Most people do not warm up sufficiently. Without a good warm-up your RPE will be higher than it otherwise would be, meaning you are using less weight and/or doing fewer reps than would be optimal. As an example, when doing legs I target an RPE of 9, but the most painful set I do is actually the first warm-up set of bodyweight squats that I perform at the beginning of every leg workout. The very first rep of that first set is excruciating - knees ache, muscles feel like they’re tearing, it’s horrible. The second and third sets hurt too, but a little less each time, and by the fourth set I feel really good and just rep out sets of 8-15 bodyweight squats to loosen things up. Next, for whichever leg exercise I’m doing, I start with light weight and do a set or two of 8 reps, then increase the weight and knock a rep or two off as the weight goes up, until I’m doing singles with a little less than the weight I’ll be using for the actual working sets (how much less depends on the exercise, but usually between 10 and 50 pounds). The heavy (but less than working weight) singles for warming up are important because they will get your neurological system fired up and get those fast twitch fibers ready to go to work. THEN you start working out.
Leg hypertrophy is great for increasing pedaling strength. A few extra pounds of muscle isn’t going to slow you down - it’s 100% functional for pedaling and involves numerous adaptations: thicker actin and myosin filaments which can exert more force and, simultaneously, withstand more force (strain); increased glycogen storage; increased mitochondrial size; increases in other organelles such as golgi and ribosomes. When it comes to recovery, many people think only in terms of mitochondria and glycogen, but ribosomes are especially important for this, as they regulate protein synthesis - recovery isn’t merely re-filling glycogen, it includes making structural adaptations within the muscle cell and those all require protein synthesis. Hypertrophy means more muscular stuff, all of which matters for exercise performance.
“I recommend that anyone, not just bodybuilders, do 80% of their cardio work at 70-75% of their maximum heart rate, which is zone 2,” Viada says. “If they’re already doing 3-3.5 hours of that per week, they only need to add another 1-2 hours of specific training for their sport to their workout schedule.”
Some people are genetic freaks and look jacked without lifting any weights, and some are fast without riding a bike. Idk I think you have to pick what you want to be good at. If you want to win cycling nationals you won’t get there spending 3-5 days in the gym lifting using periodized progressively overload strength program. Then again track cycling maybe you could?
We can try but I doubt it will happen, then again I’m not an exercise physiologist.
Why do you need Cog to be your fact check warrior? You can do it yourself. Some people assume hypertrophy means muscles merely inflate with water but I assure you that is not the case. In the past, in order to learn about this stuff without taking classes you’d have to visit a university research library; today a lot of it is at your fingertips. Take 30 minutes to read about skeletal muscle anatomy - it’s very interesting, extremely complex, and you can find online everything that was in my anatomy and physiology textbook. PubMed is your friend.
To add to this, I also think if we had a low body fat percentage >6% we’d all look ripped. Not healthy imo, I’m around 14-16% body fat and kind of have a six pack. Based on my profile name, I like food and like being able to eat what I want.
This picture chart seems somewhat accurate, I don’t want to body shame. Most people with low body fat are miserable and restrict food which sound terrible. Luckily as cyclist we can burn a lot of calories and enjoy pizza and snacks. What's So Bad About Pizza?
Posted this today, next week I’m hosting and riding. Need some ideas on how to deliver the first part! My wife is at the gym while we are riding, and won’t be home until after the event starts.
Yep, and “jacked” is a subjective term. I know lots of dudes who are carrying a lot of muscle mass, but are extremely squishy. Everyone should strive to have enough muscle to be a strong/healthy person, but not everyone wants bulk. I personally don’t want to be big, but I do want to be strong and I fall into the cyclist trap of getting lazy about upper body work. Lots of squats and dead lifts and other leg work, upper body is pretty limited to a bunch of push ups, some bench press, and some pull ups/curls sprinkled in (but no heavy weight work). I definitely need more upper body strength, but I’m pretty lean for an old dude and you can at least see the muscles I’ve got.
That’s one thing triathletes have on cyclists, they often look better with their shirts off. This dude (Jan F.) is about 6’4" and goes about 170lbs. He isn’t gonna win the crossfit games, but he’s super lean and I’d say he’s got a healthy amount of muscle mass (I’m sure opinions vary on that).
