Posted on March 03, 2015 by Jenny Cromack

Improving your speed on a bike can seem like a daunting challenge, especially if the last time you cycled your legs where screaming at you. So the personal training team at Motive8 North have put together two simple steps to improve your cycling performance.

Yes that is all it takes…..two simple steps!

Step 1. Get the simple things squared away:

• To improve your cycling performance you need to drop body fat, every excess gram of body fat you are carrying will lowering your V02 max, making the body work unnecessarily hard. Dropping 10lb of body fat will make you much quicker in a shorter period of time!

Step 2. Get strong and develop the ability to utilise your new found strength:

 

It doesn’t matter how much individuals in the fitness industry bark on about strength training, endurance clients hate strength sessions! To demonstrate how important strength training is to improve your cycling performance I can show you thousands of studies, or better yet training programs from elite level road cyclists involving maximal strength training.

Strength training does not mean building muscle, strength training is far more complex, it involves improving the efficiency of the muscle motor units. If you strength train correctly you shouldn’t build much muscle at all, you definitely shouldn’t notice that much of a change in your appearance, but boy will you feel it in everything you do!

A great demonstration of this was recently published in the Journal of Strength And Conditioning, the researchers examined the effects of maximal strength training on cycling economy at 70% V02 max. One group acted as the control and completed their normal training in absence of of strength training, the other group completed 3 squat sessions per week including 4 sets of 4 repetitions of the back squat. the results were amazing….taking part in maximal strength training for eight weeks improved cycling economy and efficiency and increased time to exhaustion at maximal aerobic power among competitive road cyclists, without change in maximal oxygen uptake, cadence, or body weight. Therefore if you want to improve your cycling performance you should include maximal strength training in your programme. 

Now its need to be clear that lifting a weight 4 times doesn’t make it strength training, you need to be lifting between 80 and 90% of your 1RM, this ideally needs to be completed in a wave like fashion, i.e.

• Week 1- 80% 1RM
• Week 2- 85% 1Rm
• Week 3- 87.5-92.5% 1RM
• Week 4- 70% de-load (reassess 1 RM through a 3RM lift)

Repeating the cycle every 4 weeks will keep you gaining strength, the volume is so low it won’t build muscle, but bear in mind it won’t burn fat either, the work on the bike and in the kitchen will take care of that.

If you look further than simply to improve your cycling performance, strength training has numerous more benefits for a cyclist, Andersen and Aagaard (2011) recently concluded that  “strength training can lead to enhanced long-term (430 min) and short-term (o15 min) endurance capacity both in well-trained individuals and highly trained top-level endurance athletes, especially with the use of high- volume, heavy-resistance strength training protocols. The enhancement in endurance capacity appears to involve training-induced increases in the proportion of type IIA muscle fibers as well as gains in maximal muscle strength maximum voluntary contraction and rapid force characteristics (rate of force development), while likely also involving enhancements in neuromuscular function.

There is no reason, strength training cannot be continued though the training year, it is not advisable 2-3 weeks before major races, however 2 sessions a week appears to be the optimal frequency for strength development in road cyclists.

The most important lifts for a cyclist are included below, they don’t all need to be performed each session, pick 3-5 exercises, for 3-5 sets for 3-5 reps, rest 3-5 minutes between sets, and you can’t go wrong:

• Full Olympic back squat- if you can’t do this seek the help of a professional
• Half squat
• Split lunge, front foot elevated or rear foot elevated
• Overhead squat
• Clean variation deadlift
• Snatch grip RDL
• Single DB RDL
• Snatch grip push press
• Barbell hip thruster

We hope these tips help to improve your cycling performance.