brawlo

On the contrary. I had a good number of years lifting while attending uni. Sad to say for my cycling career, but my lower body did not respond nearly as well as my upper body. Kind of muffin top I guess you could say. When I made a choice to focus on sprinting, I found gains in dropping weights altogether through race season. It seems I take time to transfer strength to the bike. From that, I did a fully experimental winter of strictly bike trainer work and no weights and that was my best season gains to date. Notably strength work to take the place of weights work, not aimless trainer drills. If I had Nate's legs I'd be set, but sadly I just have my own.

I guess also worthy of note is that I have been racing for about 9yrs now. I have a good basic strength as a result. For the newcomer I don't discount the value of weight work, as it helps to build a base, but I believe that is a point where it loses its value and the bike, either trainer or track, could be a better tool

jfiveeight

I don't think it works like that.

This might be true for continued training at their level, but from what I have read they still were able to squat 2.5-3x their bodyweight before they moved to different methods. Working up to that amount of strength then training to apply it is still probably the way to go. If this isn't the case, please elaborate as that would be really interesting. We may share the same idea:
This sounds pretty conflicting with a large analysis of studies.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21735398

And even more recent: Influence of passive stretch on muscle blood flow, oxygenation and central cardiovascular responses in healthy young males | Heart and Circulatory Physiology

Divebrian

I think weights and exercise in general is a very personal thing and each person must experiment to find out what works best for them. I wrestled in college and then went on to be a pro kick boxer and used cycling for cardio and to shed few pounds to get down to fight weight. I found that a mix of 2 days weights and 3-4 days (depending upon intensity) on the bike works best for me. That schedule still works best for me...if I increase my weight days, I bulk up too much and if I increase my cycling days, my power takes a nose dive. I think your time spent away from the gym and off the bike has ALOT to do with it as as well. If you are a roofer slumping packs of shingles up a ladder all day long, your work out regimen would look vastly different than someone who sits in an office chair for 8 hours a day.

carleton

It's funny that you mention that. Steve Hill would ask his new coaching clients about their day jobs when he was writing programs for them. He would take that into consideration for sure.

I also agree that it's very personal.

As we mature as training athletes, we are our best meter of what's going on with our bodies. If we learn to listen to our bodies, we can tune our weekly programs. Feeling good? Maybe ad another workout day in the week or add more exercises/reps during your normal session. Felling bad or run down? Take an unscheduled day off or lighten the volume.

I traded a few emails with a former US elite pro who works in the medical field who said that he would schedule an unheard of 2 days off in a row to allow for recovery as opposed to the standard no more than 1 day off at a time. He said that his recovery significantly improved while staying on a linear growth plan. I tried it and had similar positive results.

Also, burn out for sprinters is a real thing. I'm sure this is true for roadies/enduros, too for similar but different reasons. Sprinters spend several months per year, day in, day out doing maximal or near maximal efforts in the gym and on the bike. It's mentally taxing on a long term level. Some sprinters end the season in a funk. I was really pissed at the end of my 2010 season. I wanted to sell all of my sh*t and quit abruptly. Jennie told me to, "Not make any permanent decisions for at least a month. You'll feel differently when you decompress." She was right.

When I stopped racing in 2014 and started doing normal life things (relationships, work, other hobbies), the cloud lifted and I was really happy and was like, "I can't believe I was missing all of this".

taras0000

Damn! I forgot about Tournant!

taras0000

It's the nervous system (again!). Here's a quick little primer on it.

Maximal work is extremely taxing on the nervous system, and it takes much longer to rebound from neural fatigue than it does from cardiovascular fatigue. It's not to say that endurance training can't induce neural fatigue, it just takes much longer to get there. This is something that is seen more in athletes who are putting in consistent 3-6 hour days of endurance work, not your typical avid amateur who maybe maxes out with one 2-3 hour ride a week. Sprinters experience it because the type of training they do revs up the production of anabolic hormones. This is good for training, but over time the body starts to dial back these pathways to keep burn out of the glands in check. Us cyclists are masochistic and push through this because we are superhuman and don't know when to dial it back and when to step on the gas. What happens next is we become lazy in the production of neurotransmitters, specifically epinephrine and norepinephrine. Our body is now putting on the brakes for us. These neurotransmitters also effect out mood (See carleton's post). They are no-otropic in some respect, and when they start running low, we feel our memory get foggy, our mood sours, and we stop feeling the love for the things we love. This is when it's time to step back and actually take a break from it all.

