SylvainG

So when I started commuting last April, I stopped my lower body workout, thinking that cycling 200 km per week would be enough of a workout for my lower body. Boy was I wrong. Now that my commuting season is wrapping up, I started my lower body workout Wednesday. I'm still sore from that workout! The most sore muscles are my quads and glutes. Two muscles actively participating in cycling hence why I'm surprise they hurt that much...

prathmann

I experience soreness whenever the exercise differs from what I'm used to even if the muscle use is almost the same. Certainly get very sore after a hike if I've only been cycling for a few weeks or more.

rubiksoval

Why would you think that participating in one thing would help with another?

I can go ride a quick few hours a few days in a row and not even think much about it.

But the last time I tried to run a mile with my son I was sore for three days!

work4bike

I made the same mistake, thinking that since I run and bike a lot I didn't need to do weights with my lower body, but I eventually developed problems with knee pain and such...

After reading and thinking a lot about it, I realized I failed to take into account that doing one activity, say riding a bike, only works certain muscle groups in one way, but what's worse is that there are other muscles that are not worked nearly as much as they should be. An example would be to only do bicep curls and build up you biceps, but do nothing for your triceps.

Cycling requires strong hamstrings, glutes and lower back muscles (aka the posterior chain), but does little to build them up. I now do whole body workouts and it has greatly improved my overall fitness, not to mention I no longer have knee pains and I no longer think about giving up running. I'm 53-y/o and getting younger

wolfchild

Cycling is not strength training, don't be surprised when you get sore from lifting weights.

work4bike

...But it can be

Actually, this is something I use to think about a lot, so I'll just post some thoughts....

When does aerobic activity become strength training and vice versa?

This is one of those questions that popped into my head (and stuck) while hiking the AT (Appalachian Trail). When I first started hiking it was hard as hell and my legs would be sore as sh*t, after spending all that time walking up and down mountains with weight on my back. It was so difficult that I could not do one single climb without stopping at least a few times during the climb, because my legs were burning and I had to catch my breath, due to going anaerobic. However, after about a month on the AT, I got to the point where I could just breeze up the mountains and at that point it was totally an aerobic (not anaerobic) activity.

I can apply this same thing to other activities, such as running and cycling...So it made me think, was my hiking (or whatever activity) more akin to weight lifting in the beginning?(since weight lifting is an anaerobic activity, by definition). Take cycling, if you go up hill or against a head wind in your largest gear, isn't that now weight lifting?

And what about weightlifting? It is by definition an anaerobic activity, but what if you reduce the weight by so much that it's actually aerobic?

At what point does an activity become aerobic or anaerobic? It's actually a pretty complicated question and after pondering it, you realize that there is no true line between the two, it's very murky, so when someone says you need to do aerobic exercise, do they even know what they're talking about....


Just a few thoughts to ponder, which I find very interesting, but I don't like doing long posts, so I'll stop here....

asgelle

Why we don't use strength-endurance anymore ? aboc Cycle Coaching

DrIsotope

I ride ~200 miles every week, then walked ~12 miles in the span of a day at Disneyland, and my calves were sore for 3 days. I don't know if it would be possible to find two separate, different lower-body activities that use the same muscles the same way.

wolfchild

It depends on the duration and intensity of an activity. Working at 90%+++ of max effort is strictly anaerobic and can only last for about 10 seconds. Aerobic work can be done for hours and hours.


