Hill repeats during base building

You should be able to do hill repeats at over FTP. But it depends on how many you are doing.

125-150% seems like reasonable efforts. 200% seems too high.

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Use a cadence that feels good. I don't like to climb above 90.

i would actually try to avoid these during base training.. nothing bad about going up hills as you meet them on your ride, but I wouldn't do any structured hill repeats.. just go up hill at or below FTP.. use a cadence that YOU are comfortable in (i'd say tend to the lower end of what you're comfortable with).. you can have some fun a few times and do a little harder dig, but keep it in check.. and as I said I wouldn't be doing anything structured at this point..

I was trying to exclusively focus on leg and hip strength. I don't like doing the leg press or squats at the gym ever since I hurt my knee last year from it. It took almost a whole year to heal completely. It wasn't bad, but I think I tore something as every time I really pushed hard, it I had pain in the inside of my left knee. I have no pain now, but I would hate to repeat the injury.

cycling is simply not a strength sport.. it's an endurance sport.. Literally if you can squat 100lbs you have the strength necessary to put out 500W..

Here's the poster child for this.. would haves kicked Contador's butt if he didn't get busted for lying about his whereabouts and missing dope controls.. but basically the best cyclist in the world that year..

[IMG]cyclingforums.com430Open ↗[/IMG]

Yesterday I forgot the display for my Powertap. Most likely due to good fortune.

From mile 62 to 70 I was riding into a headwind. (Actually most of the day was into a headwind.) The people riding in the opposite direction were having fun spinning away, riding much faster than normal. For them riding was not a strength sport. But for me riding at 13-14mph, it most certainly was. Every pedal stroke was hard.

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But the sport is just as hard as you allow it to be. It is as much about strength as you want it to be.

Old Guy.. strength does not equal effort.. strength equals how much actual force/torque needs to be applied to the pedals to move the bike forward.. being able to put 50lbs of force per leg is all that is required to make you the strongest cyclist in the world.. cycling is an incredibly difficult, painful sport, but 50lbs per leg is peanuts when compared to the strength requirement of many other sports.. 50lbs of force it the amount of force that can be put out by a pre-pubescent little girl. strenghth is not the limiter for cycling obviously.. what is is your bodies ability to perform many SMALL torques in quick succession for hours and hours.. be able to get oxygen and nutrient to the muscles and the rate that an individual can metabilze those and get muscles to move.. cycling is not about strength at all (the magnitude of the force)..

i.e. cycling is about power.. not torque.. unless you're a match sprinter on the track then you better hit the weight room..

you have a power meter.. how much torque do you tipically apply to the pedals?

Power = force x angular velocity (cadence)

I completely agree with the fact that the force applied to pedals is too small to make any adaptations in of itself. Coggan has a whole section in his Power book about this. He argues against high resistance, low cadence work. It's all about the power you can generate.

So with that said, does hill work really do anything? I would say definitely. We all know hills make you stronger, but why? Cyclists that ride in a B group in hilly areas have no issues (from what I've seen and been told) hanging with an A group of people use to riding in the flats.

So, based on what I just said and if you concur, if going up hills at 75 RPM makes you better at producing power at 90 RPM on a flat, I would like to know why.

Quoted post said:

Originally Posted by awilki01 [IMG]/img/forum/go_quote.gif[/IMG]

Power = force x angular velocity (cadence)

I completely agree with the fact that the force applied to pedals is too small to make any adaptations in of itself. Coggan has a whole section in his Power book about this. He argues against high resistance, low cadence work. It's all about the power you can generate.

So with that said, does hill work really do anything? I would say definitely. We all know hills make you stronger, but why? Cyclists that ride in a B group in hilly areas have no issues (from what I've seen and been told) hanging with an A group of people use to riding in the flats.

So, based on what I just said and if you concur, if going up hills at 75 RPM makes you better at producing power at 90 RPM on a flat, I would like to know why.

