duncanblkthrne

Is there a point of diminishing returns with leg strength?

I'll easily be able to push 3.5 times my bodyweight when I reach Maximum Strength phase of Fall strength training; last Fall, I finished out doing 7 sets of 10 reps with 945lbs loaded onto the 45 degree leg-press sled (works out to 668lbs if it was on a flat leg-press machine).

I'm 6'4" tall, 198lbs, with bodyfat around 10%; my weight isn't going to get much below 195lbs, I think; 190lbs may be as low as I can get without things getting strange.

My main problems on the bike: Acceleration, and hill climbing, both of which are related to my total mass.
I'm not built like Andy Schleck, there's no way I can get down another 30lbs without becoming a skeleton.

What I'm thinking is one way around this is to just make my legs as powerful as possible.
Both Friel and Chapple feel that 3 times your bodyweight is where you should stop adding weight to the leg-press; is there really any reason why I shouldn't just keep going and get my thighs as big as possible?
Is there a Point of Diminishing Returns with leg strength? If, highly motivated, I can generate 1300-1400 watts in a sprint as I am now, how can it be a bad thing to be able to generate 1500-1600 watts or more instead?

I've got a few weeks before I hit Maximum Strength phase, so there's time to discuss the subject before it becomes fully relevant.

[HR][/HR]
I am no longer monitoring this thread nor am I subscribed to it anymore; any comments directed at me will be ignored. Thanks for playing.
[HR][/HR]

nkfrench 

My 2c.
Strong is how many pounds you can press. It's easy to get caught up with this number.
Power considers how fast you can press those pounds.
Explosive effort of fewer pounds is better than a very slow press of more pounds.

In high school my coach said I probably had the strongest arms of any girl in the state, based on my bench press. He had me join the track & field team to compete at shotput. I had no explosive power and was totally mediocre. I did a lot better at bowling.

Carbonfiberboy 

Here's the deal: road cycling is really all about climbing. No one cares how fast you can go on the flat. Even sprinters have to do the climbs fast enough to get to the finish in the front. Climbing is about power/weight, watts/kg at lactate threshold. Power at lactate threshold is mostly a function of:
1) the amount of oxygen your blood can transport and then
2) the amount of ATP your mitochondria can generate per unit time

The problem is that each person's heart and lungs are only so big. Making your legs bigger increases your weight, but doesn't increase your power at LT much if at all. So it's a negative. Makes it worse. Lance had to lose 14 kilos of protein for his comeback tour. AFAIK there are no studies showing that conventional weight training is any use at all for even increasing TT speed, much less climbing.

Track sprinting is another story. Track sprinters do a lot of weight training.

So it depends on what you want to do. Sounds like you are interested in climbing, in which case you have to lose weight and increase your RB cell count and your mitochondrial density. The way to do that is with intervals. Never do anything in the weight room that takes time or strength away from your ability to do intervals. Of course one needs a lot of base for intervals to maximize your potential. Climb, climb, climb. Do intervals on the flat, too. 5 X 10 minutes of speed work is good on the flat. I probably do about 6 hours of zones 1, 2 and 3 for every hour I spend at or sub threshold. That's a minimum. I'd do better to make it more like 10 hours.

The lighter you get, the faster you'll be, down to a BMI of around 20. Simple as that, really.

duncanblkthrne

I'm sorry, but it's really hard to hear what you're saying. Can you point me in the direction of information from authoritative sources to back up what you're saying? I spent several years making my legs as strong as they are now, and the thought of intentionally letting them get weaker is not something I'm willing to take lightly, especially when it'll take considerable amount of time to get them strong again if this turns out to be a bad decision for me to make.

hamster

Sprint power and climbing are two distinct goals. At constant BMI, sprint power is limited by your quads; climbing power is limited by your cardiovascular system. I do not think that it's possible to "overtrain" your quads to the point where excess strength training would harm your aerobic/climbing capacity. But don't bet money on it. Keep your leg strength and start doing intervals on the bike.

There certainly is a point of diminishing returns in leg strength. With 10 reps at vertical leg press weight of 3.37x your own weight, you could easily be hitting it. (If you give up cycling at this point and work on your bench press and deadlift, you could get competitive in powerlifting at the national level.)

bmontgomery87

I'm not sure if I totally understand your question. But as far as strength training goes, don't base your progress off of the leg press. You can use bad form, cheat the movement, and press well over 1000 pounds without being "strong". Most of the time when I see someone leg pressing a ton of weight, they're rounding their lower back at the bottom of the movement, which is a recipe for disaster.

