burnthesheep

I've tried to read a few. I've gotten email invites to local UNC or Duke research things where they toss you on a Velotron or something and do stuff.

My huge issue with the academic paper stuff for bike related stuff is the studies often pick untrained street folks, for one thing. Next, they often test things that have no real world application to racing a bike.

They often suffer from issues of sample size, poor procedures, outside influence, poor protocols, etc......

Poor procedures as in they don't force participants to adhere to some nutrition and exercise schedule to make sure something stupid the person does between visits to the study bike doesn't affect the results.

One bad one is with all the untrained riders you will always do better the second hard effort test as you now know how it feels, what to expect, and how to pace it better.

So.......yeah.....you would really need a team of coaches and university researchers together to put something on to be meaningful. Some stuff might do that. But a lot doesn't seem too.

Anyone on the Google Group "wattage"?

Carbonfiberboy 

I've already posted a list of coaches who use weight training with road riders. In reality coaches and researchers are intertwined. Researchers test what coaches are doing. Coaches read papers and test the conclusions. Hunter Allen is a very respected coach and ex-pro. He featured Coach Ertl on his blog in 2018. Coach Ertl recommendations are about what I have done and still try to do. This is what I've been talking about.
https://www.hunterallenpowerblog.com...ts-part-1.html
https://www.hunterallenpowerblog.com...ts-part-2.html

Carbonfiberboy 

There may be studies like you say out there, but I don't read them. You might try reading the studies which I curate and post for you to read instead of random stuff.

burnthesheep

Those links sounded more like not withering away and dying because you neglect your body. What most roadie/triathlon folks do is jump into bike forums and say stuff like "I'll get faster on the bike if I start treating lifting like a track sprinter or become a hardcore crossfitter". They think picking up and putting down REALLY heavy things will magically boost their ftp or even 5min power.

What you say you do from those links I just consider maintenance of an athlete in general. Not any silver bullet weight training.

I just really hate assigning the words "on the bike strength training". Because it conjures images of towing a cart full of weight up a hill at 1mph and 10rpm. On the bike work targets specific ways that the body operates, stresses that operation to cause adaptation. If you suck at repeated surges, do what Rubik said he did. Some 600w+ surges and recovery. You'll get good at it. You won't get good at it grinding up a hill like Cubewheels says while doing some crazy low rpm in a huge gear. If you are your own Ox cart in a rural village towing carts up a hill by bike........by all means go for it. So, folks read "on the bike strength training" and reach the wrong conclusions as to what to do.

Next thing, the whole one legged pedaling red herring appears on those articles. Most of the time left/right imbalance is a bike fit or musculoskeletal issue that needs some remediation. Either a cleat shim, saddle height or fore aft, or that "general overall fitness" for your weak supporting muscles. Or you can't, you're bow legged somehow. Or your cranks are too long and saddle too high and therefore you rock or sit on one side of the saddle more than the other.

Before I ever would tell somebody to do one legged drills..........I'd send them to a bike fitter and exercise PT to figure out why they're at 40/60 on the power meter (while having them also try a different borrowed power meter).

Hermes

I have google search function and know how to use it and find coaches, articles and whatever.

If someone thinks that Hunter Allen or Carmichaels’ coaching is great, then hire one of them and report back how his strength training workouts coupled with on the bike workouts improved performance for your A goal. Or maybe the routine turned back the clock 20 years.

I have hired coaches and used them for seasons and like my current one who I have known for 10 years. Reading about them and what they say on a blog or talk about during a podcast is completely different from having them prescribe workouts that include weight training, intervals, aerobic rides and etc. The bloom is then off the rose.

I have found some prescribed workouts to be impossible to do. And sometimes the style of the coach and the way feedback is presented does not match the client.

I cannot even imagine pulling a paper off the internet and then suggesting to Hunter Allen that his prescribed workout seems to not be the best way for me because of what happened to 20 highly training athletes.The coaches are aware of all that stuff and take it into account, if appropriate, for the athlete.

One could hire Hunter Allen and after his testing and observation, he rules out strength training while prescribing it for another athlete that you consider a competitor.

