Hey, no apology. The more people that say it the better. I'm not making this stuff up.

http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/4/4_13_3.gif

oh jeez

You won't get any stronger if you ride the heavily weighted bike slowly. There is no shortage of overweight, long distance touring riders who plod along at a comfortable pace with 50 lbs of gear. The reason you personally come back stronger is that when you are on tour you are riding your bike every day and very likely 'training' with more hours per week than you normally would. You could get the same benefit if you went 'credit card' touring with a light bike and just rode faster. But I'm just starting to repeat what umd and others have been saying.

There's a reason you don't see professionals training on heavy, weighted bikes and it's not because they didn't study at the Bruce Lee school of bike racing.

holy sh1t at this thread.

No, no. That will just make your workout easier. :grin:

umd has proved what I'm saying to be correct. "Reduce the resistance so that you go really fast". Which basically means what???...

Right... umd rides his normal everyday bike which weighs x amount of lbs. Hes saying, now if I jump on a lighter "paper mache" bike, I'm going to go alot faster (factors remaining constant), correct. RIGHT, DON'T go back & ride on your everyday bike which weighs x amount of lbs. That stimulation has been learnt by the central nervous system. Your stalling, don't you understand?.

YOUR NOT GOING TO RIDE THE HEAVIER BIKE SLOWER, THE POWER ISN'T GOING TO DECREASE, THE SPEED ISN'T GOING TO DECREASE, YOUR GOING TO TRAIN HARDER, TRAINING A NEW CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM STIMULATION.

The resistance DOESN'T come from mashing higher gears, your reducing power, reducing limb speed, the bike is travelling faster but your limbs are moving to slow for your brain to learn a new power response. The resistance has to come via different methods but your pedalling is going to remain in the power spots.

Your not going to ride it slower, YOUR going to train harder. The power remains the same, the speed will remain the same... Your brain is learning a new response from the new resistance. Your brain is tricking your body into firing the muscles more powerfully from the new stimulation.

When I talk about riding heavier bikes, increasing resistance, ITS SMALL INCREMENTS, until the nervous system has developed that new response.

EXACTLY!. "The only difference is that the speed you are traveling will be faster on the lighter bike".

Right, now go back & enhance that principal.

Its all about training hard & the hardest trainers are usually the ones that come out on top.

You said, "the benefit to your body will be the same riding the heavier bike". But its the brain where conditioning here, the brain is what will fire your muscles.

Non sequitor.

No, you are wrong. You are putting words in my mouth. I ride my light bike hard and fast. I ride it as hard as I can and if I rode a heavier bike my power would be the same but my speed would be slower. If I rode a still lighter bike my speed would be even faster. The thing you are missing and refuse to see is that you can increase resistance without increasing the weight of the bike by just pedaling harder. The fact that you refuse to see this pretty much proves you are a troll.

You know what they say, the riders of today can't oil the chains of the riders of yesteryear. Maybe they knew something.

So what I should do is put it in a harder gear?

Look, what you are describing is what intervals do. You do a hard effort, above your "learned power of your central nervous system," and then you adapt. The next time you go out and do intervals you do them harder. Each time harder and harder. You can see the improvement with a power meter.

If you are training with weights in a gym, you increase the weight to get more resistance. On a bike, the "weight" that you are pushing on the pedals is a function of your gearing. Shift one gear higher and for the same leg speed you push a slightly higher weight. Increasing the weight of the bike and changing nothing else would have the same effect.

The weight that you are capable of pushing at any given time isn't going to magically increase just because you put a higher weight in front of you. If you are pushing as hard as you can, increasing the weight of the bike will just make you go slower until you are able to produce more power. Just as shifting to a higher gear will make your legs go slower until you are able to produce more power.

One of the workouts my coach had me do back in December was a high-force strength workout. By climbing in a high gear at a low-cadence you are putting out more torque (i.e. weight on the pedals), which develops muscular strength. He had me alternate days with these and low-force high-cadence workouts, spinning at 110 rpm at a tempo effort on flat group. One develops muscular strength and the other develops leg speed. During that time I put about an inch around each of my thighs and now I can pretty easily push the same torque/weight I was doing at 60rpm in those strength workouts at 80-90 rpm for threshold and VO2 workouts. The point is I can vary the resistance as needed by shifting to get the appropriate leg speed, and then just push as hard as needed to put out the prescribed power.

umd, Do you happen to have 2 dumbells lying round your home which you can load with about 5Kg's each???...

yes....

I don't know where this is going, but I can say I ride with a 20lb backpack sometimes. I don't ride harder with it, I just ride slower.

Right. When you have the time, perform this exercise, don't laugh, just do it. Takes 2 minutes

Stand upright, get into a boxing stance. Throw 20 punches (as explosively) as you can, counting them, consciously remembering how fast your hands are moving.

Now perform the same routine with the dumbells in both hands (5Kg) (Throw another 20 punches (as explosively) as you can with the dumbells in your hands, counting them. Now put the dumbells down, (Throw another 20 punches resistance free).

Did you feel it? (The power), the new central nervous system stimulation. I apply that to cycling, but you don't stall, your constantly progressing, constantly telling your brain you want your muscles to fire faster & faster (power).

Look, you aren't getting it. You do the same thing on a bike by shifting. Instant extra resistance. I am dumbfounded that you can't see this.

To put this back into an experience that you may be able to understand, yesterday I did my threshold intervals on a climb. I was supposed to target 3x 300W for 10-12 minutes at 85rpm. But before and after the intervals I was supposed to do 10 minutes "tempo" at 230W, over 100rpm. After pushing that 300W (which is over my threshold), the 10 minutes of tempo felt much easier than before the intervals. In part because I was warmed up from the previous efforts, but mostly because I was just doing 300W for half an hour so 10 minutes at 230W felt pretty damn easy by comparison.

Look, I get what you are saying about work with more resistance, then drop the resistance and you feel faster/stronger. I get that. But what you don't get is that on a bike shifting affects the resistance. If you are throwing a punch or doing a bench press or whatever, there is no way to get more resistance except to add more weight. But on a bike shifting to a higher gear increases the weight on your legs for the same leg speed. It is just like adding 5kg and throwing a punch in your example.

But what are you sacrificing from shifting to higher gears???...

NOTHING!!!!

It is no different than adding weight.

yes!

But the leg speed doesn't remain the same, you have shifted to a higher gear.

But the leg speed doesn't remain the same if you put more weight on the bike either. Both are adding more resistance. In both cases you have to push harder to get your leg speed back up, and that is what stimulates the training.