On Mon, 11 Apr 2005 14:15:44 +1000, Tamyka Bell <[email hidden]>
Quoted message said:Carl Brewer said:
On Mon, 11 Apr 2005 12:21:33 +1000, Tamyka Bell <[email hidden]>
wrote:
<snip>
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:
Wow, my hill climbing got WAY better when I did weights - but it was
strength/power only, not endurance weights, and my PT made sure I had
PERFECT form for everything... But then weights improved my running
heaps too. Maybe I'm just lucky and respond well to weights? I never do
heaps long term, mostly enough to build the neural response without
building heaps of muscle - and that might be the key.
It's also possible that the weight training had little effect on
its own, but the rest of your training may have made a
more significant contribution than you expected.
Not in this case, actually, because when I was on exactly the same
program without weights, I did not see the same improvements. My coach
wanted me to quit weights and I told him to f$ck off, because after a
few weeks of detraining, I slowed down and started getting injuries.
Interesting. Were you doing any on the bike strength work
or all aerobic stuff on the bike? What sort of intervals were you
doing?
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:Also, you're running, which is different again, and
then weights are essentially cross-training. Tri's are
always confused about what they're actually working on 🙂
In contrast to weights being cross-training if you're cycling? I don't
understand that statement (but I think the second sentence applies to
pretty much anyone who has accepted someone else's trg prog).
Mea Culpa. Weights are always cross-training, unless your sport
is weights 🙂
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:My understanding is that weight training is useful if you're
deficient in base strength, but, as Rik Stern says, you're
probably strong enough anyway, and weight training is then
of questionable benefit.
Although, if you're stronger, your muscles are working at a lower
effort.
Yes, but my understanding is that for
most riders, the difference between peak power (>>1000w)
and sustainable power is so great that it won't make any
significant difference to their sustainable power at or near
LT/MSS* (250-400w).
If you're biomechanically gifted, you're probably pretty
Quoted message said:efficient anyway. If not, your stabilisers could probably do with a
tweak. However those programs with leg curls and hammie curls etc will
not help because they fatigue major muscles without working the little
ones so much. Go free weights, go free weights, go free weights...
You're talking about a different thing though, you're talking about
injury prevention and management now, not increasing sustainable
power output *on a bike*. To be fair, you can't put out much power
when you're injured, but that's not what I was talking about 🙂
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:There's a lot of claims and counterclaims made wrt training for
sports, and very few proper studies done to confirm or
deny most of the claims. It's risky to atribute gains made to
a specific drill (eg I climb better because of weight training) when
you'll be doing a lot of other training as well, which may or may
not have made a difference. To climb better, you need to be able
True. However as above the only change was weights. Incl nutrition/sleep
etc. I also tried an extra day of cycling instead.
Quoted message said:to sustain higher wattages, not increase your peak wattage. That's
Again, if you increase your peak wattage, you have more to work with.
Then it's a matter of increasing the amount of time spent at the high
power i.e. interval trg. Well, it's worked wonders for me.
My understanding is that the peak is so much higher anyway
that it's essentially irrelevant for a trained rider. this may be
different in other sports and in non-specific sports (ie: tris). The
reason I get my riders doing strength work is because road races
and crits almost always end in a sprint, so there they need peak
power and technique (which is why I do hill sprints and *down* hill
sprints in lieu of motorpaced sprints)
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:done by teaching your body to metabolise more blood lactate, which
is done by longer intervals at high intensity. Climbing is just
an ITT where the bad guy is gravity, not drag. When it comes to
strength for riding, you hint above at neuromuscular adaptations,
which weight training will almost definatly not train for riding -
That's not entirely true. Greater muscular innervation will improve
response. Which again is why I would not stay on a weights prog during
competition but rather use it as an initial build.
I'd suggest that perhaps it's not just nerve activation, but also the
*right* nerve activation that makes the difference. This
is the core of the specific training argument that Rik refers to.
We're bogging down in details here, and I'm on shaky ground without
re-reading the material so I get it right and give you the right
references.
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:unless your weights are set up to exactly mimic riding - which is
why I get my riders to do hillsprints as strength training - it's
very specific, which is what we want. We want to ride faster!
