If you’re thinking about taking part in the Bowral Classic event this October, it’s a perfect time to start conditioning and strengthening your body for the event.
Building a strong base to begin your training on and develop strength and balance both on and off the bike will help you conquer the ride with ease! Some workouts can even be done from home possibly during the cold winter months.
As Sarah Hunter wrote in the September – October 2015 issue of Bicycling Australia Magazine, strength training can give recreational and competitive cyclists the edge when it comes to efficiency and fatigue. Check out her tips that might just help you!
“Strength training for cycling, do you really need it? In the past the standard response to this question would probably have been “not really, just put time in on the bike”. It goes without saying that time on the bike is needed and it will improve your leg strength and aerobic capacity, but that is only one part of the story.
Sumo Squat – works quads
Increasingly, competitive and recreational cyclists are finding that strength training allows them to use their muscles more efficiently, reduce time to fatigue and have that little bit of extra power at crucial stages in a race.
Changing the way you train and work out will enable you to increase strength without adding large amounts of muscle, will increase you resistance to injury and best of all will make you faster on the bike. How will it make you faster? By targeting the major muscles groups used while cycling will make your muscles stronger and enable you to produce more power. The greater your maximum strength the greater your potential for strength endurance i.e. you will be able to produce more force over a longer period of time.
There are plenty of other benefits to strength training other than making you faster on the bike which include increasing bone density, tendon and ligament strength and lean muscle mass.
By the time we reach age 40, we slowly begin to lose bone mass. (1) Studies have shown a direct relationship between the effects of strength training and improvement in bone density. Cycling is not a weight bearing sport, and combined with the large amount of sweating lost during cycling, we are susceptible to a loss of bone density.
Forearm Side Plank – for a strong core
There is a general consensus that there is a 1% decrease in muscle mass per year once someone hits their 30’s. This results in a reduction in Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) which is the amount of calories burnt at rest. A reduction in BMR means the body is less able to use the food eaten as energy and so more gets stored as fat. Muscles have a high energy requirement, so increase in muscle mass lead to a higher BMR, higher BMR means more food can be consumed without gaining weight.
Contrary to popular misconception amongst female endurance athletes lifting heavy weights will not result in them looking like a Arnold Schwarzenegger with huge bulging muscles! This is due to the simple fact that most women do not have enough testosterone in their body for this to happen. Women also have smaller muscle fibres than men, thus limiting the likelihood of huge muscles.
Winter is a good time to start this new approach as most of us are probably struggling to spend as much time on the bike as we would like, or some are just taking a well deserved break from the intensity of structured training. So lets embrace this spare time and plan some strength training.
Cycling isn’t just about good quad strength, but your core, lower back ,triceps and neck take a lot of strain from time in the saddle and continual pedaling. When you start to fatigue on the bike its not just the legs that fatigue, but the core and upper body tire as well. A stronger upper body can help to resist fatigue on longer rides.
Seated Resistance Band Rows – works back, shoulders and biceps
If you are new to strength training then keeping it simple is key. Choose exercises which are compound (this means more than one joint is moving and more than one muscle group is used eg a squat) rather than isolation exercises (only one joint is moving or one muscle group is used eg a bicep curl). Compound exercises provide better results than isolation exercises and should form the core of any strength and conditioning program. Compound exercises use more muscle groups, simulate real world activities such as cycling and allows you to get a full body workout faster than working each muscle group independently.
Having said that, isolation exercises do have their place. They can be prescribed to correct muscle imbalances or weakness that may result after injury. Isolating that particular muscle can help it to fire again and regain strength.
Keeping it simple means choosing exercises that are within your reach to start off with. Just because you see someone doing a single leg Romanian Deadlift in the gym doesn’t mean you should be doing them too. Think of your strength training progressing in the same way your bike skills have, start simple, practice, keep good form then progress to the next level. An example of progression for squats would be body weight squats -> dumbbell squats -> barbell squats -> single leg squats.
Forearm Plank – mimics TT position
The same principles of training for cycling will apply to strength training. To get stronger you will need to apply progressive overload. What does this mean? In a nutshell it means if you keep doing the same number of exercises at the same weight and the same number of reps then your strength will stagnate and you won’t see any further improvements. Do not fear though as there are many ways to apply overload to your program. In the first instance just simply changing up the order of the exercises in your program will give a different physiological response. Other ways to overload are to increase the number of repetitions in each set, say from 10 to 12, to increase the weight (eg progress from body weight squats to dumbbell squats) or to increase the number of sets (eg from 2 sets of 10 reps to 3 sets of 10 reps). Note that you only need to pick one of these to change at any one time.
A example of a some exercises to incorporate in to a full body workout that can be completed at home without any weights:
Sumo squat – quads
Hip thrust/bridge – Glutes and hamstrings
Plyometric jumps on to box or step – explosive power
Inverted Rows – back, shoulder, arms
Push up – chest, shoulders and triceps
Forearm Side Plank – strong core
Forearm Plank – mimics TT position”
References:
1) The effects of progressive resistance training on Bone Density: A review
Layne JE, Nelson ME.
Sarah Hunter is an associate coach for FTP Training. She is a qualified Triathlon Coach and has certification in Fitness. She’s a lifetime competitive athlete with a 20 year passion for cycling including Ironman triathlon, muli day MTB races, TTs, CX and crits. Her passion for cycling and strength training is boundless and infectious.
