Fast4 50

Hey everyone,

I'm a 58 year old that has returned to track racing after a 33 year lay off. Things have changed, my warm up gear is close to my sprint gear back in the 80's. My focus is Match Sprinting and Keirin. I'm pretty solid tactically and in Match Sprints generally do better than F200 numbers would suggest. Sometimes I'll jump in to a mass start event for fun.

My question is should I focus on getting as strong as I can in the weight room for the rest of the off season or try to hold on to the gains I've made in the gym and focus on losing a bunch of body fat.

Here's my numbers:

at altitude, Erie and OTC, Colorado
Weight 212 lbs BF 28 %
Squat 5 x 5 @ 225 (legal squats, hips below knees)
F200 12.3 (last season's pr) I felt pretty good about that number considering that was after 6 weeks on the track after not training for so long.
Max wattage: about 1400
5 sec power: 1110
10 sec 1050
20 sec 891
top speed 41mph
My f200 speed starts high then drops by about 5-6 mph.

Currently my wattage on a smart trainer are about 150 watts below those numbers.

maybe I should change my username to Fat450.

FBinNY 

IME - trying to lose weight will cost you some strength and power in the process. You want to counter that with a balanced regimen to main strength while you lose, or go for strength and not stress the weight for the moment.

At your weight, I'd probably focus on shaving some of that, even if it costs me some strength, but the right answer depends on your size and the amount and distribution of the "spare" weight.

Velocirapture

+1

That said, how tall are you, and what sort of body-type do you have? Endo-, meso-, or ectomorphic? (Think bulldog, German shephard, or greyhound, if those descriptors are new to you)

Velocirapture

+1

Brian Ratliff

Strength matters way more for track sprinting than weight. There was a time when I was transitioning from being a roadie to being a trackie where I would shave 2-3/10ths of a second off my 200m time every time I gained 10lbs.

I would not worry too much about weight and just focus on training. If you train more, your body weight will take care of itself. No dieting or cutting necessary. Don't neglect some endurance training though. You noted that gears have gotten bigger... sprints have gotten longer too. 250-350m sprints are pretty common in a match sprint these days. Gone are the days where the major acceleration happened 150m out. People are generally winding up coming into turn three. That means you need some endurance to go with the strength.

taras0000

at 28% BF, you won't lose much strength, if any at all trying to lose pounds. You will most likely actually get "stronger" as you lose weight.

How does that happen? Increase in Work Capacity. Basically, as you get fitter, you recover better, which means you can work harder for longer periods of time. You will "lose strength" initially as you accumulate fatigue from doing the cardio/extra work necessary to lose the fat, but this will reverse itself and rebound as you adapt to the new workload and recover.

As long as you are doing some sort of maximal capacity work like sprinting or lifting, then you won't "lose" any strength. An increase in strength is actually based on the ability to recruit muscle fibers in increasing numbers (at least initially, which depending on your non cycling activities, you may still be doing).

The muscular system is similar to the lighting in your house. Recruiting/contracting a muscle fiber is like flicking on a light switch. Muscle fibers can only be on or off, and this is why I use the light switch analogy. So strength = light output. Power is the ability to make the contraction happen faster (flicking on as many switches as quickly as possible). This is possible because of your nervous system (the wiring, this remains constant).

Initially, what happens when you get stronger is you learn to recruit more muscle fibers (flicking more lights on gives you an increase in light). As the demand for more light increases, you learn to flick more switches. When you start to max out the number of lights on at one time, the bulbs get brighter (muscle fiber growth), but the number of switches stays the same and will always stay the same. As long as demand stays or grows, you will always keep or upgrade your lights to keep up with demand. If the demand drops, then what happens is the bulbs start getting swapped backwards for lower output ones, and you have to start all over again.

If you also train power, your lights get to full brightness faster, and this is equivalent to the ability to run from room to room as fast as you can flicking on switches. You can train power and strength separately, but they are interrelated. Stop training power and you start to lose the ability to run from room to room quickly.

