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Smart Cycling,
Inc.
Website Article #25
by Stephen Thordarson
USA Cycling,
Inc. Level 1 Coach
Physical Demands
People just getting started
in bike racing usually make the same observation; they can't get
over how hard it is. It is unlike anything else they've done
before and it is difficult to make comparisons to other sports.
The level of fitness and training needed is much greater than
most sports the average person in America is familiar with. The
season for racing can be nine months long and the training that
takes place before, during and after the season is very
difficult. Unless you live in a year around warm environment,
getting your body ready for a season of racing means training
indoors. You work hard in the gym and on the trainer for months.
Then you have to make the transition from structured indoor
training to some type of structure outdoors. That is where many
cyclists begin to lose the strength and power they were
developing indoors. So how do you go from an indoor focus to and
outdoor focus?
Setting up a good program
starts long before you lift the first weight or spin on the
trainer. You must start with some understanding about the
physical demands needed to perform well. Familiarity with the
physical demands of the various events can make your training
more effective and your expectations more realistic. A lot of
difficulty and confusion can be avoided by knowing which muscles
actually contribute to pedaling a bike. Here is a diagram that
shows which muscles contribute to the pedal stroke and at what
point they make that contribution. The initials for each muscle
group are placed at the center of their place of influence. So
for example, the soleus (SOL) has its
biggest influence when the pedals are at the furthest forward
position in the pedal stroke. Many brands of weight training
equipment have illustrations on the machine themselves showing
which muscles are worked by that machine. This chart and the
information on the machines will make it easier to use the right
equipment. It is also a good idea to train the legs separately
at least once a week. If you are using machines for say leg
curls, working the legs separately at least one day a week will
help identify strength differences between the legs. Then you
can focus some of your attention on evening them out.
TA
- tibialis anterior
SOL – soleus
GA - gastrocnemius
VL
- vastus lateralis
RF - rectus femoris
ST – semitendinosis
GM - gluteus maximus
BF-LH - long head of the hamstring biceps femoris
In this diagram of a cyclist,
the muscles are indicated on the legs to show their positions
front and back. You can see from the crank arm chart where the
soleus muscle has its influence and this diagram shows where the
soleus is located on the back of the leg. By using these two
charts, you can gain a better understanding of how strength
training will impact your pedaling.
The experience of a good
coach will help identify how much weight you need to work with
and how often you should be strength training. The goal is to
build up your strength over the off season and transform that
strength into speed and power on the bike. Actually it is a
mistake to call it the off season because many people actually
work harder in the winter than in the racing season.
Another thing new athlete
needs to develop a solid base of endurance. Athletes who are
starting the next season's training use much of the winter to
reestablish their base of endurance. They work on strength
training and perhaps cross train in other sports as well. This
also requires long hours on the bike and lots of patience.
Developing patience is one of the more overlooked areas for
newer cyclists, along with one other attribute; determination.
In the great movie “Chariots of Fire”, the coach tells the
athlete that he cannot put in what God left out. That one thing
is determination, nothing else will take its place.
So after a winter of strength
training and endurance workouts comes the joy of riding outside.
The trick then becomes holding onto what was gained and adding
to it. Technology over the last ten years has made this part
easier every year. Many cyclists now use a power meter system of
some kind to train and the data produced from it can be a big
help when making the transition from indoors to outdoors.
Despite the advances in the equipment, indoor training will
never be exactly the same as outdoor training. Wind, terrain,
road surface, temperature, humidity and traffic are just a few
of the things that effect training outdoors. Oh yes and the
biggest part; the other riders in the pack with you. There is
nothing like a little competitive adrenaline to get the pace
going.
When you are going from
indoors to outdoors you need to consider a number of factors
that will determine how ready you are. You will need to
consider:
Your current overall physical
condition and the condition of everyone else.
The level of your strength,
endurance and ability to recover.
It is amazing how
few athletes make an effort to have recovery built into their
training plans. Yet, without the ability to recover properly
progress will be slow and limited. No athlete is capable of
going full blast all the time. Sooner or later they have to take
a break. When you are transitioning from indoors to outdoors,
you may need to start with more recovery than you might like.