1-4 seconds....anaerobic---ATP
4-10 seconds....anaerobic---ATP
10-45 seconds....anaerobic---ATP + glycogen
45-120 seconds....anaerobic glycolysis---glycogen
120-240 seconds....anaerobic + aerobic---glycogen + lactic acid
240-600 seconds....aerobic---glycogen + fatty acids


The first 10 seconds of a max effort is strictly anaerobic alactic also known as ATP/PC and after that your anaerobic lactic system kicks in and your body starts to use glycogen. After about 2 minutes it all starts to become more and more aerobic.... One thing to remember is that your aerobic system is always working and contributing to energy production even during maximal efforts, the percentage or the amount of energy that your aerobic system contributes is all dependent on the intensity and duration of whatever it is you're doing.

asgelle

All metabolic pathways are alway active.

u235

I remember a few years ago when I did like 10 lunges for the first time.
Great to hear about the running pain though
Same thing happened to me last winter when I decided it was too cold and wet to ride my bike and went running instead. It took a few times with a minimum if 2 days in between to recover. I haven't run much since last winter and that time is coming again.

wolfchild

That's right and that's exactly what I said in my post....however, the percentage or the amount of energy that each of the three energy systems contributes towards the activity all depends on the intensity and duration of the activity...For example, a 10 second max effort sprint is almost entirely dependent on ATP.... about 85% ATP, 10% anaerobic glycolysis, and only 5% aerobic.

asgelle

I guess one of us doesn't know what "strictly" means.

canklecat

A friend who's very active in his 60s mentioned during a recent long walk that his long walks around our relatively flat terrain, and his bike rides, didn't help much on his mountain hiking vacations this autumn since he retried. He's very fit, goes to the gym, etc., but like many folks involved in multiple activities realized one activity doesn't necessarily translate to the fitness needed for other activities.

I've added more full body workouts since starting HIIT in June. I'd plateaued with bike rides alone and wasn't getting faster overall, stronger on climbs or improving in endurance for longer rides. HIIT and moderate full body workouts got me past that plateau.

Sprinting in HIIT, including on climbs, helped some. But adding simple squats without weights helped too. Ditto calf raises, etc. Can't say it's improved my speed but my recovery time is improved and I can recover from being winded on climbs and sprints just by easing up a bit while riding. Last year I often needed to pull over and stop for a minute to recover.

I'd neglected my upper body. It got to the point that my attempts at riding a standard 100 mile century were thwarted by back and neck pain, not by my legs, cardio or overall exhaustion. I could handle 50-65 miles, no serious problem, but the neck spasms were stopping me. So I added more core exercises, including pushups and triceps strengthening -- after standard floor pushups I'll add wall-pushoffs, mimicking the standard bike riding position.

asgelle

You may want to consider what Alex Simmons had to say on the subject. Anaerobic adaptation
"Keep in mind that recovery from any effort or efforts, no matter how hard, is a wholly aerobic process. And that the higher your sustainable aerobic power (i.e. threshold), the less deep you go when you do "surge", and when pace settles back down the further below threshold you will be, meaning recovery of oxygen deficit and anaerobic reserves will happen more quickly, enabling you to sustain harder efforts more frequently and with shorter recovery times. Just 10W higher threshold can make a large difference in your recovery ability."

MauiKai

Nothing to worry about. You are just using those muscles in ways that they were not used before. When cycling season begins again, and if you continue with the new routine throughout the off-season, they will be sore again after the first few rides.

canklecat

Yup, I've considered that theory as well.

After concentrating on HIIT since June I suddenly stopped making progress by late August and was feeling exhausted rather than invigorated. Turns out I was overdoing it with HIIT sessions three times a week. At my age (just turned 60) I probably should have limited HIIT to once a week. So the rapid gains were quickly offset by depletion, insufficient rest and inadequate protein intake (I'd been following a low meat diet, but have since resumed a normal diet).

And I tried tagging along with a relatively fast (for our 50+ age group) B-group, but it was just grinding me down and thwarting my efforts to tackle longer distances. Too many rides combined the A and B groups, with the B group riders drafting the younger, faster riders. I was able to hang on as long as the terrain was relatively flat. But I'd drop back on climbs and couldn't close the gap. Struggling to hang on wasn't helping my overall conditioning, just wearing me out.

