most part. There are a few days where you'll have to grit your teeth and bear some colder temps.

I think I will try your ladder training on the road bike. It sounds as though it will be quite effective.

Actually I was just thinking that I did them that way.. it has been too long.. it could be that I didn't do them for 30 s or 60 s but for longer periods.
One thing I certainly tried to do a couple of times, was to try to go as fast as possible a few times.. something you can't imitate on a road bike..

I will go out and get myself a cadence meter again.. my cadence slipped down considerably.

It is good for everyone, but especially for the weaker cyclist to work up to a higher cadence when you don't have the strength to push big gears..
Speed = gears x cadence.. lower gear & higher cadence means same speed but more efficiency.. well, to an extent of course!