Take the time to learn to squat, it's a better movement that is going to improve your strength overall. Leg press is more of a "bro lift" that turns into a member measuring contest.


What program are you doing that even suggests that you use a leg press? For strength, it doesn't really get much better/easier than programs like Starting Strength, Stronglifts 5x5, 5/3/1. Strength programs should be based around the squat/bench/deadlift. Thats how you get the most bang for your buck in the gym.

I'm with you on the idea that stronger legs = better climbs. I strength train year round and I think it's going to benefit my cycling.

bmontgomery87

He could definitely get into the sport and start doing local meets.
But, as someone who competes in powerlifting, leg press has nothing to do with squat ability.
I've seen an 800+ raw squatter talk about how he doesn't use more than 500 pounds on the leg press, because he knows it isn't a strength movement. It's for keeping good form and actually working your quads.

Carbonfiberboy 

I should have mentioned that for flat crits, weight is not that big a deal. They're more like track racing. But around here, even crits and TTs have hills. There are pretty much no flat rides. You could say something about your goals. Most folks who are trying to get faster have something in mind: good times on a century or double, racing of some sort, riding with the fast group, etc.

You would like what you are doing to be the correct answer because you enjoy it. Believe me, training to get faster on the bike can really be no fun at all. It hurts, it sucks, and one is hungry a lot. Lance would go out for 6 hour rides with only water in his bottles. Try that sometime and see how much fun it is. I've never met anyone who enjoys doing intervals, either. But that's what we do, because that's how we get faster.

I've been hungry since April. I'm down 11 lbs. and looking to lose another 7. I'm very noticeably faster and haven't lost anything off my thighs. I'm not doing heavy weights now, but by spring I'll be able to sled 4 X bodyweight. I don't squat heavy because I'm old and it's not good for my back. I'm already 1.5" shorter than I was in my 20s. Most of those skinny pros can squat a lot of weight, they just don't say anything about it, or much else in their training for that matter. For a cyclist, squatting and sledding isn't about trying to get bigger, it's just about recruitment.

You already have authoritative sources: you say you read Friel. Research it. Information is not too hard to find, unless you're looking for corroboration for lifting heavy weights to climb faster. Not much evidence of that. Here's a metastudy:
https://www.sportsci.org/jour/04/cdp.doc
The good stuff is in the appendices.
Note that the "usual weights" cyclists lost power rather than gaining it.
"Explosive weights" training showed gains, but not as great as doing intervals. I tore a meniscus doing that. YMMV.

I've had the best results in the weight room from doing sets of 30 per Friel, circuit style, to failure, what he calls Adaptation. I'm not sure I did any better with 3 sets of 30 than with one, since the more weights one lifts, the less energy one has for training on the bike. 1 set takes me 24 minutes, twice a week. Some years I have gone through the whole progression, but I'm not sure there was any benefit.

I've had the best results in general from doing long, hard, hilly rides, riding past exhaustion into the hard-to-walk stage, so 4-6 hours. And in general, more mileage = improved performance, up to around 20,000 miles/year. I have a riding buddy who got really fast at 30,000 miles and 1.5 million feet of climbing, married, 2 kids, full-time job. Divorced now, though.

Carbonfiberboy 

I should also say that to tell whether your training is effective, you have to have some sort of performance metric. Most serious folks use a power meter and look at FTP watts/kg. Or you can race and see how your performance changes when riding against others. Or you can go out consistently on a local group ride and see how you do against the fast boys. Or you can look at your time up a local long climb. There are no non-cycling metrics that are useful for measuring changes in cycling performance.

duncanblkthrne

I am using a strength training routine that is specifically designed for a competitive cyclist by Thomas Chapple from his book "Base Building for Cyclists". No interest in Starting Strength or anything intended for bodybuilders, and I am not going to do squats, I see no point to them other than risking ruining my back.

duncanblkthrne

..Yeah, I guess I assumed that anyone in this forum is racing and would assume I'm also racing.