Since then I've eased way back, working more on sustaining consistent effort over longer distances, riding my own pace. I'll occasionally mix in a few higher intensity efforts just to break up the monotony. Sprint on a good flat section, charge up a hill, then ease back for several minutes to recover.

I'm paying more attention to my average times over my own private Strava segments that I ride often. Those averages over non-stop 10 mile segments at near-maximum effort, accounting for wind, etc., tell me more about my fitness than times on shorter segments or data for entire 50-60 mile rides when I might have stopped two or three times.

And I've followed the patterns of another local rider, nearly my age, who rides many full standard centuries a year. A few years ago he set many local KOMs and is still among the strongest local guys in our age group. I'll never match his times on climbs.

But, since he's switched to riding centuries (he's on pace to finish 110 full centuries this year alone) I'm more interested in studying his Strava records to note how he tackles stuff that often thwarted me in the past -- especially long roller coaster segments -- to pace himself for the distance. I'm riding more like he does now, and finishing metric centuries without feeling depleted.

Strengthening my back and neck will be key to going beyond that metric centuries into full 100 miles. I'll tackle 100 miles again soon, so we'll see how that's going.

Doge

Not like the gym.

Machka 

I can cycle 1000 km months including 500 km in one weekend ... but if I ease way back on my stair climbing for a few weeks in order to do that, and then resume my stair climbing, I'm stiff and sore for a week.

And any time I run on the treadmill at the gym, I feel it the next day.

Cycling doesn't use all 4 quads. At most it uses 3. So it's good to cross train to use all your muscles.

gregf83 

Are you going up and down? If so it’s likely the going down that causes soreness. Walking downhill results in eccentric (muscle lengthening) contractions which are absent in cycling.

I have no problem hiking a local steep climb (850m elev in 2.9km) and taking the gondola down but running up and down 50m of steps/trail 6 times will make me sore for a week if I’m not used to it.

Machka 

Both ... what goes up must come down! And yes, down really gets the calves plus a few other muscles.

I climb stairs at work ... anywhere from 4 flights on a really light day to a maximum of 40 flights a day. Mostly around the 20-25 flight range.

Carbonfiberboy 

Wow, is that ever the truth! Since I have such a crappy VO2max, I've had to push really hard and keep pushing to keep up with the more talented. Now I don't have to worry so much about blowing up on attacks or surges because I can recover just a few beats below LT and do it again. Highly recommended to those with competitive tendencies. Lots of time right around LT. Formally I suppose that's over-unders, but it's a lot more fun with the kids on the road. As I've said many times, for me fitness = ability to repeat.

Another slightly odd thing for the OP: I've been doing more ass-in-the-grass squats and yesterday I attacked out of the saddle on a steep (on my single) which I've always had to ride in my granny before. When I sat down, I couldn't see anyone. It was one of those I-guess-that-worked kind of things.

I have the same experience as the OP every fall when I start hitting the weights again. Maybe I get in one full set of light squats before I quit out of wisdom because I know what that's going to feel like tomorrow.

12strings

While its true that no activity perfectly mimics or prepares you for another...some are closer than others:

Cycling won't prepare your joints and muscles for long distance running.

BUT...there is no doubt that when I'm in good cycling shape(which includes some sprint intervals and low-cadence climbing intervals)... I can go up 5-6 flights of stairs WAY easier than my non-cycling friends. They are complaining before I'm even noticing that I should slow down. Same for hiking uphill there's no question cycling helps with that.

12strings

I'll also give a second to the success of full-depthh squats...after a season of those, I can go up put of the saddle on climbs for longer and stronger...

work4bike

I agree totally with these two posts. My aerobic capacity greatly increased after countless deep anaerobic sprints; so many that I remember I did over do it a little too much (not recommended) and had symptoms of overtraining, with total body fatigue and brain fog. However, once I recovered I started back up (more sensibly) and now I can do some really hard sprints and I recover so fast and my cruising aerobic speeds are much faster, even against a head wind, which I get a lot around here.