The physical strength gained during the winter has to be molded
into speed and power on the bike. In the Midwest the winter
drags on sometimes until the end of April. I usually have my
athletes max their strength training on Valentine’s day
(February 14th). That way they are transitioning from
the weight room to the race course just in time for the road
racing season to be underway. That doesn’t mean they stop
lifting weights. It just means the focus begins to shift from
pushing weights to pushing the pedals.
Good athletes always keep a
training log of what they do. When the weather begins to allow
for outdoor training you need to look at that log. Efforts made
outdoors have to reflect the same level of intensity that has
been happening indoors. For example, if you have reached a point
in your interval training where you can maintain 27 mph for 20
minutes, then when you get outside that has to be your starting
point for interval efforts. The physical demands to race a
bicycle are directly related to the gearing of the bicycle. Over
the winter you should be paying careful attention to cadence,
gearing and speed. If you are using an indoor power meter
trainer like a CompuTrainer or TACX trainer, but don’t have a
portable system like a PowerTap, then you will have to use
speed, cadence and gearing for your controls. Not to spend all
your time looking at numbers, but to get an idea of how hard the
work needs to be in the real world. The goal should be to know
your current physical condition well enough that in a race you
don’t have to look for numbers. When Greg LeMond went into the
final time trial of the 1989 Tour de France, he was confident he
could win. He knew exactly what kind of shape he was in and he
knew what the demands of the event would be. He had no computers
and the team car behind him gave him no information about his
progress. He didn’t need it because he knew how he was doing.
His performance is still listed as the fastest average speed of
any athlete to ever do an individual time trial in the history
of the Tour de France.
If you are getting ready to
go back outdoors and you have been fortunate enough to be
training with a power meter, then you know what you can do
indoors. Outdoors you first have to start pushing air out of the
way. On a reasonably good day you can expect to have to generate
plenty of power. The power requirements go up geometrically
according to the speed. Here is a crude example:
Average watt requirements compared to speed
15 mph 115 watts
20 mph 190 watts
25 mph 358 watts
30 mph 523 watts
This
is not based on hard scientific data produced in a physiology
lab. This is just the average of test results done on a group of
athletes. The purpose here is to show how much the amount of
energy required to ride increases as the speed of the bike
increases. If you want to be able to pedal your bike to go 30
mph, you have to develop the physical strength it takes to put
out that much power.
The goal is to improve efficiency in order to use what you have to
the maximum. The efforts outdoors will need to go up in
intensity, but you will also have recovery. That is why God
invented drafting. You need to do the efforts you need at your
pace and then take advantage of the pack to draft and recover.
The older we get, the more recovery we need. If you are
struggling at this transition point of the season, you don’t
need to exhaust yourself more, you need to recover properly in
order to hit the next level in your training.
Periodization training refers
to the principle of increased intensity in training followed by
proper recovery. In this diagram the basic pattern can be seen
in the yellow bars showing increased levels of each week’s
intensity. When you are making the switch from indoors to
outdoors, you may want to time it to coincide with the last two
build phases. That way you have time to recover after your
initial reintegration to the group or race pack.
In a race, you have a pretty
good understanding that it will be fast and hard. After all it
is a race. However, there are a lot of group rides that while
there may not be medals or prizes awarded, they are competitive
and fast. If this is the place where you usually go during the
outdoor season, you should time the outdoor rides with days that
had you doing the same type of training. Perhaps your training
plan calls for you to do hard efforts on Tuesday and Thursday,
then those should be the two days when you first get back into
the group.
·
If they
are riding below your level of intensity, then you work harder
than them and get your work out.
·
If they
are at the same level as you are, then you do your share of the
work and get stronger.
·
If they
are riding at a higher level, then you hang on for as long as
you can until you improve.
One important note here;
write it down! As was mentioned earlier, good athletes keep
training logs. You should keep records of what you do, how hard
you work, what you eat and drink on the bike, how much rest you
get and anything, no matter how obscure it might seem, that has
to do with riding your bike. Keeping good records can help you
determine if you are back on course from last year or if you are
ahead of the curve. If you are ahead of the curve, don’t get
lazy. Push!
More of this in part two.
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