The first thing one learns when he/she starts with a coach is that one is really not as good as one thinks they are. In fact, we suck. It takes a long time to work with a coach and develop strengths, identify weaknesses and determine what routine will yield the best result to achieve a goal. One of many reasons I use a coach is because otherwise over time, without one, I start to believe my own BS.

Carbonfiberboy 

Did you read both articles which Allen posted? Except for the OLP discussion, doesn't sound like you're replying to the same articles. If you did read them right through, then you'd know what I've done, because it's pretty much that. Well, except this year, no gym. However I see from Dr. Ertl's experience that I should change some things. I always leap right into bike base in September. Looks like I should focus on strength for a couple months and not let bike riding interfere with weight work too much. 5 sets of 50 with two exercises will tire a person right out.

OLP training has nothing to do with L/R balance. If you'd read the articles, you should have noticed that it's not mentioned. That's another straw man argument drug out by riders who've never done it and want to diss anything they don't do, because of course they do everything right. OLP is on-bike strength work. Dr. Ertl's explanation isn't quite complete. I got this tip from an American RAAM rider. Besides the 2' X 2' X 2' routine Dr. Ertl described, you want to do the sets alternating 50-55 cadence and 80-85 cadence. You want to use a gear which is hard enough on the one-leggeds that you can just barely do the 2'. For slow, I use ~50% FTP, but for fast I use more like 40% and the legs together at 70%-75%. One repeats the alternating OLP sets either until one fails or 45'. If one doesn't fail, one uses more power next week. Failure is defined as a slack chain on the backstroke. OLP can only be done on a trainer or rollers. It's so easy on the road that it doesn't do anything.

For sure if you suck at surges, do what Rubik says. Strength work on or off the bike is mostly about endurance for road riders. That said, strength work will help you with surges, too. To surge, you have to push hard on the pedals, rather the same as sprinting, but seated. The harder you can push on the pedals, the faster you'll spin it up. Track sprinters weight train like crazy and that's what they do.

I think it's ironic that some riders who claim they do what works diss a rider who did what worked, just because they never tried it. You might try some low cadence on your trainer yourself, just once, eh? Pedal at 50-55 cadence at 95% of your FTP for half an hour. See how that feels the next day. It's only 30' out of your life, right? I did 2 X 20' X 10 yesterday, the day after I did 35' of OLP, and I'm going to do Z5 intervals in a few minutes, all on my resistance rollers, and I'm 75 y.o.. I managed to get the temp in the shop up to 50°. Yep, leg warmers indoors. BTW, the reason that some people don't think this works is because they don't use enough power. It's supposed to be so hard that at first you don't think you can do it, but then you do. Be like Basso. You'll see that exogenous EPO has nothing to do with it. It's strength training at near AeT.

Both OLP and low-cadence are great exercises for those who are trying to get faster doing PT with limited hours. If you're going to ride below AeT, why not stimulate your muscles at the same time?

gregf83 

I just came across an interesting paper, Comparison of Short-Sprint and Heavy Strength Training on Cycling Performance, which looked at the impact of doing heavy strength training in the gym vs short sprint training on the bike. Both groups started with 4 wks of preparation strength training and then they were divided into 2 groups. The group doing heavy strength training in the gym for 6 wks got stronger by about 10% but didn't improve in their 6S, 30S or 5min all-out efforts. The Short-Sprint group got a little weaker after 6wks but were faster with 6S, 30S and 5min power all increasing significantly. Both groups were also doing their normal training ~14 hrs/wk on the bike.

There were some benefits that occurred during after the initial 4 wks of preparation strength training but after that it doesn't appear that making the legs stronger resulted in increased power for any duration under 5min. It appears that specificity of training still has value.

Carbonfiberboy 

Fascinating study. Another interesting thing is: The group which continued in their strength training and didn't increase on-bike training did the same at 5 minutes, VO2max, and gross efficiency. I would have expected the group which switched to sprint training to have improved more then the group who continued to strength train in at least one of those measurements. Sprint training improves sprinting and doesn't harm endurance. Makes sense. I'll continue to sprint train close to my A rides.

rubiksoval

Well, you can call it what you want, and dismiss it as you see fit.

But suffice to say, unlike you, I'm not the one polling random internet strangers about my training methodologies and clinging to specious correlations with track sprinters and geriatrics lifting weights so they don't break themselves walking down the stairs.

