How to train to Sprint

Vanquish said:

Hello, I hope someone can enlighten me with this issue, Firstly ..I am a fairly strong endurance rider and have traded the mountain bike for a road cycle a while ago, I now ride with a club and train 4 times a week(distance training increasing with the onset of better weather! (after reading the gym for power thread i better be careful about this I also incorporate- 45deg single leg presses, lunges, squats, calf raises, leg raises is part of my regime) But my biggest problem is chasing down breakaways in the club rides, There is a rider who stands up on the pedals and drops me, as soon as I try to stand up sprint I lose speed and sit back down and can slowly reel him back in but its really starting to bother me that I can't seem to get that same initial boost of speed/power

I understand fast and slow twitch muscle fibres but I believe in my case it is either a technique failure or training problem as I have asked others for advice on the matter and they have suggested once a week on a ride to stand up sprints for say 10seconds then sit and recover for x then go again? do you agree?
Would I benefit from concentrated hill climbs to build sprint power?

Thanks in advance

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I find I can accelorate faster and get onto guys wheels if I ride in a lighter gear and spin like a maniac. I used to always drop it onto the 13 and try to grind away out of the saddle and I used to get nowhere.

fwiw I am a [censored] sprinter but I can usually hang onto accelorations of seriously fast riders by turning 120 rpm on the 17 for a short while.....I've held onto a couple of pros in this manner.

when the speed goes up I often find myself clicking "up" a gear rather than dropping down.

if you are racing or "racing" try also to anticipate when someone will "go" and accelorate early without getting out of the draft. Watch the shape of the bunch....if it starts to go from short and fat to long and thin someone accelorated hard and the chase is on. Concentrate and get ready to go.

"Golden boys spurt light". From Krabbe's, The Rider.

IOW - winners sprint on easier gears

YMCA said:

"Golden boys spurt light". From Krabbe's, The Rider.

IOW - winners sprint on easier gears

I see it a lot, I hear about it a lot, and I've done it myself - riding too heavy when you're "new"....

I used to ride way too heavy and got dropped a lot, as I struggled to match accelorations, often the speed went up and my reasoning was "we're going faster I need a bigger gear" and then right off the back.

Now I'll do up to 60kph on the 17, especially in a crit. I changed my natural cadence in training and racing from about 70 rpm to 95rpm, and I do all my intervals at over 100. I have had my best season ever.

it takes a while to get used to, as it works the lungs and HR harder, but once you get accustomed your accelorations are so much more fluid and natural and you get "gapped" a lot less.

^^^
Nicely written.

Supple muscles, combined with highly-efficient, high-rpm pedaling, produces plenty of power and generates higher speeds, versus trying to muscle ones way through a spot of bother.

A few years ago I tried out track racing and did some points races and shorter events maybe a dozen times over 4 or 5 months. At that time I had been riding for 8 or 9 years, and racing on and off for most of them. My best 5 sec was around 1100, best peak in the high 1200s. I would mostly mash a big gear and lift weights to train my sprint, but without a whole lot of improvement.

As I continued the track racing, I found my sprint improving by huge amounts. Within half a season, my 5 sec best was 1450 and best peak was mid 1500s.

I guess it goes in line with what others are saying - spin. Since then I've found that, during training, I get my best improvements by jumping in a small gear and accellerating that gear to the highest rpm I can reach. I may use a bigger gear during a race (not mashing by any means), but that is how I've seen my biggest improvement. I think the track racing forced me to spin a much higher gear than I typically would.

Not hard scientific proof - but I think this is what has helped me.

Sprint training is something that has me baffled as well. About 5 years ago I was able to sprint very well. I didn't have a powermeter back then, but if I had to guess, I'd say I was able to put out around 1500 watts for 5 seconds. It was good enough to run consistent mid-11 second 200Ms at the track. Since then, I've lost about 15 pounds and boosted my FTP by quite a bit. On the flip side, my best 5s power is now only 1100 watts, and my 1M power is also very low for a 160lb rider. I've been doing 1 or 2 sprint days each week trying to bring the 5s power back up (10 20-second sprint efforts each day) along with some 1-minute efforts, but I'm not having much luck. I'm not sure what the next move should be. Although my physiology is more of a road racer, most of the races I'll be doing next year are crits. I'm reluctant to try any weight training for fear of losing some of my FTP, but most crits come down to a sprint finish. Other than the sprint & anaerobic training that I'm already doing, does anyone have any suggestions that can help bump up neuromuscular and anaerobic power? I know that a lot of those Type IIa fibers have migrated towards Type I, but there must be some way to get them back to the IIb world where they belong!

Dave_K said:

Sprint training is something that has me baffled as well. About 5 years ago I was able to sprint very well. I didn't have a powermeter back then, but if I had to guess, I'd say I was able to put out around 1500 watts for 5 seconds. It was good enough to run consistent mid-11 second 200Ms at the track. Since then, I've lost about 15 pounds and boosted my FTP by quite a bit. On the flip side, my best 5s power is now only 1100 watts, and my 1M power is also very low for a 160lb rider. I've been doing 1 or 2 sprint days each week trying to bring the 5s power back up (10 20-second sprint efforts each day) along with some 1-minute efforts, but I'm not having much luck. I'm not sure what the next move should be. Although my physiology is more of a road racer, most of the races I'll be doing next year are crits. I'm reluctant to try any weight training for fear of losing some of my FTP, but most crits come down to a sprint finish. Other than the sprint & anaerobic training that I'm already doing, does anyone have any suggestions that can help bump up neuromuscular and anaerobic power? I know that a lot of those Type IIa fibers have migrated towards Type I, but there must be some way to get them back to the IIb world where they belong!

NMP responds strongly to freshness, so it can be a trade off vs aerobic training. Maybe do fewer sprint sessions but of higher quality. Standing starts and hill sprints perhaps - they tend to provide maximal on bike resistance. Keep em fairly short ~ 10sec.

Vanquish said:

I understand fast and slow twitch muscle fibres but I believe in my case it is either a technique failure or training problem as I have asked others for advice on the matter and they have suggested once a week on a ride to stand up sprints for say 10seconds then sit and recover for x then go again? do you agree?
Would I benefit from concentrated hill climbs to build sprint power?

Thanks in advance

Plyometrics really work to build fast twitch muscle. So does Marlston hill (anybody else, don't worry). So do the 10 x 10 second intervals. Remember, it is far from an instant process, but one thing that helped me was racing crits. On the other more drastic end of the scale, I do a bit of riding on a singlespeed or fixed gear, mostly for fun and transport.

bobbyOCR said:

Plyometrics really work to build fast twitch muscle. So does Marlston hill (anybody else, don't worry). So do the 10 x 10 second intervals. Remember, it is far from an instant process, but one thing that helped me was racing crits. On the other more drastic end of the scale, I do a bit of riding on a singlespeed or fixed gear, mostly for fun and transport.

Ok... I have just read up on Plyometrics, I hadn't heard of it before and wow there are some very interesting claims, health warnings and prerequisits before attempting but ok i passed (have to up my squats tho) so, you suggest I start :box jumps, depth jumps,tuck jumps? 3 sets of 8 each?

Warm up really well, stretch, do it on a soft surface and watch technique. Joints hate them, so I only try to do it once a week.

I'm sure there are more experienced people that can tell you where to start, but that's about what I'm doing.