"The trouble with cyclists is that their training establishment keeps reinforcing the silly bull**** that all recreational athletes want to believe: at some point, all serious athletes go outside their sport-specific work to improve, and recreational athletes just want to play their sport and wear the clothes."
Mark Rippetoe
"Also, realize that time spent in the gym will never be more valuable than time spent on the bike, though it will make you much, much more powerful when you do get on the bike. "
From my first post.
Yes, training your sport requires a certain level of specificity. This is true across all sports.
The thing is, especially for something like track cycling, which is generally relatively short bursts of powerful cycling, being stronger (to a point) will be of much use, especially to the novice weightlifter who can't even squat 1.5 times their bodyweight below parallel, or deadlift 2x their bodyweight.
Have you seen the legs on most track cyclists? I have no doubt that most of those guys competing in the relatively short events could, with very little training, be squatting 2x bodyweight very shortly. They are, without a doubt, very, very strong men.
The short and long of it is that you should lift heavy to grow strong, which will have carryover to when you get back on the bike. Both can be done concurrently, but at decreased effeciency. Training the necessary energy systems is accomplished with General physical preparedness (GPP) training during the offseason, and then sport specific work as the season approaches.
These are broad, general scenarios, not necessarily having to do specifically with track training.
I also am no coach, just an ex personal trainer and someone who loves weightlifting.
A few Rippetoe Quotes to round things off:
"Physical strength the most important thing in life"
"The full squat is a perfectly natural position for the leg to occupy. That's why there's a joint in the middle of it, and why humans have been occupying this position, both unloaded and loaded, for millions of years. Much longer, in fact, than quasi-intellectual morons have been telling us that it's "bad" for the knees."
"My program is 3x/week barbell training until the strength gains produced by linear progression are exhausted. That's it, the whole program. Adding a bunch of other stuff in, or even adding a little other stuff in makes it NOT MY PROGRAM, because it fundamentally alters your response to the stress. Do what you want, of course, but it won't be my program if you do it your way."
- Mark Rippetoe
Anyone who is serious about their lifting will do themselves a favor and go to
http://aasgaardco.com/ and order themselves a copy of Starting Strength; if you don't like wasting time, order Practical Programming at the same time, or wait until your done with Starting Strength and then read it. If Starting Strength is the "what," and Practical Programming is the "how" and "why."
I don't work for Rippetoe or his publisher, I'm just one of many that have been forced to rethink how they approach trainging (not "working out") because he smacked me upside the head with brute logic, linear progression, and a plan based upon decades teaching novices how to lift damned heavy weights.