Carbonfiberboy laments about things like this:

but I've actually done all that. That's my point. I've done periodized weight training in conjunction with periodized on-the-bike training. I did it for years. And I have actual performance data from that time period.

I've also done all the low-cadence hill climb work. I've done all the standing starts, wind-ups, on-the-bike strength work you read about. I bought a pair of rollers to "smooth out my pedal stroke." I've done all the one-legged drills to "engage all the leg muscles." Hell, I even bought a pair of powercranks and used those once or twice a week for a few months just to ensure they weren't absolute bollocks (they were). I've done the massive amounts of low-intensity training (up to 28 hours a week) and lost an entire race season because of it. If Bicycling or Velonews wrote an article about it, I probably tried it.

And I've done all the stuff I do now and had a lot of success with it. Could I have done things differently and still had success? Maybe, but I didn't, so I won't try to argue it.

I'll be the first to say there are a multitude of reasons to do lots of different things on and off the bike for lots of different reasons. And there are lots of things that one rider thinks may work for them while something else works differently for someone else. Of course, at the end of the day, humans are all really, really similar, so that's always something to keep in mind, though there are lots of different needs and things that motivate people.

But again, dismiss if you like. Call it arrogance or whatever. But until you actually put your money where your mouth is, put your season on the line, do all the stuff, see the results, look over the data, and THEN try everything differently and do the same, well, you're just another guy on the internet that reads things and tries to argue about it.

Arrogance vs. ignorance?

ZHVelo

Polling? I was asking other people about their opinions. Just so happens that yours is full of itself. Not my fault that's the case. I am not the one dismissing pros actually doing gym work on some crazy notion that the off-season doesn't count and is just "general". I wonder what I am in right now

OBoile

You're arguing a stawman here. You do realise that right? I don't think any reasonable person would suggest that sport-specific training is not the most important thing. It's quite clear that all the top cyclists at the durations you list do both.

OBoile

By your own statements, your anaerobic energy system is producing > 50% of the work for the first 40 seconds, and is still producing a close to half after 40 seconds. Unless you're not counting that part of the effort, strength matters.

Look, people here have posted expert opinions from numerous coaches, including at least one from the world tour. People have posted videos of track cyclists lifting. They have posted articles containing gold medal winning cyclists describing their routines. I've repeated posted the 1km world championships which contains exclusively big strong guys. If you aren't convinced there's a correlation between muscular strength and power over a short duration at this point then you're just being deliberately blind to reality.
Sagan does.

Why do you think sprinters are the biggest and heaviest riders in the peloton? I'm curious as to how you think this helps them "save every single ounce of energy possible in a race to ensure he can sprint as well as possible at the end of the race."

OBoile

Just released today. Apparently Alex Dowsett thinks there's value to strength training too (but he did stop during training camp).

Road Fan

How can you be a "sweet spotter (medium effort focused)?" I thought sweet spot was a specific level of effort that becomes pretty challenging the longer you keep it up, i.e. not a medium effort.

ZHVelo

Back to the original topic - Dylan just released this video:


And interestingly enough the study he links shows that for as little as 6 hours per week the polarized routine yields bigger benefits than the intensity orientated.

Personally I will stick to two interval sessions during the working week for the most part, I do feel that cutting that down to one and adding yet another 1 hour zone 2 ride will do little and I don't want to do a two hour + ride after work every week indoors, in the summer around the lake might be a different story. I also checked my times in zones on GC and turns out that in a 3 zone model, I am in zone 1 for 70% of the time, 13% in zone 2, and 17% of the time in zone 3. Probably a bit more pyramidical but seems to me that two interval sessions per week is a good idea. I really don't buy the it is meant to be 4:1 session ratio, some weeks I just do 4 sessions, so what, I do zero intervals that week? Nah. And too much zone 2 is also boring.

gregf83 

Both groups in the study did an initial 4 wks of strength training. The interesting thing for me was that further strength training which increased strength did not improve short term power. The group that improved their short term power got weaker which supports the notion that cycling is primarily an aerobic sport.

OBoile

That's an... odd... conclusion to draw from a study that performs a bunch of anaerobic tests in order to compare anaerobic work done on a bike with anaerobic work in the weight room. A far more logical conclusion would be that sport-specific work is the most important thing, particularly in the time immediately before an event or test. I don't think any reasonable person would conclude that 6 and 30 second efforts, or a 55 meter sprint, are primarily aerobic activities.

