Campag4life

I know this isn't the racing forum but a question for decent riders here who casually compete with their friends out riding sprinting to a given finish line on a course you frequently ride. Do you ever work on your sprinting?...aka...do any drills when out training to develop a bit better technique or maybe a bit more explosiveness? Based upon your training, have you actually improved?

Reason I ask and this is a bit whimsical but lately I have been participating in a A- group ride....20-24 mph depending who shows up....30 miles...mostly flat. Before we take a break to fill our water bottles and stop and chat the group does a sprint. I have no problem keeping up with the group and may even be toward the front in overall riding...but not the fastest guy...but I haven't been training much either riding mostly with my girl friend who is more of a 16-18 mph rider so getting plenty of Zone 1 riding in ...not all bad btw as I am not totally unsatisfied with my fitness. But no doubt riding with these guys will be good for my fitness. I want to do a bit better in the sprint competition. I am not built like a sprinter but not that far behind the guys who win it...but need to improve my out of the saddle technique near the finish which feels a bit pathetic honestly.

Any good videos or tips how to improve?
Thanks

bianchi10

Sprinting is my strong suit. I do interval sprints on a road near my place. It has a couple sections where I can practice flat sprints as well as a place that has a slight incline. Making sure you are in the right gear or are comfortable with shifting in mid stride will help a lot.


This is a good one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL1NWl7xqrY

Or this one..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvRPFkpTEU4

Campag4life

Thank you brother...much appreciated!

Homebrew01

I used to work on jumps. Pick a 'start' and 'end', such as 2 telephone poles. Cruise up to pole #1 , without ramping up, but in a bit of a big gear to give you something to push against, then go as hard as humanly possible until pole # 2. Repeat several times during a ride.

For "jumps", top speed is not important, just short distance to get the initial acceleration.

Top end sprints are a different drill. I would do 1 all-out towards the end of the session. Try and bend your handlebars.

colnago62

If you can, try some on a slight downhill or tailwind. It is less stressful on the body. Do about 5 maybe. Sprinting is stressful to the body and if you do a bunch, you might not be able to ride very fast the next day.

I don't work on my sprinting. I can win the sprints with the guys I ride with because they don't have the timing down. They go from too far out. They start drag racing from 300 plus to go. I sit on and start coming around at a little under 200 to go, depending on wind and elevation. Timing is something you might experiment with.
On your rides with the gf, practice shooting the wheel. Back off a wheel length or two and run straight at her rear wheel then move over at the last second. This way you are accelerating in the draft. Lots of riders move to the side and then accelerate, pushing the air themselves. This is a lot slower.

Carbonfiberboy 

I used to sprint recreationally a good bit, back in the day when I was the best sprinter on most of our group rides. Well, there's technique and practice.

Technique first. When we climb normally standing, we use what I call the rest stroke. We use as little energy as possible. We can climb with completely open hands because we don't exert force on the bars. We rock the bike in a rhythm with our pedaling where the rocking and pedaling phases cancel out the forces on the bars. We rock the bike to the left just before our right foot comes down.

OTOH when we sprint we use a power stroke. We rock the bike to the left while our right foot is coming down. This adds the power of our upper body to the power of our leg.

Looking at the two videos posted, there is one glaring difference between these riders: cadence. The cadence at which you are able to sprint will determine your technique. Observe the foot and calf action of the GCN rider at ~:50 and on. Notice how his heel lifts and his calf contracts on the upstroke. He's pulling up, hard. Now look at Wust at about :56 and on. He's pedaling with some change in his foot angle but less than the GCN. He's pulling up less. Now look at Wust at about 1:57. His feet are mostly flat as he hits his fast sprinting cadence. The lesson is that you can accelerate harder if you can pull up as well as push down, but somewhere above 90 that doesn't work anymore and you only concentrate on moving your feet. The ability to pedal really hard and fast is that pro sprinter quality. You might go into a hill sprint pedaling flat at a high cadence and turn to pulling up as your cadence slows. I never shift during a hill sprint.

So the thing to work on is technique. Do form sprints on the flat, on hills, going over the tops of hills. Good article about developing sprinting form here: Sprinting ? Hagens Berman ? Society Consulting Cycling

Be sure to rest for a few minutes between each sprint. Your technique will fall apart if you haven't rested a bit.