Been road racing/doing crits for 4 years now. It's a hard sell to tell me "lose muscle mass to get faster on climbs" because every year for the past five years (before I even decided to try racing) I've gotten stronger and faster.I have, of course, a full-on program of interval training. I ride a couple hundred miles a week, typically. I understand that power-to-weight ratio is important. I was ~240lbs when I started training to race, and I'm down below 200lbs now.

duncanblkthrne

Yes, I have a PowerTap, have had it the entire 4 years that I've been training/racing. Used to have a coach helping me with my training schedule and what-not but it is now impossible for me to afford that so I must do this all on my own.

duncanblkthrne

If you don't mind my asking, what is your purpose in riding? Do you road race? How many races did you do this last season, and out of those how many did you get a top-10 finish? A top-3 finish? A win? Are you self-trained, or do you have a coach? Do you use a power meter? Helps for me to know something more about who I'm talking to.

bmontgomery87

Well if it's designed by a cyclist, I can understand you sticking with it as it seems closely related to your goals.
Does the book not go into detail about rather or not there comes a point where you should stop pushing for more weight?

Personally I think you should just continue getting stronger, the only point where you would run into diminishing returns would be if you were gaining a lot of weight (which would be more a factor of diet than training) or if you pushed too hard and got injured or wore yourself out too much to ride.

That being said, squats are safe when done correctly and are great for strengthening the whole body as opposed to just isolating the quads and hamstrings. I don't think you build strong glutes from leg pressing, and I think they're beneficial for standing up and sprinting.

Best of luck with the strength phase!

duncanblkthrne

For leg press they both would have you stop at 3 times your bodyweight. I'm already there and I'm not even at Maximum Strength phase of strength training; I've retained pretty much all the strength I gained last year, but I actually weigh less than I did at the same time last year.

Both Friel and Chapple are saying in their books that you should stop at 3X your BW "to avoid injury, perhaps severe" and "to avoid muscle imbalances". You seem to at least understand weight training; what do they really mean when they say "muscle imbalances" in this context?

duncanblkthrne

Would you mind telling me if you race or what sort of cycling you do? If you race, what sort of racing, how many races this last season, how often did you finish top-ten, top-three, win? How many years have you been racing? Thanks.

bmontgomery87

That's a tough call as far as stopping goes. I guess if I only had x amount of weight to work with, I would try to really control the movement and do my best to work the muscles as opposed to getting sloppy with my form, if that makes sense. (Not saying your form sucks or anything. I just know I can muscle up some heavy deadlifts, but doing them with perfect form at times is a different story)
The only other thing I could think would be if you can only use X weight, you could always add reps. So if you're doing 5 sets of 10 with 800 pounds, for your next phase maybe go 5 sets of 12 or something.
I've never ran into a situation like that though, so I'm not sure what the most beneficial thing would be in terms of cycling, but if your primary goal right now is strength, I'd add reps if you can't add weight.

The muscle imbalances come from training a given muscle more than its antagonist muscle or supporting muscles. For example a lot of guys who spend 3 days per week bench pressing in the gym eventually develop shoulder issues from that muscle imbalance because they failed to strengthen their backs and rear delts, which leads to an unstable shoulder.
I would assume that Frield and Chapple have observed situations where maybe people ended up with very strong quads, but weak hamstrings and glutes, which could end up leading to knee pain, muscle pulls, etc.

I haven't had a chance to read the book/program, but what different exercises does it have you do?

*I'm not a racer, I've just recently started riding again and just commute to and from work and ride for fun at this point. So I'm not speaking from a level of expertise in the field of racing. I just know strength training as I've competed in powerlifting and also worked towards certifications for personal training. Figured I may be able to help out a bit, but there are obviously some different ideas on how to be strong and still train for long races like you're doing.

(sorry for the long rambling)

duncanblkthrne

I don't mind a "rambling" post so long as it's got a high signal-to-noise ratio. ;-)

What they're recommending is that once you hit 3X BW (or thereabouts; apparently it's OK to go a little over that point) you're supposed to start adding sets. As previously stated, last Fall I finished out doing 7 sets of 10 at 945lbs (on the 45 degree sled; works out to 668lbs effectively).

For what it's worth, I do seated leg curls, 3x20 at 300lbs (single-leg, 150lbs per leg); is there an imbalance going on there?
I also do hip flexion/extension/abduction/adduction, 1x20, standing, with a low cable and an ankle strap, 2x20 leg extension, and 3x20 seated calf, all of which are part of Chapple's recommended routine.

I'm glad I thought to ask people where they're coming from, athletically-speaking. A bodybuilder/powerlifter is typically going to look at what a competitive cyclist does for Fall strength training and think they're wasting their time, whereas doing something like Starting Strength adds muscle mass in areas that don't help them turn the pedals faster (i.e., big arms).

bmontgomery87

Yeah, I don't really know what else to tell you as far as your program. I guess I would just listen and add sets. I guess as far as the program goes, it's okay to continue adding sets as long as you can? As long as you beat where you were last fall, I'd say you did something right.
It's hard to tell if there is a muscle imbalance based on lift numbers, especially with the vast difference in machines. I've been on hamstring curl machines where 110 pounds was extremely difficult. They vary greatly. If you're staying injury/pain free, I would imagine that you don't have any serious issues going on with imbalances. When I've had issues in the past, I ended up injured.

