Originally Posted by
GhostRider62
like all medicine, dose is important.
I did not mean to imply training the anaerobic fibers is not important for endurance rider and on the contrary, it is critical to get a good balance if for no other reason to get lactate and the concomitant increases in shuttle to the slowtwitch fibers. It takes some looking into and depending on the focus of the ride duration and power profile, but the optimum loading of the muscle varies from the type 2a or 2b. I would love to see the training the sprinters of TdF use, what a conundrum. They have to have the endurance to make it to the finish and then have the explosiveness relative to their peers. I am not sure or really have no idea how much is too much or how often is too often to do sprint training if one's focus is long distance endurance type riding.
https://alancouzens.com/blog/strength_week.html
I just go off training plans I've used from Training Peaks (custom plan for Etape du Tour), Wahoo SYSTM (Mountainous Gran Fondo plan) and Pillar's dynamic endurance plan (5000 m climbing over 160 km). They all seem to dish out similar small doses of sprint training during the build phases. Typically standing starts. What I always gain from it is an almost instant boost in sprint power over just 2 or 3 sessions with no obvious downside. None of these plans push sprint training any further than that, so I don't know what happens if you do any more. But they all seem to agree that it's a good idea to do some NM training as an endurance focused rider.