Endurance athletes and their neural fatigue starts out on the opposite side of the spectrum. Instead of revving their anabolic hormones, the prolonged physical activity induces an increase in stress hormones. Where sprinters were producing anabolic hormones because of the work they did (which helped them recover), in endurance athletes, these hormones mildly kick in as a recovery mechanism, BUT ONLY ONCE THE BODY HAS RECOVERED FROM THE FATGUE OF THE PREVIOUS EFFORT. The problem with this is there is very little anabolic stimulus once the body has recovered from this fatigue, so there isn't a huge rebuild response once the stress hormones are cleared out. Stress hormones cause the body to cannibalize muscle and other connective tissue, anabolic ones build and repair. As you decrease the amount of muscle you have to rely on, you put more of a strain on the nervous system to make sure that whatever muscle is left is firing at 100%, more of the time.

So basically, Sprinters keep making their engine's output bigger, and then the body hits the brakes to make sure it doesn't get too big, because it's a real pig to have to move and rev up a big engine. In Enduros, the engine get's continually made smaller, but it get's more efficient, running closer to redline for longer periods.

Dalai

Enjoying your training physiology posts Tara's!

taras0000

Thanks. I was pretty fortunate to have a coach who had a masters in exercise physiology when I was younger. He had a lot of experience on the road and mountainbike side, and I was his first track athlete. He was the S+C coach for the university in town, so he trained a lot of the rugby guys as well. I was an experiment in trying to merge his athlete knowledge with his cycling knowledge. He taught me a lot and explained the reasoning for everything he had me doing and what and why we were doing to get to where we wanted to be. He ended up going to work with the Australians, and I ended up going back to school (coincidental, not related). He planted a seed that sprouted into a healthy appetite for knowledge and how the human body works. We're all a pretty smart bunch, but we can't know everything. Most of us are experts about a few things and generalists about a lot more. When someone asks a question on this forum, I figure that there are others that are looking to answer those same/similar questions for themselves. If I can pass along some info that helps someone improve, understand something, or maybe save them a lot of time and effort, then I'm more than happy to share what I know. If only I was smart enough to actually put that knowledge to use for myself!

Baby Puke

Maybe Russians hacking the track cycling webverse?

warx

What a great resource this forum is!

So I still don't understand if NM workouts (weights in particular but also sprints, standing starts) tax the same systems as aerobic/LT/VO2 and how you can combine them in a training plan. i.e. is it better to do weights day one and threshold/VO2 day two (then Level II day three) or vice versa. When recovering from one does it more negatively effect the other on subsequent days. Now that I know DOMS is not necessarily an indication of "repair" going on it seems like weights first then VO2 stuff is better.

carleton

Thanks, Taras!

taras0000

There is a way to "layer" your training (i like using this term because the recovery periods of workouts overlap each other), but depending on ability, strengths/weaknesses, time of year/cycle; it sort of ends up being a "how long is a piece of string" type of situation.

The thing to remember, and not lose sight of, is "What am I trying to accomplish with this workout?" Always ask yourself this before you do anything, and it will save you a bunch of wasted effort, as well as time. The body will adapt to the largest strain put on it in a workout. If you have a "mixed" type of workout, you really end up shortchanging yourself. The body's energy systems do overlap, so you will end up training at least a little of each aspect of your physiology no matter what you do, but there should be a clear cut mission to what you are going to do each workout.

Before having a coach, I was probably the most masochistic junior out there. Years of hockey taught me to just go, go, go, go. Sprint after sprint, for minutes at a time. When I got into track, I was successful purely because I would outwork and outmuscle the kids I was racing against. To train for sprints, I would do sprints for up to 2 hours, one every 5-10 minutes. Kilo training was doing 4-5 Kilos ten minutes apart. Pursuits would be similar, except only 5 minutes apart. It taught me to dig deep and gave me a pretty good start, but it was a stupid way to train. If you noticed, all of those workouts were TIRING! That is the worst way to train, and after my coach had seen my logbook from the previous season, he educated me on neural fatigue, and showed me exactly where it had started to kick in based on my results/times. That kind of training worked initially because as a beginner, anything will work as long as it induces an overload.