Speed comes from using good technique.

Of course there's also positioning. You know when they're going to wind it out, so pick a wheel you want to be on and try to position yourself near the front on a good wheel before things really start to happen. If you're pretty good, you'll find people positioning themselves on your wheel. It's all fun. The effort and technique always mattered more to me than the win, and that attitude took a lot of the risk out of it. I never really cared if I won or not. Leading out another sprinter is just as much fun.

OldTryGuy

Sprinters need strong, stable, reliable knees......I walk and ride wearing knee bands or braces so I don't sprint. All I can do is help lead out the guys by accelerating to the jump points. SOMEBODY has to do it and I enjoy it when they have a good go at it.

f4rrest

I like sprinting over the bridge on my commute home a couple times/ week.

It's single lane with barriers and no escape from traffic. It's motivating when a truck is on your butt.

29 sec. Just 1 less sec needed for the KOM out of 3700. I find it's easier for me to put power down going up. Need to work on maintaining power going down after sitting.

pdedes

Have you ever tried slamdancing on the pedals? I hear that's an effective technique.

Radish_legs

With a power meter

Homebrew01

You risk breaking your baby bolts, especially over 400 watts.

UnfilteredDregs

The article @Carbonfiberboy mentions leg speed...a very good sprinter I know recommended a little ring exercise (or an easy gear...) just getting out there, keeping cadence at 100+ and doing "Spin-Ups," to the highest sustainable cadence you can achieve for at least a few seconds...rest and repeat. His rationale being that you need to train those muscles to fire that fast smoothly.

Carbonfiberboy 

One of the things I did in winter was to pedal for long periods on my rollers, 15-40 minutes, at an uninterrupted cadence of 115-120 while trying to keep it in zone 2. Now I'm down to 112-113 in zone 2 but I still do it. That helps everything, not just sprinting. I can still hit 150 in spin class, maybe 135 on the road. I know, that's slow. Some folks can hit over 200 but I'm not that talented.

DannoXYZ 

First, a little background. Why spin so fast? It's physics and a lot of people don't understand the difference between force and power (similar to torque & HP for autos). The equation distils down to power=force*rpm. Once you're pushing down on the pedals at 100% muscle-exertion force, you simply cannot push any harder. The only way to to generate more power and go faster is to increase RPMs. In a sprint between two identically strong riders, both pushing on the pedal with exactly the same force, with one spinning at 100rpms and one at 130rpms, the 2nd guy will generate 30% more power and go 9% faster.

One of the main improvements made with sprinting-exercises is you're training the brain-to-muscle timing and coordinating when each muscle around the pedaling circle needs to fire to maintain even and smooth spinning. You get fastest top-speed crossing the line at about 130rpms seated. That requires years, at least a decade of training and practice. I recommend the following once a week:

- 1-legged spinning, 2-3 sets of 20-30sec on each side with rest in between. You really learn where the dead-spots are where the muscles haven't been recruited into the pedal-stroke. If there's any sections of the stroke you can't move the leg on its own, it's "dead" weight that the other leg has to push up through the pedals. This robs power that could be going to the back wheel and moving you faster. Due to the different size muscles, it's impossible to get 100% even torque through the entire 360-rotation, but each muscle should be exerted to its max with no deadbeats.

- spin-ups down hills. After you crest a hill, don't shift up. Stay in the same gear and use gravity to help you spin up the gear. Focus on smooth round motion to get the crank going as fast as you can. When you start bouncing, back off a bit and keep on spinning as fast as you can smoothly. With time, this peak smooth RPM will increase as you coordinate the muscles to fire in proper order. A lot of inefficiency and boucing is caused by pushing on the pedal at the bottom of the stroke. Obviously all this does is try to stretch the crankarm, but doesn't do anything to spin the spindle. This is also what causes the bounce, because you can't stretch the aluminium crankarm, instead, that downward force on the pedal just pushes up on the body. When the crank is at the bottom you actually want to be pulling the leg backwards. Lemond compares this to scraping mud off the bottom of the shoe. Basically at any given crankarm position, you want to be exerting force 90-degrees to the crankarm.

