Originally Posted by
globecanvas
Q: Sprinters; born or made?
Rahsaan: Born, definitely! I don’t do any sprint specific training, I work to improve my climbing or to sustain power for longer; God gave me the gift of a sprint, all my training is designed to get me into a position to use it!
Originally Posted by
canuckbelle
I kinda think I agree. I basically do zero sprint training and easily put out >1200w at the end of a hard ride, and >1400w when I'm feeling good (at the end of a ride). I don't even need to try to put out >1100w.
+1
I don't do any specific sprint training anymore, no weight lifting, no sprint intervals per se except to go for the green jersey on Zwift or chasing a truck. In an outside ride I might jump 1x every hour, sprint 1x every 2-3 hours. Zwift I sprint every 30-60 minutes (takes me 30 min to do a lap, I'll skip the sprint if I am not optimized with game boost, current green jersey time, and whatever else might dissuade me from making a 25-28 second effort).
Without the sprint training I'm close to what I think I can do. I handily won the Cat 3 field sprint last weekend (no camera footage to see how I did it), to the point that I sat up well before the line. If I was racing on the track I'd probably focus more on working on my sprint but for now it's just a matter of having fun racing and doing whatever I feel like, or not, in training.
One of the guys that got me into the sport has a killer kick/jump. He stopped racing for 10 years. We went for a ride, he was just dying, but when we raced to a spot from a standing start he just buried me until I got going, in the jump he just killed it, it was probably 30-40 meters before I flew by him. We jumped in the same gear, we both had similar components (shift while sprint, etc, after all he taught me about the sprint itself)