To plan your training, you have to realize what is the easiest VS hardest to develop. Speed is the hardest to develop, followed by power, then strength, then endurance/aerobic is the easiest. This is the order you lose things in as well (Speed is the first to drop off, ...). This is also the heirarchy to follow when layering. Simply, you can layer speed over strength, but not strength over speed (or shouldn't, because it's a waste of time and energy). So, do speedwork when you are freshest and most rested the day before any other type of workout. The fatigue from each item on the scale will compromise anything above it. The fatigue from each item on the scale will not effect those below it, and may/will even contribute to increasing it's effect (speed and power are the only ones that are interrelated enough to effect each other negatively from fatigue, you need speed to generate power, and vice-versa).

It is also important to remember that each item on the scale NEEDS to be developed to effectively train the items above it. You build with aerobic, develop VO2, get stronger, get more powerful, then get faster. If you have a crappy aerobic engine, then your sprint workouts are going to be too taxing, and will suffer. You need a certain amount of fitness to get through your workout effectively enough to not only induce an overload, but to make sure that overload is greater than the previous one, AS WELL AS contributing to recovering for the next workout.

Does this mean that you should be doing everything on the scale? NO. The amounts, timing, and spacing are going to vary with individuals and goals.

carleton

+1,000

It takes thousands of dollars in coaching fees and years of training to learn what Taras has summarized here in the last few posts of this thread.

sarals 

+ another 1000.

Thank you, Taras!

warx

Yes! Very much appreciate all this fantastic info.

This week I'm starting to lift every three days to see if I can find that "breakthrough" moment. Certainly puts some hard points down for forming any layered training plan...

VanceMac

These three sentences encapsulate two of the biggest barriers I encounter when discussing training with roadies (and more acutely, roadies who may want to start incorporating lifting).

topflightpro

I've started lifting, and I am trying to hit the gym 3x a week, as many have suggested. Right now, I am going to my local gym as well as my office gym. Office gym is more like a large hotel gym. It's got a decent amount of cardio equipment, dumbbells, leg ext/curl machine, adductor/abductor, smith machine and a crappy leg press machine.

MY plan has been to do heavy weights at the real gym on Sundays - Squats, deadlifts and leg presses, then on Tuesdays and Thursdays go to the office gym, where I do dumbbell-based work - lunges, step ups.... as well as leg curls, ext, adductors and abductors.

Does this seem like a good plan?

carleton

Not really (don't shoot me).

I know where you are coming from. The not knowing what to do is killing you. It killed me.

Yes, doing something is better than doing nothing but I assume that you want to get the most for your limited time. Doing that starts with a goal. These are questions that you are going to ask yourself. Don't respond here as giving programming advice is very tricky. We don't know you, your body, your athletic history, your schedule, your goals, what equipment you have available, etc... Another thing is that if someone here gives you some specific instructions...you'll do it then say, "OK. Done. Now what?" and that person may or may not respond because it's the internet. Or they may give you something outside of the range of your abilities.


Why are you weight training? Basic fitness, beach muscles, to make your road riding better, as a base for sprinter training, as a base for omnium training, you hate riding your bike in the winter, etc...

From there, you have to find a program that gets you closer to that goal.

Weight training is a weird thing. It's been around for hundreds of years. It's pretty much been figured out...yet every year someone thinks they've made a better way to do it.

There are a few well-known books on the subject. I like Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe and recommend it a lot, but there are others that are just as good. But, keep in mind that the book and the basic program therein assumes that your only exercise is coming from that program. If you are adding bike workouts in your weekly regimen, then something has to be adjusted.

I'm not saying you can't achieve your goals with your current gym situation.

There is no easy option, but you do have options:

- Become a insatiable researcher and do lots of homework on the subject. (I've done this)
- Join a club/team that has members with the same goals and do this together.
- Find a workout buddy who has goals very similar to yours and train together (I've done this. It's very effective)
- Hire a coach that knows how to help you reach your cycling goals, not just a generic personal trainer. (I've done this. It's the most effective...and most expensive). Understand that you don't need a full-on cycling coach. You can limit the engagement to just writing weekly or monthly gym programs which should be a fraction of a monthly coaching fee.
- Pick parts from previous programs you've used and cobble together a custom program for yourself (this is what I currently do)

Baby Puke

In my experience the health club-type machines are not that effective, and I would try to get in a real gym with a real bar and plates if at all possible, at least two times a week for real gains. I'm dealing with something similar- I'm a full time uni instructor and I only have time to get to the "real" gym once a week, and my other gym days have been spent at my school's gym which just has the aforementioned machines. I find that despite being able to consistently train between these two gyms every week the best I can do is maintain the strength I've built during my vacation through the semester, AKA, not good enough!
I'm currently working on expanding my home gym to have enough weight to be usable when the real gym is not an option, and begging for a more flexible teaching schedule next semester... .
Of course, your mileage will vary and as Carleton said this all depend on a lot of personal variables. That plan you outlined might work great for you depending on your level.

warx

Posting a followup on some things I've been trying.