Hypertrophy does not necessarily mean track sprinter legs, which are heavily dependent on fast twitch fibers, it means increased muscle mass. I would offer that Wout’s and Jonas’ legs have some serious hypertrophy. As an aside, I watched Greg LeMond crest the Vesuvius climb in the Tour DuPont in the early/mid 90s and was stunned at how massive his legs were - he looked like he could play linebacker with those suckers and he only weighed 150 pounds. Hypertrophy can be the result of years of 20+ hour weeks on the bike and it can be the result of strength training for those who don’t have time, desire, or ability to ride big hours. And as I said it isn’t one thing it involves many different adaptations. Not really sure what your comment about track sprinters is intended to mean (For track sprinters I thought it was about increasing creatine stores, glycolytic stores, and max force production). By glycolytic stores do you mean glycogen stores? Hypertrophy can result in part from increased glycogen storage. Muscle cross-sectional area is also associated with strength; on the other hand, separate from hypertrophy is the ability to recruit additional fast twitch fibers as a result of neurological adaptations. All these adaptations go hand in hand and work together; my point is that one should not think that because their legs increased in mass that it is a detrimental thing - it isn’t, it’s a good thing, it all goes toward moving the bike forward at a faster speed.
Don’t take my word for anything. People much smarter than myself have studied this:
and repeatedly come to the conclusion that strength training in the gym isn’t really a significant factor in going faster on the bike. Very minor benefits.
Yeah, I know lots of dudes (including myself) who get a bit surprised by Dexa numbers. As a guy in my mid 50’s, I’m happy with anything under 20% and I’m usually ~17% in race shape. At that %, my legs and arms look like “vein maps” of branched rivers, but I still need to look hard to see the abs (airbrushed accents and the right lighting helps).
I’m pretty sure the evidence has repeatedly shown the opposite? One need only search for the many many many TR podcasts on this subject.
I’ve read the study you cited–it doesn’t discuss the effects of strength training on endurance sports.
I don’t think this is even debated at this point:
Rønnestad, B.R.; Hansen, E.A.; Raastad, T. Effect of heavy strength training on thigh muscle cross-sectional area, performance determinants, and performance in well-trained cyclists. Eur. J. Appl. Physiol. 2010, 108, 965–975.
Vikmoen, O.; Ellefsen, S.; Trøen, Ø.; Hollan, I.; Hanestadhaugen, M.; Raastad, T.; Rønnestad, B.R. Strength training improves cycling performance, fractional utilization of VO2max and cycling economy in female cyclists. Scand. J. Med. Sci. Sports 2016, 26, 384–396.
Aagaard, P.; Andersen, J.L.; Bennekou, M.; Larsson, B.; Olesen, J.L.; Crameri, R.; Magnusson, S.P.; Kjaer, M. Effects of resistance training on endurance capacity and muscle fiber composition in young top-level cyclists. Scand. J. Med. Sci. Sports 2011, 21, e298–e307.
Rønnestad, B.R.; Mujika, I. Optimizing strength training for running and cycling endurance performance: A review. Scand. J. Med. Sci. Sports 2014, 24, 603–612.
Beattie, K.; Kenny, I.C.; Lyons, M.; Carson, B.P. The Effect of Strength Training on Performance in Endurance Athletes. Sports Med. 2014, 44, 845–865.
Berryman, N.; Mujika, I.; Arvisais, D.; Roubeix, M.; Binet, C.; Bosquet, L. Strength Training for Middle- and Long-Distance Performance: A Meta-Analysis. Int. J. Sports Physiol. Perform. 2018, 13, 57–63.
There have been frequent discussions here recently, but the TLDR is that strength training won’t make you aerobically faster, won’t raise your FTP, except in certain edge cases. It absolutely can help sprint / anaerobic power, help with durability / injury prevention, etc.
If you want to raise your threshold, and get faster on the bike, strength training isn’t the best way to do it if you’re talking aerobic power.
There are also people on this forum who really appear personally offended by that and do the best they can to post as much inconclusive gibberish as they can to obfuscate the issue.
Kolie / Empirical cycling was involved in the recent discussion and has some great podcasts on the subject if you’re so inclined
Do you have links to these (and particularly the evidence)? It’s been known that VO2 max is unchanged (not surprising), but I’m seeing increases in mean power output (which incorporates more factors than raw aerobic ability).
Not super interested in rehashing the literature from years ago, but if there’s some new solid debunking study or better analysis of the evidence, I’d be interested in reading it.
