jim p

I am pretty much a spinner with no power. I have been reading about people doing strength training like lifting weights. If I mash up a few hills would this not be just like doing single leg presses. Should I be able to build up some strength by doing this as long as I don't make it a habit? I know that pushing too hard of gears can cause knee damage over a period of time but could I get away with it for maybe part of my ride?

Don in Austin

If you rode fixed anywhere with hills that's what you would be doing. Variety in exercise is good.

Don in Austin

nkfrench 

My personal experience is yes, pushing a bigger gear can build strength.
Slide back in the saddle and drop your heels so you do not feel any discomfort in the area of your kneecaps.
Build up to it gradually.
Riding into a headwind is a good way to do this, it is easy to shift when you've had enough rather than having the terrain dictate.

nosmoke

The best way to build shear power is with squats and deadlifts. Those two exercises are very intimidating at first and can leave you feeling like you got run over BUT they grow on you to the point where you like doing them. And they build immense power.

jimxyz

+1 - but if you don't have access to weights I'd say push up a hill in a big gear or do intervals in a big gear (start at snails pace and accelerate in big gear to sprint - repeat several times), your legs will feel like they are going to fall off.

jim p

I just got back from a very short ride. I have been doing hill repeats. Instead of using my lowest gear I shifted up 2 gears and did some mashing. I even stood and pedaled up the steepest part. I have not stood and pedaled in 3 years. My pedals have a large amount of float and my feet slide on the pedals like I am standing on ice so this kept my concentration pretty high. I enjoyed the different riding style.

You are right I am too intimidated to do squats and dead lifts. I am going to leave these exercises for the young and healthy.

2manybikes

Yes, it works.

Carbonfiberboy 

What you want to do is called Muscle Tension Intervals or MTI. You need a hill that has a fairly steady grade, no stop signs or traffic lights, and which takes you 10-15 minutes to climb. You also need a cyclocomputer with a cadence function. If you don't have one, you should. Cateye Astrale is the simplest and cheapest of these. You'll also need either clipless pedals or toeclips. Flat pedals won't work.

Ride up the hill at about a steady 50 cadence, in the saddle, for 10 minutes. 48-55 cadence is OK. Do not move your upper body. Not at all. Do it all with your legs. Use a effort level that you can hold for the whole 10 minutes, but just barely. After the interval, coast back down and do it twice more. Do that once/week for a month. Stop if your knees hurt. Your legs will hurt in general, but ignore that. If you are in good condition, you should be able to get about the same distance up the hill during each 10 minute interval. You'll need to shift as necessary to maintain that 50 cadence if the hill gradient changes.

After the interval set, ride home at a comfortable pace, normal cadence.

Weights don't work particularly well. This does.

Garfield Cat

You are right about knee damage. We only have so much cartilage in our joints. Choose your activity wisely. Do you want to be a good climber just because everyone else in the group is doing it? Or do you want to ride for a very long time into your older age?

jim p

For now all I would like to do is be able to maintain 15 mph on level ground. If I could average 15 mph I would be all smiles. I find that on level ground I might be around 13 mph without pushing too hard but on the small hills I will drop to 6 mph and that kills the average speed.

I only have small hills so I would have to travel a little ways to find a hill that would take 10 minutes to climb. Will mashing up a 2 minute hill a few times be just as good as a 10 minute hill. All that I have been doing for the last 3 months is repeats on my small hill and I have been using my lowest gear 38/28. The last time I used 38/23 or whatever the 3rd cog on the freewheel is. So I don't think that I am over doing the mashing yet. I think that some peoples largest cog is only 23.

gbiker

Mashing up steep hills definitely improved my climbing. And my knees are still just fine.

poxpower

Just climb the hill as fast as you can, time yourself and then try to beat that time.

Repeats on small hills are not the same as big ones in my opinion. It's a whole different experience to climb for 10 straight minutes than to climb 2 minutes 5 times. It's a lot harder for one thing.

wphamilton

Yes that will help. Even if you only do it once a day it will help. Another thing to do at your level is to get in one gear harder for the longer level sections, and try to build up to your regular cadence. It's like resistance training. You should feel a little improvement every time. Just back off a gear or two if your knees start to ache - that's not something you can just tough out.

PluperfectArson

Squats and deads, the lifts of men.

travelerman

This is how I built strength - without knowing what I was doing - in my first foray into cycling back in my twenties. I started out in higher gears on the big chainring (with a lower cadence), and over time, increased my cadence. I had the strength from pushing the big gears, and built the endurance on top of that.