And again: there's no reason why a person can't do both.

gregf83 

Yes, a better conclusion would be that strength doesn't appear to be significant a significant factor in Anaerobic Work Capacity. In other words these riders were 'strong enough' for their sport. Maybe older guys like me are no longer 'strong enough' and need additional strength training. For myself both my AWC and strength have gone down in the last 5 or 10 years. The question is if I spend time and restore my strength will my AWC follow?

burnthesheep

A big drawback sometimes with these things is that they never assume an "end goal". Like, is it which works better for a "one and done" effort? Is it which works best after 3 hours of Z2 with some surges along the way? Etc..... Most "one and done" kind of things like this don't make sense in the real world. You have to surge many times in a race. You have to race to even get to the finish line. You may have to race several days.

Since current pros can't really mess up their training and plans to do things for these studies the way it would need to be done.......we might never have the data.

You'd have to split it up by cycling discipline. Track sprint, track kilo, pursuit, road racing with an anaerobic effort(s) after long or long multiple days riding.

It doesn't help at all to be able to say "weights help with XXX efforts". Like, when? In what circumstance?

You can't replicate in a lab the Tour de France. Or even an amateur crit season. As you won't get somebody willing to devote their whole year to a protocol to only wind up doing the test in the lab versus at their race.

You would need to start with: "we are going to test if weight training improves 30sec and shorter power at the end of a race during a season"
Then you would have to "simulate" a controlled season of training and racing for multiple people. Then do the test.

A real race might skew the result looking for the data. So all the stuff about "ignoring the pros turned coaches who worked with people on the studies" doesn't really help at all. That's just collections of anecdotes bolstered by "you should listen to me because I've done it this way".

In the off season pros have time to do weights, sure. Whether I follow the logic or not. Joes don't have much time. Most folks are on 6 hours a week. In the off season you might stand to lose a LOT of bike fitness substituting 2 hours a week of weights for 2 hours a week of bike if you can't turn that 6 into 7 perhaps and keep at least 5 hours a week on the bike.

I think best a lot of those short on time folks can do is ride the bike all the time THEN anytime you remotely think about looking at your smartphone out of boredom or are waiting.........drop and do some plank, pushups, bodyweight squats, lunges, etc.......

I can't postulate what a Cat 1/2 or pro should do as I'm not one. No need to do the same thing they do, or can do.

asgelle

In other words, the antithesis of polarized.

asgelle

Good for you, but that's not what polarized training is (at least as it's commonly understood). Of course, you ran redefine terms and then use them however you want.

Carbonfiberboy 

That works. What you want to notice is your comfort level during those intervals. If they're comfortable, even vaguely so, make them longer, recovery half the work time, and a long Z1 cool down, maybe 1/2 hour. I'm hoping to slowly work up to 4 X 8 X 4 @105%.

Also if you're looking at doing a certain number of Z1 (3-zone) hours/week, it's best to do them in as few rides as you can manage. There's a training word for that . . .depth?

There's no need to bore yourself to death on Z1 trainer rides. You can do anything you want with the pedals as long as you stay below AeT. So low cadence (50-55), high cadence (120), OLP, your favorite climbing cadence on 2000' climbs, etc. Variety is good. Nothing like sitting there for 2 hours and grinding away at 78 & 75% or so, eh? Builds character and pain isn't usually boring.

ZHVelo

Which is why I do a really long ride on Sunday and then interval on Tuesday and Thursday. That's the core of my training. Anything on top of that is bonus. E.g. atm I ski almost every Saturday and Wednesday I might do an hour of endurance riding in between the intervals.

Hermes

Copycat.

Tuesday and Thursday are VO2 and team time trial with my wife outdoors on the flat local TT course and Saturday and Sunday are longer 2 hour plus endurance rides. We are just trying to stay in some semblance of shape and dodge the virus. We are skiing in Park City, UT at Deer Valley Ski resort this week so no riding. 10,000 vertical feet yesterday for our first day. My wife works for a large Swiss company so she is plugged into the Swiss culture and activities.

Wattsup

Who?