I don't know.. I don't personally do these work.. i could speculate..
1) it forces an exaggeration of pedalling technique, in that you might tend to unweight the non-drive leg.. and this carries over to the flats as well..? this would tend to make pedalling easier in that the drive leg doesn't have to drive the drive pedal down and additionally lift the non-drive leg.
2) psychologically, hills tend to make you work harder than you might otherwise on the flat so you might be putting in a harder (from a power standpoint) workout than you might on the flat.. but I think you are not necessarily doing these at a high power output so maybe not...
3) maybe it just lets you realize that you CAN put out a lot of power at a low cadence and you aren't as fixated on doing 90-100RPMs like the books tell you, you should be doing..? I've in the last 2yrs tried using much lower cadence to great effect.. so i'm kind of in the camp of.. use the cadence that YOU can produce the most power and stop reading books that tell you everyone on the planet should be riding at x cadence... now i typically use a cadence of around 80-85RPMs where I used to use 100-105...

can't think of a sound physiological reason though... doesn't mean i doesn't exist.. i just can't think of one..

i do, do low cadence, hill work but.. it's at a very high power.. and i do them to mimic riding REALLY steep hills (15-25%) you find in Vermont.. in this case i'm mimicking the conditions that i'm going to be riding in, in the absence of those conditions.. so it's different...

Quoted post said:

Originally Posted by An old Guy [IMG]/img/forum/go_quote.gif[/IMG]

Yesterday I forgot the display for my Powertap. Most likely due to good fortune.

From mile 62 to 70 I was riding into a headwind. (Actually most of the day was into a headwind.) The people riding in the opposite direction were having fun spinning away, riding much faster than normal. For them riding was not a strength sport. But for me riding at 13-14mph, it most certainly was. Every pedal stroke was hard.

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But the sport is just as hard as you allow it to be. It is as much about strength as you want it to be.

Interesting anecdote. Never took you for a fixed gear type of guy. What (single)gear were you running?
Facetiousness aside, the lesser experienced roadies I know tend to pound heavier gears than necessary.
Those that have a few years under their belt know to gear down and spin an easier one of the other 19 (or so) gears available.

Because of the availability of a score (or more) of gears, absolute strength is never a limiting factor to how much power an athlete (of almost any stature) can generate. My $0.02CAN worth...

Quoted post said:

Originally Posted by awilki01 [IMG]/img/forum/go_quote.gif[/IMG]
So with that said, does hill work really do anything? I would say definitely. We all know hills make you stronger, but why? Cyclists that ride in a B group in hilly areas have no issues (from what I've seen and been told) hanging with an A group of people use to riding in the flats.

So, based on what I just said and if you concur, if going up hills at 75 RPM makes you better at producing power at 90 RPM on a flat, I would like to know why.

That may be true in your area and in your observation, but that has not been my observation or personal experience. A couple of years ago a small bunch of guys split out of our larger group to train exclusively on mountain routes for a mountain event. After that event we joined back in with the larger group that had been training mostly flat to low rolling hills. I know that I was dropped on every single ride because of the speed and even the better of the guys that were training in the mountains were getting dropped. We became decent at climbing, but when we returned to the flats we simply could not hang with the speed of the group. I was very stunned and discouraged those first few weeks because I thought my conditioning was better and fully expected to be up front and yet I was getting dropped.

lanier made a similar observation in a different thread not long ago that he does better raising his threshold training on flatter pavement and does well enough when going to the hills. For the past year I have been intentionally training on the flats with my focus on sustainable power output (long sustained blocks of effort at my output goal and a steady ~80 rpm cadence) that is harder for me to achieve on rolling hills and even the mountain courses have a good bit of coasting that can't be avoided (at least in my area). I got to test this out last fall to see if that flat road conditioning would help me on a group ride in the mountains. I did not keep up with the best of climbers, but I left a bunch that train exclusively in the mountains like they were sitting still. I have done well on fast group rides on large rolling hills as well with match burning out of the saddle efforts as the group surge on those large rollers. I feel fairly confident now that I can raise my FT on the flats and do okay in the mountains. My biggest need to improve on the mountain courses is my watts/kg.

I know this observation is different in every area because the mix of riders and how they train is going to be different. I'm just saying in my area with my mix of cycling friends I am observing something different.

Quoted post said:

Originally Posted by Felt_Rider [IMG]/img/forum/go_quote.gif[/IMG]

That may be true in your area and in your observation, but that has not been my observation or personal experience. A couple of years ago a small bunch of guys split out of our larger group to train exclusively on mountain routes for a mountain event. After that event we joined back in with the larger group that had been training mostly flat to low rolling hills. I know that I was dropped on every single ride because of the speed and even the better of the guys that were training in the mountains were getting dropped. We became decent at climbing, but when we returned to the flats we simply could not hang with the speed of the group. I was very stunned and discouraged those first few weeks because I thought my conditioning was better and fully expected to be up front and yet I was getting dropped.