I tried heavy squats 2-3 times a week to see if I could get over the DOMS hump. Nope. Seems like I am one of those genetically disposed folks who is subject to DOMS more than others. I have been looking into this since I work in genomics - actually not possible possible to find public genomes/exomes with patient data expressing their athletic endeavors... oh well. Still, research shows there is quite a range in pain response here and in many cases (and related to age - 49) there is not a great deal of adaptation to help with reducing the neural effects. Also documented is how strength/power performance is impacted for possibly 7-14 days after heavy exercise.

Anyways, I've been trying a different tactic knowing this about myself. I isolated the main cause of excessive DOMS to eccentric end range of just the one exercise (squats obviously). Switching to box squats, single leg squats on raised platform and/or doing the concentric effort as rapidly a possible all eliminated the pain. I still do leg press with the eccentric part but that does not inflict me nearly as much. I'm not advocating the extremes of pure-concentric routines like sled-pulling etc. I've just altered one movement.

Research is mixed about how much you're leaving on the table w/out doing the final turn-around part of the eccentric motion since it causes the most damage/hypertrophy. Given that recovery is much faster (and more pleasant!) you can exercise more often so it might be a wash. Plus, at my age pretty sure huge adaptation WRT to strength is limited to say the least. So... just for a purely lifestyle reason (I don't want to hurt for four days and not want to go ride) I'm sticking with this regimen.

carleton

I haven't read back through this thread, but could it be a nutrition thing? I know that I get achy when I'm on a calorie-restricted diet. My recovery times seem to go up.

When I eat as much and as often as I like (including sweets), I recover very quickly, easily being able to do heavy leg work every other day.

jsk

I think that nutrition may play a part, but I also think some people are more susceptible to DOMS than others. It definitely hits my wife worse than me, even though she lifts more often. She definitely eats less than me, but she does make sure to get some extra protein and carbs on weight-training days.

I can get away with squatting once/week and not really get sore (unless I miss a week). Even exercises with a heavy eccentric component such as reverse lunges or bulgarian split squats don't cause me too much DOMS unless I haven't done them in a while. RDL's being the exception - those always make more sore, although that's probably because I dread the DOMS and tend to avoid doing them regularly.

warx

I'm generally on a weight-gain to weight-neutral diet with at least 40g of supplemented protein/BCAAs. If I stop this I definitely feel it.

Regarding the DOMS - funny as the split squat (not quite bulgarian but with dumbbells held down by side) was my go-to squat. I think glutes and adductor magnus are the real debilitating ones. RDLs obviously not good for me!

warx

OK - worst DOMS story:

On vacation (no bike) and thought I'd go for the KOM/CR running down Massada to the Dead Sea and beat my family in the cable car. It's cool as you start at just above sea level and finish 900' below (aero disadvantage?). Anyways, worst mistake ever. Spent the rest of the vacation in agony hobbling down steps, cringing getting into cars etc. It's all in the eccentric! Worse still - I only got 2nd best time https://www.strava.com/activities/160693251

TDinBristol

Try hex squats. It reduces the eccentric effort because you're coming off the floor rather than lowering the weight into the hole.
Hex squats are done by using the lower handle of the bar, sitting back, and getting the butt down so your thighs are parallel. Depending on body proportions, you might stand on a platform or a couple of 25lb plates (see link below)
Hex deadlifts, in contrast, are using the higher handles and having the butt a bit higher and more of a forward lean.
I've been using them instead of squats to heal an IT band issue that gets inflamed in the eccentric. Significant reduction in DOMS. Some studies show this variation also develops explosive power better than back squats/deadlifts (link below). Said to be easier on the back and knees.
Hex deadlifts and hex squats are variations, and on a spectrum both fall between a high-bar squat and a barbell deadlift.
For simple basement or garage gyms, they're also good (and very safe) if you don't have room for a power rack. I use dense foam pads, 1/2" thick, on the floor so the weights don't make so much noise when I lower them to the floor.

https://www.strengthandconditioningr...-bar-deadlift/

See "deficit pulls" here:
https://www.t-nation.com/training/5-...ift-variations