Originally Posted by
JeffOYB
not much call to swing from an older 5 hr/wk rider to Sagan when discussing the least possible yet still effective training method...is there?
I was simply pointing out that an assertion upthread that strength training is a waste of time isn't necessarily true, and that in fact many, most?, all? of the world's top competitors use some form of it. Ate you a world's top competitor? No. Would it help you? You don't know.
My practice has been to develop a year's training program, implementing it in the fall, trying to stick with it as much as possible unless it turns out to be obviously stupid. At the end of the season I look at where I was weakest and try to come up with a program for next year which addresses that issue. And so on, every year. For the self-coached, nothing but experience can teach you how to plan your training. OTOH, each year you get one data point. If you have a coach, that coach already has 100s of data points.
Since everyone's different, my opinion is to accept no dogma but rather experiment to see what works for you. Of course you have to start somewhere but my advice is not to mistake the beginning for an endpoint.
On a slightly divergent tack, one of my riding buddies rode 20K-30K miles every year for several years. One year he climbed 1.5 million feet. He was in his 40s, married, 40 hr/week IT job, with two sub-teen kids. He didn't do any program, no intervals, nothing except ride his bike. He was one of the strongest people I ever rode with.