Originally Posted by
njdanny85
I mentioned in a previous post that I am about 5'10 175. I am not huge and never said I had the strongest legs out there. I have decent strength for my size and I have been weight training for over a decade. My point was simply that I am an experienced weightlifter and I strength train regularly (3x per week usually, sometimes 4x) in addition to cycling and running.
Wanna try something that might help your cycling?
Squats: 4x12, < 10 second rest between sets.
Four sets, twelve reps, under 10 seconds rest between sets.
Oh, yeah. First time you try that? Pick a LIGHT weight. Like 135 lbs.
That won't help your aerobic power, but it sure will help your anaerobic capacity and your ability to tolerate lactate buildup.
And FWIW, back in my competitive powerlifting days, I'd do legs once a week and bench twice a week. That's it. The rest of my gym time was for beach lifting.
I dunno how active Waterrockets is around here anymore, but he's been known to weigh in on weightlifting and how it helps cyclists every now and then. You might want to see what's posted over in the "Training and Nutrition" and the various racing forums.
I think the consensus is that I need to continue to add distance rides at a moderate pace and add in some interval work to improve my TT/duathlon leg pace. Again, I appreciate the input and I am hoping to put it to good use.
Yeah, I'd say once or twice a week with the interval work, 2-4 times a week doing two to four hour rides at a moderate pace, and maybe a hard group ride every week or two would be good.
Interval work is high intensity - 2x20 or 3x15 workouts should be hard, and take couple of days to recover from. They're not going to feel like you feel after killing yourself in a hard squat workout, so you'll probably be tempted to try riding hard more than that. But in some ways, those kind of cycling workouts will take more out of you than a hard squat workout. You'll burn a whole lot more calories on the bike, for one thing.