Jon in Sweden wrote: ↑7 Jul 2022, 11:56pm
Does anyone else do much in the way of strength training?
I have a long history of both cycling and weight training, though they haven't often overlapped.
I'm now doing both, spending around about 5-7hrs a week in the saddle and 90-120 minutes a week strength training.
It actually feels really good, insofar as I've got decent strength but fitness is always improving. The biggest noticeable affect is that I'm not losing any weight with the cycling, but I am changing my body composition a bit.
I weight train 3 times a week but don't train legs now. I love squatting, but hurt my patella tendons overdoing it a couple of years ago. They still aren't 100% but they are mostly better. I find that the combination of upper body work, cycling and deadlifts works well.
Has anyone else here successfully combined both weight training and cycling over a long period of time? I'm having a blast on the bike and I know that upper body mass slows me down, but it's not all about absolute speed for me and the ability to chuck around my kids easily is important to me
For nearly all the years I've cycled at a high level (in events such as Audax, road racing and time trialling, along with the background "training") I've also used the gym. The gym-going was partly to enhance the cycling performance but also an antidote to jobs that were almost all sedentary. It alarmed me to see how many of my workmates went
slump as soon as they were free of any kind of regular exercise, which "freedom" seemed to start in their early twenties as their wages allowed them more grog, mucfud, "going out" and other dangerous-to-fitness addictions.
Unlike you, I did (and still do) heavy leg exercises although not of the squatting or other kinds that can compress my spine. Early and uninformed gym work (mostly to do with squats, deadlifts and overhead presses) damaged things in the connections around my sacroiliac joints. I now do leg presses, extensions and curls on machines that avoid undue weight-bearing by my spine. I recommend you consider the same, if you can, as stronger legs can help with all forms of cycle racing .... whilst a damaged lower back .... doesn't.
These days me and t'ladywife go regularly to the gym for a one hour session followed by two days of rest from the gym. We do basic exercises for all the main body parts (shoulders, arms, chest, back, waist, legs) in each session. We often vary the particular exercises for a particular body part (e.g. two of six possible exercise forms mainly for the various back muscles). We also emphasise quality (of strict form, pace and range) rather than maximum liftable weight or fastest possible pace.
This regime gives enough recovery time, which is the absolutely essential aspect of weight-training. It's that time that repairs the microdamage you do to your body parts; and that seems to be the process that makes them stronger, resilient and better-functioning. No rest just makes more damage to already micro damaged parts.
This regime is maintenance, not body-building. The microdamage is not great so we're also able to go out on the bikes the day after a gym session without feeling sore or tired. We usually manage three bike rides a week in good weather and at least one per week in the periods of the year with less light and poor weather. We rarely go further than 60 kilometres, these days and often just 35k. However, in West Wales it's 200 metres of climb (and also descent) per 10K cycled. The ladywife also gets two swimming sessions in each week, of one mile per session.
The trick is to balance all these efforts so that you can get the most out of them. It's very easy to detract from cycling performance with too much gyming (or swimming or running). But the younger you are, the more you can manage whilst still improving gradually. Over-training is a common pitfall, though.
The kind of gym work you do is also important. In support of other sports, you should (obviously) aim to strengthen the main muscle groups involved (legs, glutes, core for cyclists) but it's also beneficial to improve the resilience of your whole body. Weight training doesn't, as you will know, just grow muscle - it improves the resilience of sinews, nerves, blood supply and all the other things that contribute to "fitness".
On the other hand, bodybuilders make poor cyclists. I always found the best effects for cycling from the gym work was to emphasise how well I could do an exercise rather than how much maximum weight I could lift. "3-1-5" is a good regime: three seconds to lift the weight; one second paused at just less than full extension (so you can't relax the muscles and let the locked-out bones take the strain); five seconds to slowly lower the weight to starting position (but without allowing any kind of muscle resting); repeat. It's surprising how much harder that is to do than is hoisting 20% more weight with a jerk, to full joint extension, followed by a gravity-drop to the start.
Cugel, droning on & on.