lanier made a similar observation in a different thread not long ago that he does better raising his threshold training on flatter pavement and does well enough when going to the hills. For the past year I have been intentionally training on the flats with my focus on sustainable power output (long sustained blocks of effort at my output goal and a steady ~80 rpm cadence) that is harder for me to achieve on rolling hills and even the mountain courses have a good bit of coasting that can't be avoided (at least in my area). I got to test this out last fall to see if that flat road conditioning would help me on a group ride in the mountains. I did not keep up with the best of climbers, but I left a bunch that train exclusively in the mountains like they were sitting still. I have done well on fast group rides on large rolling hills as well with match burning out of the saddle efforts as the group surge on those large rollers. I feel fairly confident now that I can raise my FT on the flats and do okay in the mountains. My biggest need to improve on the mountain courses is my watts/kg.

I know this observation is different in every area because the mix of riders and how they train is going to be different. I'm just saying in my area with my mix of cycling friends I am observing something different.

that's my experience too.. if you want to prepare for a particular type of event.. mimic the demands of that event... if you have hilly road races coming up do hilly rides, if you have flat RR coming up then do tha... short fast crits do that.. the rhythm of those races is quite different.. when I start my training in the hills after doing long steady intervals all winter it takes whiles to get used to that rhythm, crit riding (especially on short circuits as well).. and generally if you've been concentrating on one thing and then jump to the other there is an adjustment period.. it think there is likely both a physiological and psychological component to this.. i think that's why for some reason motor-pacing or even just group riding seems to help in racing.. i think it's primarily psychological.. riding at that speed and power, seeing the world go by at that pace seems to make some adjustment in your mind, that you're ok.. likewise on hills you get used to doing big power and the world going by at that pace.. you get used to a rhythm..

is there something to doing low RPM hill work? I wouldn't think so.. can't think of why it might work.. but i've never done them so I can't say. i think it's kind of old school and old school thinking also says ride in the small ring for your first 1000km (that's what my coach used tell us back in the day).. maybe it's meant to help the transition to big ring riding? not sure.. i wouldn't think it would help though.. that's why i don't do them..

Quoted post said:

Originally Posted by awilki01 [IMG]/img/forum/go_quote.gif[/IMG]

Power = force x angular velocity (cadence)

I completely agree with the fact that the force applied to pedals is too small to make any adaptations in of itself. Coggan has a whole section in his Power book about this. He argues against high resistance, low cadence work. It's all about the power you can generate.

Andy also says that cadence is a red herring. 😉

Find whatever cadence works best for you for a given situation. If you find that your sustainable power on the flat is better at a slightly lower than usual rpm, say 85 rather than 95, then it is what it is. If you then find that this causes a bit of an issue in road races or crits then you can either train around this or use your gears a little more when you have to accelerate quick...

Knowledge is power... sometimes literally.

Thanks everyone! Perhaps my observations were skewed a bit. I was scratching my head and trying to figure it out. I suppose it all comes down to sustainable power. It doesn't matter if you are on a flat or a hill, sustainable power is what matters.

And, I completely agree with training on a course similar to that of your primary race. My main event (if I had to choose only one) is a very hilly time trial down in Gruene, TX in the Fall. I guess my Saturdays about 8 weeks prior to the event will now consist of driving an hour north to get into some bigger hills while doing threshold work. I think this would best simulate the conditions of the race.

As an engineer, I love numbers and graphs. But, sometimes just using a bit of common sense goes a long way too.

Sustainable power and weight for the hills, sustainable power and aero on the flat.

If your "main event" is a time trial then don't forget that a power meter can be used as a very good tool for measuring aerodynamics on a bike. Additionally, some training should be done on the bike you'll be TT'ing on at or above threshold. Use some of that training to check your gear selection. If you know ahead of time if the course has a long straight downhill section or a part of the course often has a screaming tail wind then you'll need a gear that you can still pedal at threshold and still be comfortable in a tucked aero position on the aero bars. That may mean changing the big ring to something bigger. Conversely, if it's a very technical course with a rough road surface you might need to ask yourself do you need that 11 sprocket and would you be better off with a better choice of mid range gears.

You don't need that many rides on similar courses. A couple will work fine unless you notice that a particular item needs additional work. 8 weeks out will be a good time frame to get a ride in. If the weather changes a lot during that time of year in that location, ie gets hotter/more humid, then testing things like aero helmets in the heat might be an idea closer to the event.

