Originally Posted by
Carbonfiberboy
Looks like the 5th edition has the AA phase at 15-20. The 2nd edition had it at 20-30. Being conservative and actually more concerned with endurance and not getting injured than lifting heavy right from the start, I went with 30 reps.
You'll note that 15-20 reps is only prescribed for a small subset of actual sessions. Most use a lower rep range. Also, there's no evidence that doing 30 reps is safer.
Originally Posted by
Carbonfiberboy
I think in your "who's your advisor" sentence there's just a chance you might have it backwards. Why look to a strength athlete for advice on endurance cycling training?
This is strength training. Most cyclists know next to nothing about it.
Originally Posted by
Carbonfiberboy
The strength athlete's goal is to lift the maximum weight possible. The cyclist's goal is to recruit as many muscle fibers as possible without increasing leg weight.
This can be done using lower reps.
Originally Posted by
Carbonfiberboy
It's also more complicated than simply trying to get maximum force out of minimum size. There's also muscle fiber type to consider. By using high rep sets designed to fatigue the muscle, the type 2 fibers fatigue first and thus the type 1 fibers are forced to do the work.
This is already done when riding your bike. The current prevailing thought is that you don't try to duplicate your cycling efforts in the gym. Contrast is good. Furthermore, your statement isn't really correct. The type 2 fibers don't really get used unless the type 1 fibers aren't capable of generating sufficient force. This happens immediately with heavier weights, but not with lighter ones.
Look, you keep doing you. I'm not telling you that you need to stop or change or whatever, but just keep in mind that no one else is suggesting this rather extreme approach. The fact is that pretty much all reasonable rep schemes will work reasonably well for someone who is looking to get fit and doesn't have some extremely specific performance goal.