When I got back into it this past year, my legs naturally went for the higher cadence - in lower gears, because my knees are a little creaky - and it has seemed to take a long time to build the strength back. Whether that's due to age, or the different approach, I'm not sure. But I have supplemented it with leg exercises and careful protein/carb intake, and it has definitely helped.

If I could just do something about these creaky knees...

gregf83 

Those exercises are good for building strength but are not useful for building the sustained power in cycling the OP is looking for.

Cycling is primarily an aerobic sport and not limited by leg strength. When riding at 300W, the peak force required to push the pedals at 90 RPM is only around 80lbs. Increasing your leg strength might help sprinting and short term (<1min) power but it isn't going to do much for steady state power.

If you want to get faster you're better off just riding more and eventually adding in some longer intervals. Hammering up 2min hills won't hurt you but it sounds like you should probably start by building a solid base with longer rides and more time in the saddle. Once you are comfortable with long rides up to 3 hrs a couple times a week then you can start adding in interval work.

wphamilton

I think that when you don't have the strength or strong conditioning yet, that a short steep hill or two can wipe you out for the rest of the ride. It does help to build up the strength to be able to get past it and on with the rest of the ride so I wouldn't discourage working on that.

dolanp

I found the best improvement in my riding came after I started attacking short hills and standing on the pedals. I do this for short rides during the weekday and push it for 10 miles or so then when I ride for a few hours on the weekend my stamina is much increased and by the end I can still climb the short ones without spinning slowly.

Trakhak

"You can't spin big gears if you can't spin small gears" --- Eddy Merckx.

"I always chose one gear lower than the rest of the bunch while climbing" --- Giovanni Battaglin.

See also any Youtube video showing Lance Armstrong climbing at a high cadence in the Pyrenees or Alps.

Good spinners are the riders who can crush it on climbs and will keep their own knees. Your legs evolved to operate most efficiently at a running pace of around 90 strides per minute. On a bike, you can maintain a slightly faster pedaling rate, but your target spinning rate should be somewhere around 90 to 100 on climbs as well as on the flats.

asgelle

https://www.aboc.com.au/tips-and-hint...rance-anymore/

Carbonfiberboy 

Very interesting, like all Coggan's work. I would point out however, that he dismisses anecdotal information and also steers clear of developing any anecdotal information either personally or through client base. So I'm not convinced either way. Lance used to do them. I used to do them pre-tandem and thought they helped my climbing quite a bit. Anything that makes my legs feel like that so quickly must be doing some good! That's one theory anyway. Actually, when Lance did them he did one pass at 50, then a pass at 100, then back to 50. My practice was to do a few weeks at 50 and then a few weeks at 100. I thought both exercises helped my climbing, meaning on the competitive group rides during those periods. Coloring outside the box, just like people do spinups to 130 to enhance performance at 100.

My personal guess on the mechanics of it is that it's similar to doing OLP, when one does one interval at 50 and then an interval at 85, the purpose of the slow interval being to slow down the action enough so that one can better train the neurological component and get the right muscles to kick in at the right moment. SE training without upper body movement is similar. It focuses the attention on the exact contractions necessary to move the bike efficiently and smoothly. Doing it right actually decreases peak pedal force at a particular HR or wattage, which one might also find to be a goal when one's legs are packing it in on a long mountain ride. YMMV.

I agree about the stomps. Very beneficial, anecdotally . . . I'd do a dozen of them, with a few minutes between.

asgelle

By that logic, pedaling while someone beats your quads with a 2x4 must be better training than just pedaling since it's harder and hurts more. Just because something is harder doesn't mean it's better. Specificity does apply.

wphamilton

I'm also a little skeptical in that empirical data is dismissed as well, and hence none is offered in support. He's basically made some calculations and points out that the numbers don't add up to what people expect from SE training, but without good empirical data I have to be uneasy with his conclusions.

asgelle

What do you call Figures 1 and 2 if not empirical? And it is a mischaracterization to say Coggan dismisses empirical evidence. He says it should be coupled with a firm foundation in science.

wphamilton

I call it "inadequate empirical evidence" as opposed to the "good empirical evidence" I alluded to. Only one test subject - himself - and a couple of sessions? It's intended to illustrate his calculations rather than present empirical data.

I said he dismisses empirical data because in his second paragraph he's explicit about it. "Ideally, however, coaching practices should be based not upon anecdotal evidence and empirical observations, but upon formal scientific research in the sports sciences, or at least the application of scientific knowledge to sport (1)" His conclusions may well be right, but the quasi-scientific presentation does not inspire me to confidence.