There's no law that says you can't chuck some big efforts on the hills into longer winter rides for fun. It's good for the body and the mind. Likewise, if your main event is a TT, there's no rule that says you can't stuff some clip on aero bars on the training bike and get a similar position and put in some solid top end L4 efforts every now and then while in a race position. They don't have to be 20 minute long efforts but something to keep the legs ticking over nicely and the attitude where it needs to be 😉

Quoted post said:

Originally Posted by doctorSpoc [IMG]/img/forum/go_quote.gif[/IMG]

Old Guy.. strength does not equal effort.. strength equals how much actual force/torque needs to be applied to the pedals to move the bike forward.. being able to put 50lbs of force per leg is all that is required to make you the strongest cyclist in the world.. cycling is an incredibly difficult, painful sport, but 50lbs per leg is peanuts when compared to the strength requirement of many other sports.. 50lbs of force it the amount of force that can be put out by a pre-pubescent little girl. strength is not the limiter for cycling obviously.. what is is your bodies ability to perform many SMALL torques in quick succession for hours and hours.. be able to get oxygen and nutrient to the muscles and the rate that an individual can metabolize those and get muscles to move.. cycling is not about strength at all (the magnitude of the force)..

i.e. cycling is about power.. not torque.. unless you're a match sprinter on the track then you better hit the weight room..

you have a power meter.. how much torque do you topically apply to the pedals?

Typically: 8nm seems reasonable on my trainer. 35nm seems reasonable on hills.

It is difficult to separate torque (strength) from power, but I will do it for you. Put you bike in the lowest gear you have and ride up a 35% grade. There is one is San Francisco. At some point your bike will come to a halt and you will lack the strength to move the pedals forward. (Power is force times a distance and here the distance is 0 so the power is 0.)

At the other end of the spectrum: Learn to use a very high cadence. Now go out for a ride at your very high cadence in your highest gear. Get a higher gear if necessary but at some point you will reach the point where you lack the torque to go any faster. (F=Ma leads to something like torque*cadence - drag >0 to accelerate.)

Certainly power is one measure of ability, but I have now shown you that strength is also a measure.

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Further the cadence of 90 that some people feel is optimal is due to the fact that the torque (strength) is reasonable for the power output. If power was the sole concern, cadence would rise as power rose.

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I find it difficult to understand why a bicyclist who does thousands of repeats would consider 1 repeat or even 10 repeats (common for weight lifters) a proper measure of strength. I guess it is the same mind set that allows a bicyclist to believe that FTP (a 1 hour measure) is a proper measure for a 5-6 hour event.

Quoted post said:

Originally Posted by An old Guy [IMG]/img/forum/go_quote.gif[/IMG]

Typically: 8nm seems reasonable on my trainer. 35nm seems reasonable on hills.

It is difficult to separate torque (strength) from power, but I will do it for you. Put you bike in the lowest gear you have and ride up a 35% grade. There is one is San Fancisco. At some point your bike will come to a halt and you will lack the strength to move the pedals forward. (Power is force times a disatnace and here the distance is 0 so the power is 0.)

At the other end of the spectrum: Learn to use a very high cadence. Now go out for a ride at your very high cadence in your highest gear. Get a higher gear if necessary but at some point you will reach the point where you lack the torque to go any faster. (F=Ma leads to something like torque*cadence - drag >0 to accelerate.)

Certainly power is one measure of ability but I have now shown you that stength is also a meansure.

WTF??? lol... i know the difference between torque and power.. i'm not sure you do though.. you've uses a lot of words to say nothing...

anyone of reasonable health over the age of about 10 has the strength necessary (i.e. can apply enough torque to the pedals) to produce enough torque to ride at 500W (enough fort them to win the TdF).. what they don't have is the ability to make many multiples of that torque in quick succession for an extended period of time.. i.e. they can't complete Work (that's work with a capital W.. i.e. the scientific term Work) at a rate to achieve a Power (again with a capital P) of 500W.. that's the differentiator.. Work rate.. not torque.. not strength..

strength is simply not the limiter in cycling.. end of story.. if you can't understand that.. sorry son.. there is no helping you.. go read a book.. figure it out..

Quoted post said:

Originally Posted by doctorSpoc [IMG]/img/forum/go_quote.gif[/IMG]

I guess you win.

Quoted post said:

Originally Posted by doctorSpoc [IMG]/img/forum/go_quote.gif[/IMG]

i know the difference between torque and power.. i'm not sure you do though.. you've uses a lot of words to say nothing...

Seems to be a consistent trait for that one. [IMG]/img/vbsmilies/smilies/smile.gif[/IMG]

They need a "like" button.