[QUOTE]Originally posted by steve007
[B]Forces when hill climbing will vary. There are those who get out of the saddle, those who do high cadence (easy gear), those who do low cadence (hard gear), so forces will surely vary with individual, style and gradient. But Ric is right about only low to moderate forces being present during climbing.
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the forces do vary. i was demonstrating the forces required at the upper echelon of the sport, and therefore, how little force is required to exceed at the sport.
Quoted post said:
However I do think weight training is beneficial, if you follow a plan and keep weight low/moderate and do high reps.
this sort of weight training, will not generally cause hypertrophy. the gains made here are generally only neuromuscular in nature, and only occur at the joint angle and velocity at which they're trained. thus, this typeof weight training will only help the weight training exercises that you do.
Quoted post said:
One of the reasons i weight train is because of the extreme amount of weight/mass i lose during the summer months, but there are many non-performance (although it will affect overall ability) related reasons to weight train.
there are possibly, many reasons to weight train, none of which i have agrued against. for e.g., some people say that they "look better" when they have greater muscle mass, and that of course would be highly/entirely dependent on the person concerned.
if you're loosing muscle, where is it coming from and/or is it needed for cycle racing? do you cycle race or do you ride for fun/health reasons?
Quoted post said:
Although Ric is right that its VO2 and LT which govern performance. Weight training wont improve this. [/B]
weights just don't help endurance cycling performance in trained riders!
ric