So if you developed these abilities and then started to do lots of cardio and ignore strength and power, the first thing you lose is the ability to run from room to room as fast as possible, followed by a downgrade to bulbs, and lastly to ability to flick switches in numbers.

Now as long as you maintain demand, you don't lose any of this. So if you focus on losing fat, your decrease in all of this is very temporary, and is only due to the fact that the guy going around the house flicking light switches is a little tired. But as he recovers, so do you, and you bounce back very quickly. The improvement then becomes not how many switches or how fast you can turn them on, but how often you can do it without getting tired. This is your increase in work capacity. Basically it means you can work out harder, longer, and more often.

Focus on the weight. You won't lose anything, and your improvement will be so much faster. As long as you don't go crazy cutting too many calories and you get enough rest, you will be flying in no time.

Fast4 50

I'm 5' 11" and a mesomorph under all the blubber

FBinNY 

OK, so leaving the debate aside for the moment. Put the bike down and find a mirror. Undress and take a good look.

Do you have weight that you want to shave? If so, then decide what's more important to you this year. Shaving some of that fat or being faster. Assume you can't do both and choose.

carleton

Damn, son. This is a great analogy.

brawlo

Is that 41mph achieved in your F200? A 5-6mph drop off is pretty big and I think you need to look at that area of your training. At a peak of 41mph, you should be looking at mid 11s for F200.

Going to bigger gears (aside from the purely genetically gifted) seems to have been a big contributor to the lower times these days. Bigger gears allow you to hold speed for longer with less taper, but you need to work on them. It's not like you can just head out on track and push 120" after all you've trained on is 100".

It is entirely possible to get stronger as you lose weight, as long as you do it correctly. There are many many different ways to do it, you just have to find the right path for you. At 28%BF, losing weight is a good idea, but you don't have to be some 5%BF ripped body builder looking guy to be fast either.

Get stronger and lose weight for now, but as you approach track season or a few months out from a key event, really look at improving your fitness so that drop off in speed isn't so severe. Don't underestimate how fit you need to be to be a sprinter in the modern day. I did for a long time!

Fast4 50

Yes, 41mph is the speed I hit in my drop in for the F200 (a couple of times) and I feel I have a couple of more mph in the bank. If I can turn that 5-6mph drop off into a 1-2mph drop off I'll be flying for an old fart.

I did some motorpacing work at the end of my season to try to up my speed endurance. It's real fun to sit on the hip of a moto for 200m. I'm thinking that losing some weight will help with being able to hold on to my top end better. I also realize in training everything's a compromise.

I appreciate everybody taking the time to reply although I had to read the muscle building / light switch analogy a couple of times to get it.

I guess the way I'll go is to watch what I eat, cut out the crap, lift, ride and repeat. Be as consistent as I can in the gym and on the bike. The other thing I'm trying is a 4 day microcycle, instead of the standard 7 day microcycle. That would give me 2 rest days in 8 days instead of 1 every 7. I find that I can do everything as well as I did it in my 20's just not as often and in this particular case maybe not quite as fast.

taras0000

When I was transitioning out of being a Junior, this is how my coach described it to me. As I became more knowledgable, and studied in the medical field, I saw that this is one of the most accurate ways to describe how muscles work. The analogy can even be extended into more detail using more light switch related stuff and still be accurate. He was the S+C for McMaster University at the time. Had all sorts of creds to his name and now works with Cycling Australia as their Junior S+C coach.


More rest is aways good, as long as your workouts are intense enough. It's an approach that works well for middle aged trackies. As far as BF% goes, most elite sprinters are in the 10-14% range. Staying below 10% (if you're not a naturally lean person) requires extra work to stay lean just for leanness' sake. Your strength and speed gains slow down and are very hard to make, as well as it slows down recovery. It's time and energy better spent getting stronger and faster.