- rollers, miles and miles on rollers. If you're stuck indoors in the winter, ride rollers to perfect pedaling form. You're supposed to be taking it easy anyway, so having no load keeps you in zone-1. As with the spin-ups, get up to the fastest you can spin smoothly and hold it. Gradually and smoothy increase RPMs. Back off when you start bouncing and re-gain your form to smooth it out. I do spin-ups to 200rpms on rollers as well. Also out-of-the-saddle spinning to practice balance and being smooth on jumps.

- trainer spin-ups. With increased stability, it's possible to reach 240-250rpms on a trainer.


In addition to the physiological exercises, there's tactical mental training for sprints as well.

- gear-selection. A lot of people are afraid to shift-gears and slams their shifter into top-gear at the start of a sprint. This divides your crank torque down to miniscule levels and you end up with very slow acceleration. You'll find that you get fastest acceleration by picking a gear that starts at 100rpms for a sprint. That means downshifting 1-2 gears from cruising-speed @ 85-90rpms. When the jump starts, you'll have faster acceleration than those other fools who are in top-gear, even if they're stronger than you. The sprint & shift-pattern goes something like this for fastest elapsed-time from point-A to point-B and fastest top-speed crossing the line:

• downshift to 100rpms and get ready...
• JUMP! Out of the saddle spin 100 up to 115rpms
• SIT! spin 115rpms up to 130rpms
• SHIFT! Up one gear
• Out of the saddle spin 105rpms up to 115rpms
• sit, spin 115 to 130rpms, cross line @ 45mph+

- timing. You've only got about 3-4 seconds of anaerobic energy at 100% exertion using phospho-creatine. Then it's anerobic-fermentation of glucose from then on. With training, you can stretch 100% exertion from 7-seconds to about 10-12 seconds max before your muscles lock-up or give out. Knowing you've got 10-seconds in your legs, you work backwards from the finish-line. At X-starting speed, you practice and figure out how far 10-seconds of acceleration will get you to Y-ending speed. There's variations if you start at slower X2-starting speed, then you'll reach a slower Y2-ending speed and need to start your sprint closer to the finish. On known courses, you can pick a tree or some other landmark as the furthest out you can start a sprint at various speeds.

- drafting makes a HUGE difference in sprints. The faster the speeds, the faster drafting helps. So you want to pick out the designated winner and lead-out guy from the other teams and shove, push, body-slam your way in there. Lead-outs can pick up the speed to +40mph from over a mile away from the finish. You don't want to be out in open-air all that time since you'll have nothing left for the finish. Find their lead-out guy early and stay on his wheel tenaciously. Pay attention to him and all the other guys around you. When he jumps, you must have downshifted to 100rpms already and jump within a single pedal-stroke of him. Any gap that opens up and you've lost the draft AND you'll have someone else take your spot behind the lead-out.

- going around the other guy is another skillful art. After 3-seconds, you would've done your 1st shift and sitting behind the front guy at ~110rpms. To get around him, you're going from a sheltered draft to being slammed by +40mph winds. AND on top of that, you have to accelerate faster than the guy in front of you to 45mph to pass him at the finish. Here's a tip, accelerating from 40-42mph in a draft is much easier than in open air! So you soft-pedal for half to 1-second after your shift to open a 3-4ft gap, then jump again like mad in his draft at a slight angle. At 42mph just as you're inches from rear-ending him, your slight diagonal path will have your pedals just barely clear his back tyre. Now you're accelerating up next to him and the full force of the wind slows down your acceleration. This is when you sit at 120rpms and get as aero as you can and spin up to 130rpms for 45mph across the finish. If you've timed it right, your front-tyre will barely be ahead of the next guy.

- team strategies with lead-outs, multiple lead-outs. Practice bumping and shoving, etc.


I've done a lot of practice with sprinting technique... so much fun!

UnfilteredDregs

Good Stuff!

UnfilteredDregs

200 is nuts...the whole be at 100+ rpm in a draft prior to the sprint makes a lot of sense...but if you can consistently peak at 140-150 for a few seconds that's pretty good IMO.

colnago62

https://youtu.be/a5PcQJF5Jl0 François Purvis has world's jerseys in all the speed disciplines on the velodrome, except maybe the team sprints.

Campag4life

Fantastic Danno.
Thanks so much guys for all the great input. Never knew there was such an art and science to sprinting.

OldsCOOL

I've actually bent the bars before. Didnt realize they were tweaked until several rides later.