how to really train

it doesn't make climbing EASIER man. it just makes you go faster. you are missing that.

oh, also you are wrong

http://www.roadbikerider.com/389.htm#COACH

Will I Benefit from Riding a Heavier Bike?

Q: Would adding weight to my bike for training help my average speed and power? I'm thinking about buying cheap, heavy wheels and tires and loading a rack trunk with weights. -- Tim T.

Coach Fred Matheny Replies: Adding weight for training purposes has been tried a number of times over the years.

I recall when the U.S. Road Team used lead-filled water bottles for hill workouts. A company once marketed a heavy product designed to attach under a bike's bottom bracket.

However, there's no good reason to artificially add weight to your bike. Here's why:

Improvement comes from training at your optimum intensity, not from riding a heavier bike. You need to generate a certain number of watts to get up a hill with a steady effort no matter what the bike weighs.

Take some weight off the bike, though, and you will go a bit faster -- if you produce the same number of watts.

Of course, there's no need to always ride a light bike when a heavier one would be better for the conditions. Ed and I both ride heavy bikes in winter. They have steel frames, fenders, racks and large bags for toting tools, extra tubes, rainwear and warm clothes. Add a couple of full bottles and Ed's bike, for example, weighs 34 pounds (15.5 kg). He just rode this ol' beater a couple of thousand hilly miles (3,200 km) through the off-season.

Does switching to light bikes in the spring make us feel faster? You bet. And we'll actually be faster because, for a given amount of power, we can ride uphill and accelerate better when we're not pushing as much weight.

The bottom line for training purposes, though, is that we're still riding at the same intensity when we go hard, regardless of the bike we're on.

The bottom line for training purposes, though, is that we're still riding at the same intensity when we go hard, regardless of the bike we're on.

It doesn't get any easier, you just get faster - Greg Lemond

I guess if you're riding with a group at the same speed as everyone else though, a heavier bike would give you a better workout.

if you have to move a greater mass against gravity for a longer period of time ur doing more work

if ur doing all hill work, and you quantify your workouts by mileage volume, not time, i think in theory u gain strength endurance by virtue of longer workouts on each hill.

this is why jan ulrich always trained as a fat man before juicing up for gt season.

also, this will not work for blighted flatlanders because your fat will not slow you down much. and dont train by mileage.

Cutty's theory only matters if you're training optimally. If riding a heavier bike is going to give you more of a workout - and, in terms of energy required to get from A to B, it will - or if a heavier bike is going to approximate a steeper/longer hill or whatever, then it will certainly help.

afaik NBS wants to race, therefore he should be training optimally and doing interval training, not focusing on how much his bike weighs.

It doesn't get any easier, you just get faster - Greg Lemond

that's weird, i always thought it races were ultimately determined by speed not effort. ;-P

road races (that are not sprint finishes) usually come down to a race winning effort at threshold. hopefully, when the effort is made, no one else but you can hang on. at that point it has nothing to do with speed and everything to do with who can handle the most pain.

the effort can be one 30 second acceleration on a climb that no one can hold on to. at that point speed is irrelevant. it's survival of the fittest (mentally and physically).

furthermore, you can be the fastest time trialist in the world and never win a road race.

THEREFORE. TRAINING ON A HEAVY BIKE IS NOT GOING TO HELP YOU.

find your zones. train in your zones. do structured intervals. that's how you get fit and fast.

You saying I need a heavier bike?

ride the heavy bike and put some dumbells in your backpack. have fun.

:-)

that's weird, i always thought it races were ultimately determined by speed not effort.

spreadsheets, actually

haha i def was not saying that. but races are certainly not determined by average speed over 90 miles. races are determined by tactics and calculated efforts.

no no, ur right on, the "one determining moment" thing is almost always true.

thats the beauty of learning to race- you know that if youre racing to win, you spend not ONE WATT unless it will make a difference in your finish.

and if you think thats wheelsucking, that's ok, maybe losing is just your thing.

(tho obv. there are times when getting on the front and taking your turn is important too).

right. and at my level, you practically feel like you are in the red the ENTIRE race. the guy who wins is the one who can squeeze just that little bit more out of his body and ride away from everyone else. usually on the hardest part of the course.

I bet he drops his dumbells just before making that vital attack.

you are the dumbell!

"it was going so easy, so i attacked and did a whole lap off the front." teh classik cat 5 RONG

wait until its intolerably fast. now go. can't? you just havent earned it yet baby.

yeah, i thought the adage was if yr nose is in the wind, you will never win

not unless you have made a perfectly timed solo attack in a crosswind 10k from the finish and they never catch you

today i eated for lunch:

Chipotle chicken/black bean burrito (no chz, no sour cream, ha)
Superb giant ass slice of cheese pizza
Really huge 5" diameter chocolate chip cookie

^^^^how not to really train when you are 15 lbs over "race weight." u_u

you are fricken nuts

;_;

proud'a u hunt3r

ok not biking but dang i just ran intervals around lake of the isles and yeeow

so much more bang for your buck imo

running is excellent as far as time efficiency but is terrible for your cycling.

not as terrible as a really huge 5" diameter chocolate chip cookie.

i am not concerned about my cycling

the only thing cycling is good for, fitness-wise, is more cycling

it doesnt seem that bad for the xc skate?

what the shit is cankles doing here

we're a broad church these days!

i'll tell you what i do not miss: the high impact of running, esp in the winter when you have to avoid grass/dirt because of mud.

yeah sure, i get a knee twinge here and there or back of knee ache that takes 1-2 weeks to work through but it's nothing like the damage that running did to my body.

we're a broad church these days!

came to absolve me for sin of gluttony. in the face of persecution by known food nazi. >:|

it doesnt seem that bad for the xc skate?

