How do the sprinters train?

Real sprinters spend a lot of time lifting weights. Roadies who are sprinters do sprint intervals and are naturally fast. They also lift weights but comparably less.

when you say sprinters, you mean road sprinters, right? (This is the road forum...)

Same as everyone else. Maybe do a few more specific efforts behind a moto, but with the amount of racing and travelling elite riders do they don't differ greatly.

A lot of the success perceived "sprinters" have is due to them actually takign part in a 70kmh final....their not for everybody.

ye i meant road sprinters, i know that track racers train significantly differently.

Michael Rogers is a Time Trial specialist and he managed to beat all the big guys of the peleton to finish second behind mattias kessler on stage 3. First of all you need to ride on the velodrome or have experiece with it, secondly you have to actually have the balls to want to do it and lastly some speed!

No doubt the sprinters do weights in the off-season, why the hell would they do it in season? but I think nearly all cyclists lift weights in the off-season, they obviously do a lot more sprint "specific" drills aswell.

Take a guy like Jimmy Caspar for example and you can clearly see he is a sprinter just by looking at him but hey Michael Rogers goes allright so its a bit of a mystery to me!

You dont have to have the highest max wattage to win a sprint you need brains!

dm69 said:

You dont have to have the highest max wattage to win a sprint you need brains!

Amd what you really need is lots of fast twitch muscle fibre for instant acceleration - did you see McEwan yesterday? He took a gap so fast that even if he'd had a slower top speed than Boonen and the rest, he'd still have won.

about riding in the velodrome, why is needed for road sprinters? im joining the youth squad of a spanish team and their DS told me that none of his youths have ever raced on a track and its not something which is typically done by developing spanish cyclists. granted the spanish arent the greatest sprinters, but riders like Freire, Extabarria and Valverde are all fast and are also likely to have had little track background.

dm69 said:

No doubt the sprinters do weights in the off-season, why the hell would they do it in season? but I think nearly all cyclists lift weights in the off-season,

Wrong.

They have November off, then start training again.....like everyone else.

Elite bike racers whether sprinters, rouleurs or grimpeurs just do miles and miles. Robbie McEwen didn't go near a gym this last European winter, but he did have 8 000km in his legs before the Tour Down Under.

You look at the photo of Tom Boonen on page 50 of the April Procycling and tell me if he's ever done a benchpress or standing bicep curl in his life!!! 😄

fasterskier.comtraining1293.htmlOpen ↗ this link gives a detailed description of thor hushovd's off season training program.

ewan52 said:

about riding in the velodrome, why is needed for road sprinters? im joining the youth squad of a spanish team and their DS told me that none of his youths have ever raced on a track and its not something which is typically done by developing spanish cyclists. granted the spanish arent the greatest sprinters, but riders like Freire, Extabarria and Valverde are all fast and are also likely to have had little track background.

Road sprinting is about pushing big gears after being led out or sitting in on a train. Track cycling is all about jump and the ability to spin moderate, compared to road, gears at high cadence.

I do road and track and find that training and the competition of each is totally different and not beneficial to each other.

VeloFlash said:

Road sprinting is about pushing big gears after being led out or sitting in on a train.

Not always it's not, especially in most amateur racing where there just isn't enough of an organised structure to get a lead-out train going, or where the nature of a twisty/dangerous run-in to the finish means momentum can't be built up over the last few k. So road sprinters need acceleration too! It's the acceleration that breaks the tow and gets you that crucial couple of bike lengths in front. Then you need to be able to spin whatever gear you're in all the way to line, so you need to be able to pedal a fast cadence too. So whilst track-style sprinting wouldn't be appropriate training for all sprinters, if explosivity is your thing it certainly won't do you any harm. If nothing else, track riding's great fun.