I agree with you that someone who races is obviously going to give a little better insight as to what movements directly benefit your cycling the best. I just saw "strength training" and jumped in because if that's the primary goal, I know what to do. I mainly try to keep a strong back and strong legs, the rest is pretty much just for looking/feeling better. But if I were doing 100 mile races, obviously holding an extra 10-15 pounds of upper body muscle isn't the most beneficial thing. The extra time/energy would be better spent on my bike.


Anyway, good talkin' to ya. I hope the training cycle turns out well and has some carryover when race season gets here.

duncanblkthrne

I think you're probably fairly well qualified to comment on this:
In Base Building for Cyclists, Chapple says:
"The objective of Maximum Strength phase is to recruit and activate the maximum number of muscle fibers possible in the cycling-specific prime movers."
So is what he's saying is that MS Phase is at least as much about training your central nervous system to utilize the muscle you've got as effectively as possible as it is about encouraging the growth of the muscles in question?

bmontgomery87

I think you've got the right idea. Part of getting stronger is training your body to recruit the maximum amount of muscle fibers.
So it's essentially saying the main goal is to get stronger as opposed to promoting hypertrophy (muscle growth), which makes sense to me for being a better cyclist.
What surprises me is that typically the higher rep range like 8-12 is what people usually use to get larger. Whereas the 1-5 zone is maximal strength without necessarily getting a lot bigger.

I'd assume that the program is designed the way it is because it's easier to get hurt training super heavy in lower rep ranges so it's probably a safety measure. Plus you aren't really going to put on a significant amount of muscle in a 6-8 week training block to the point where you're adding too much extra weight to your frame. Clearly the best riders are going to be strong with great endurance while still having a low bodyweight.


Just out of curiosity does the program have you doing any upper body work at all? back or core work? I'm intrigued.

duncanblkthrne

Yes, it does. Here's an outline of what I do 3X/week currently:

(AA=Anatomical Adaptation phase, MT=Maximum Transition phase, MS=Maximum Strength phase)
Everything 3x20 unless otherwise noted.
Warm up
Step-up/step-down 2x20
Hip flexion/extension/abduction/adduction, low cable with ankle strap
Seated row (3x20 in AA, 3x10-13 in MT, 3x8-10 in MS)
Lat pull-down
Leg press (5x20 in AA, 3x10-13 in MT, 3x8-10 in MS until ~3X BW reached, then add sets)
Standing upright row
Leg curl
Chest press
Leg extension, 1-2x20
Calf raise
Sit-up with a twist, on a decline bench, as many sets of 30 as I can manage

Lately, while I'm out of work and am digging stumps out of the ground and doing other heavy yard work for friends for extra cash 6 hours a day 2 days a week on the same days I go to the gym, I've started skipping the lat pull-downs, upright rows, and chest press, because I feel like during that 6 hours of laboring I'm getting more than enough upper-body exercise to suffice.

When I'm done with the Fall strength training cycle and start progressing Base training on the bike, I'll change up what I do in the gym to more emphasize core strength.

hamster

I can't read Friel's mind, but I know a thing or two about physiology.

When you are doing leg presses with 3x BW, you're deep into the sprint territory. During the leg press motion your legs generate upwards of 1000 W of power.

When you are climbing hills, only a small fraction of your quad muscle fibers is utilized. Muscle fibers vary in their strength and ability to consume oxygen. Hill climbing uses thinnest slow-twitch fibers because those are the ones best at using oxygen. They can change to some degree due to training.

Excessive strength training and hypertrophy shifts the balance towards thick, fast-twitch fibers, leaving you with fewer endurance-specialized fibers.

It's rarely a problem (as I said above, the bottleneck in hill climbing is usually the cardiovascular system) unless you overdo it and end up with too few slow-twitch fibers for the amount of oxygen your heart and lungs can supply.

duncanblkthrne

Having taken the temperature of this thread, I think I should change the question I'm asking:

So long as I'm not putting on massive amounts of mass, is there any reason not to have stronger legs?

duncanblkthrne

I've only gotten lighter, stronger, and faster over the last 4 years, and I certainly am not trying to use strength training in the gym as a substitute for interval training on the bike.