― malicious humor victim (Hunt3r), Thursday, March 11, 2010 5:50 PM (24 minutes ago) [IP: 67.132.3.242] Bookmark

i was actually talking about this w/a college buddy of mine, who's a former collegiate XC guy and cat-nothing cyclist (but who's v knowledgeable, lots of buds race in srs cats, etc.). the main issue with cycling is that literally no other sport (maybe speed skating) is so mechanistically repetitive in its motions. you're never really called upon to use accessory muscles, proprioception is virtually never tested, your arms don't do shit, there's no impact, etc.

so while it can be good CROSS training for other sports (cardio work, low-impact leg work, etc), you'd be hard pressed to say that switching to an exclusively cycling-oriented training regimen would make you better at, say, soccer. or, to be more specific than "better," improve soccer-oriented fitness.

or: five identical candidates start at a given baseline (avg fitness), all aspiring soccer players. one XC skis exclusively in the off-season (and trains like a XC skier), another downhill skis exclusively (and trains accordingly), the third trains like a sprint/middle distance runner (and trains, etc.), fourth does only rowing (etc), and the fifth reads this thread about how to really train.

i posit that the first four dudes will see improvements in their general soccer playing ability (not skills, but fitness), and the cyclist will be the same, or worse. moreover, the first four will see improvements in their ability ~in all five activities~ and the cyclist will not at all

is so mechanistically repetitive in its motions. you're never really called upon to use accessory muscles, proprioception is virtually never tested, your arms don't do shit, there's no impact, etc.

for devil's advocacy: okay then so running is less repetitive and ~proprioceptive~ then cycling because your foot strikes the ground and arms swing back and forth (mostly for balance mind you)?

i will argue that my back/shoulders/arms are more defined from cycling then from running:
1) neck, back, upper arms from helping support your torso in an inclined state/in the drops.
2) upper arms and shoulders from climbing out of the saddle.
3) lower arms from gripping and braking on long descents (seriously the first several times I descended long mountain passes, my hand and lower arm muscles cramped like crazy after a couple miles).

and legs are about the same at any rate.

i mean i don't totally buy it, maybe if you're on the rollers for 2 hours but if you're actually RIDING, it's a bit more interactive then you may think? on long rides i'm always switching my hand position, getting out of the saddle to give my lower back a rest, pointing my toes and heels in different directions to switch up blood flow.

rollers are more like the road than the trainer

if proprioception is self perception/awareness of one's body's position in space, i think mtbing racing is highly proprioceptive, track and criterium significantly so. a non-racer might not get that. general road riding, usually not. but i would need you to do the knowledge on proprioception for me.

from my conversations with xc race guys, bike guys often have terrible squatty xc free technique and a hard time getting out over the skis for the glide.

however ime it sure feels like the muscle groups and general movements on the lower body overlap significantly. *presumed response--'yes, because you are terrible at skating'*

how proprioceptive is dh ski racing? i would think very.

but is it less proprioceptive than curling? darts? those are classic eye-hand, is that sorta a subcat of proprioception?

i can see basketball, polevaulting, steeplechase as extraordinarily proprioceptive. any running track sprint as less so.

rowing as maybe the least of athletic events?

anyway, to the extent that cycling does not require great changes in body position, it would be less proprioceptive by my understanding. however certain disciplines would require very high levels of awareness of balance and positioning and coordinated adjustment. i guess cx would be the most proprioceptive as it is the most dynamic. mtb dh/fourcross/xc maybe next, then bike messengering, then pack/sprint road and track events. any tt event is basically rowing.

/drone on

if proprioception is self perception/awareness of one's body's position in space, i think mtbing racing is highly proprioceptive, track and criterium significantly so.

would agree with this.

saying that proprioception is never tested was....inaccurate. i guess what i really meant was that cycling doesn't require the same level of physicality in a proprioceptive response as, say, basketball. so while crits require acute spatial awareness, they don't demand that racers have Federer-style full-body agility to manage things.

and besides, my ~real~ point was that cycling is unique as a sport in that as someone becomes a world-class racer, they might actually get regress w/r/t general athleticism. we can expect top-level athletes in a wide variety of sports to put up respectable numbers in a battery of tests for broadly assessed "fitness." whereas, i'd posit that a competitive grand tour rider would do no better than joe average when it came time to bang out some pushups or w/e.

cycling has very narrow expectations from the human body, to the point that something that might be considered handy, though not necessary, in another discipline (well developed upper body strength for the soccer player) is actually a hindrance in cycling (muscles are heavy! get rid of them!)

sport climbing/bouldering is a decent comparison: it was def in vogue in the 90s to advocate that aspiring sport climbers NOT run/bike because it would over-develop unneeded leg muscles, and dang, legs are the heaviest things around! even today, knuckle-dragging, rotator-cuff tearing boulderers are good at one thing and one thing only: developing upper-body power (usually from the back).

we should just go to the jock sports argument about what is and isnt a real sport, right? ;) no team? less likely to be a real sport. no ball? less likely to be a real sport. potential for spandex? ew, less likely to be a real sport. mitigating factor- risk of serious injuries or fatalities.

oh c'mon, that's not what i'm saying!

my ~real~ point was that cycling is unique as a sport in that as someone becomes a world-class racer, they might actually get regress w/r/t general athleticism.

gonna continue devil's advocacy here: this can be true of any sport other than a few cherry picked ones that you've included like xc skiing?

xpost gbx- i know

shasta has a point wrt specialization in any sport. when i was tryna be a basketball player i spent all my time training to be taller.