However, if you're not strong enough to move fast up a hill, you teach
your body bad habits which become patterns. I know a lot of runners who
swear by running up hills but that tends to make me slow, because you
can't run with good flat form by running up hills.
I'm not training runners, I'm training cyclists, and hill sprints
are not about getting up hills faster, they're about building strength
so that my riders can sprint quicker. If hill running makes you a
faster or slower runner, that's a running-specific problem, and not
one I'm terribly interested in, nor one I'm at all qualified to
comment on! I don't have my MTB riders doing hillsprints,
nor the riders training for TT's, just the roadies who need to
burn past everyone at the end in one big peak-power kick.
Quoted message said:fairy nuff 🙂 I'd be worried about rolling an ankle walking on my cleats
though.
SPD-SLs are very stable to walk on.
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:Here's a snippet from Rik's article on cyclingnews, which I'd suggest
is well worth your reading if you have a spare 10 minutes and a
moderatly competant browser.
<snip>
cool. I read lots of those sorts of papers because that's my research
job. But I still reckon it's what works for the individual.
Of course. If training was the same for everyone, there'd be one
book and everyone would have it. The art of coaching is
finding what works best for each athlete you're working with,
and then getting them to actually do it!
(right Hip? Still reading? 🙂 )
Science
Quoted message said:hasn't figured out how aromatherapy and accupuncture and homeopathy work
but they do work for some people. I tried a homeopathic injury tablet
and it made me very ill. But the lotion worked like a charm.
Aren't placebos and coincidences wonderful? 🙂
Quoted message said:Without weight training, I got injured, I was weak on hills, my running
was slow. I added weights, a program that I devised based on a new
program some friends were trying, and I solved these problems. Being
female, I'm more likely to have weird biomechanics, and I'm a big
q-angle female also. I use weights to train my body posture, my
stabilising muscles, and to strengthen muscle groups. When I added calf
raises to my program, I ceased to get cramped calves when running. Why?
The forces involved in running are probably quite a lot closer to
peak as opposed to when riding - that's why we can ride for
10 hours, but only run for 2, at any decent kind of intensity. I'm
guessing, I don't know running, but when you take a stride,
that's a lot of work in catching it. Relative to peak power,
I'd guess that running was a lot closer, so peak power may be
relevant, especially in the smaller muscle groups (calves,
hip flexors etc) that just don't matter when riding. Riding
works your [censored] and your thighs, they're big, strong muscles,
they're way stronger than they need to be for riding at MSS,
and if they're too big and strong, they're taking away energy for
no benefit.
Quoted message said:General concensus from fitness professionals was that I was working them
at a lower (relative level) when they were bigger.
Sure, but you're talking about running, where calf raises move the
calf muscle through a range of motion that's very similar to
that which you use when running, and the calf muscle is
(I'm guessing, you're talking running ...) probably under-equipt to
cope with the stresses involved without structured strength work.
I'm guessing again, but I'd have thought that running is something
that the body is basically underpowered to do, and you need to
strengthen it to make it cope with the loads involved, especially if
you're short-changed genetically in the first place.
Quoted message said:If you're working fine without weights, then there's no need to add
them. But I think an interesting experiment would be to take people who
previously had biomechanically based injuries, get them doing a regular
weights program (non-isolation exercises, working balance, total power
gains), and see how their injury rates go after that.
I'm not advocating the total removal of weight training, and
it has its place, and in the case of injury rehab etc, sure,
the right weight training can no doubt be of benefit.
My understanding, however, is that for cyclists (not runners,
not powerlifters, not swimmers, not iridologists etc) weight training
is on the whole unncessary and possibly counter-productive except in
cases where there's some physiological problems - such as
low core strength (although I'd rather have my riders go swimming or
kayaking to fix thix) or some strength discrepancy brought about
by injury or adaptation to other stresses that needs balancing out.
I'm fully in favour of cross-training when there's time to recover
from it.
In the words of one far greater than any of us, ride your bike,
ride your bike, ride your bike!
[*] yeah, I know, LT, max steady state, AT,VT2 etc .. for the terms
of this discussion they're interchangable.
