Ride Faster-Be Stronger!
Strength Training on the Bike
By:  Author Unknown

This title is a bit misleading. If you become stronger on the bike, you will not only be a faster rider, but you will also be able to ride longer, push bigger gears, and run faster off the bike! Specific strength sessions are particularly designed for Half Ironman and Ironman triathletes, but also non-draft legal short distance athletes. Although, it should be part of the training regimen of triathletes racing ITU as well, it is not as crucial for them as it is for long distance triathletes, who have to be able to push big gears, during long periods of times.

By strength, we mean the force a rider can apply on the pedals. Because the power you develop on the bike is given by the speed multiplied by the strength you can apply, then improving your strength will make you a more powerful rider, and therefore a faster rider, provided you do not lose any leg speed. Indeed, if you can pedal at 90rpm on a 53x17, with 23mm tires, then you improve your strength to be able to push a 53x16 with the same cadence, your speed will jump from 35.6km/h to 37.8km/h! I guess it is worth it to give it a try...
The idea behind strength training is not to improve the force a fiber can generate, but more to recruit more fibers when pedaling. In order to achieve this, body-builders lift heavy weights very slowly to induce a near maximum contraction for a relatively long time. For cyclists, or triathletes it is the same principle which is applied, but still respecting the specificity of cycling. The best way to generate a near maximum contraction for a long period is to push very big gears at a slow cadence. When climbing, staying in the saddle, you will be able to develop even higher muscular contraction. These sessions are commonly done by professional cyclists. In the early season, to prepare for the classics, Frank Van Den Brouck (Cofidis) does between 6 and 10 times 3' interval, in 53x14, on a 8% climb (actually, he does these session on the professional technogym trainer, similar to the computrainer, repeating 3' interval at 500W, at 50rpm, 1'30'' recovery). Lance Armstrong is also keen on these sessions, and leading up to the Tour de France has done as many as 3x30' of climbing, on the biggest gear he can, staying seated! No wonder, why he does not even bother getting out of the saddle to drop everyone! If you leave in a flat area, or if you don't have climbs long enough, do not despair, these sessions can also be done on the flat (but the intervals need to be longer), into the wind, or on a turbo trainer, provided there is enough resistance to generate a high load on the muscles.  If you prepare for a relatively flat Ironman, or an Ironman with steady climbs, a good strategy would be to couple specific strength sessions over hills, and on the flat.

Sessions over hills

Over 60km to 120km (depending on when your first race is, the distance, and your cycling background), after a thorough warm-up, start with 4x2km on a big gear, staying in the saddle maintaining a cadence between 50 and 70 (experienced triathletes could aim at 50 to 60rpm, but beginners and intermediate triathletes should not used gears with which they can not maintain between 65-70rpm). Use the downhill to recover. Build up to 6-7x3km for short distance triathletes, and 6x5km for Ironman athletes. Very experienced cyclists can build up progressively to 4x10km

Sessions on the Flats

We believe these sessions can be conveniently added in a long ride during the build period leading up to a big race, or during brick sessions, which will make the run even more challenging. Start with 10km efforts on the flat over a 50-60km ride maintaining a cadence of 60-65 during the beginning of the build up period. Ironman triathletes can build up to a total of 80km over a 6h ride, doing for example 4x20km, Rest:10' on a big gear maintaining, 60-65rpm, if the goal is only to increase strength, and 70-75rpm if you want to make it more race specific.

Remarks
Do not attempt any of these sessions if you have knee problems (patella or ITB). If done over hills, focus on maintaining proper form (do not move upper body too much) avoid mashing the pedals, maintain the efficient pedal stroke you have (should have!) been working on during winter if done on the flat, and stay in the aero position,  with our hands relaxed When recovering, try to maintain a high cadence (above 100rpm). As we said initially, power is speed x strength, therefore to be fully beneficial, you need to make sure that more strength will not decrease your leg speed.

This increased strength will make you a more powerful rider, and therefore a faster rider. But, it will also make you more economical on the bike, as at a given intensity, you will need a lower percentage of your maximal strength. Eventually, because the bike leg of the triathlon will be easier, you will have more energy when running off the bike, and indirectly, your improved strength will also be beneficial to your run.

*I did not write this article as it was sent to me some time ago and I thought it relevant to a particular question that recently came up.

And if you do have knee problems?  How can you increase strength/speed on the bike without be too hard on the knees?

Dr._G wrote on Mar 17^th, 2006, 4:52pm:


The best way to get faster on the bike is to improve your aerobic capacity.  Everyone is already "strong" enough; I'll wager that many people here are stronger than Chris Boardman was.

Dr._G wrote on Mar 20^th, 2006, 11:27am:


Just to comment on Boardman:  his max wattage was something like 900W; I, who couldn't sprint his way out of a paper bag, have hit over 1100W.  I was stronger than Chris Boardman.  The difference was in the length of time each of us could hold a significant fraction of our max wattage, and that has everything to do with aerobic capacity and nothing to do with strength.  Also, for nearly all courses we triathletes do, weight doesn't really matter on the bike.

Unless you are doing 10-30 second sprints, just about all bike workouts are "aerobic"; the 4000m pursuit (a ~4min effort) is considered an endurance cycling event.  Anaerobic capacity contributes very, very little to endurance cycling.

Finally, for those of us who can train only 4-8 hours per week, there is no time for "slower aerobic cycling" from which to transition.

Just trying to inject some alternative views, not trying to argue (much)...

Brian Shea wrote on Mar 21^st, 2006, 4:38pm:


Sorry to appear argumentative.  It seems to be a commonly held belief that endurance cycling is somehow a strength-limited activity, when it appears from what I've read that it is not.  So, when someone responds that these workouts "improves cycling speed by building strength or power", or "one of the best workouts you can do to improve cycling performance", it perpetuates the belief that "if I can get stronger, then I'll be faster".

If you, as owner of this forum, would rather I not provide alternate perspectives on what I understand to be incorrect ideas ('anaerobic workouts', building speed by increasing strength', etc.), I'll desist.  Heck, I'm not a coach.

Dr._G wrote on Mar 29^th, 2006, 7:58pm:


It's interesting that, in the article on resistance training, they reference what they call "the only pervious (sic) training study performed during the competitve phase of a season" done on swimmers, they neglect Costill's 1993 study of exactly that, which showed that his competitive Ball State swimmers showed no improvement in swimming speed after doing dry land swim-specific resistance training.  Of course, they were more "powerful" by 25% or more, but not faster.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstra...

I'm not sure what you mean by "sustained periods of time", but Faris al-Sultan averaged 283W at IM Hawaii in 2005, Sindballe 286W, and Stadler 268W.  This is from their actual power data files for the race.  Race info can be found here:  http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?post=583379

ChuckyFinster wrote on Mar 30^th, 2006, 7:13pm:


Weight has significance when climbing and while accelerating.  There aren't a lot of triathlons with significant climbing (like >7% sustained climbs) where a couple of pounds add up to a lot of time.  Yes, a bunch of pounds will slow you down when climbing, for sure.
The accelerations (coming out of corners, getting up to speed) typically found in triathlons are pretty small, and weight isn't that important.

ChuckyFinster wrote on Mar 31^st, 2006, 2:45pm:


I think that my limiters in triathlon are not strength-related, so I would consider weight training to be a waste of time.  If I had more time, I would use it to do more less-intensive training in addition to the pretty intensive stuff I now do.  Either that or I wouldn't swim at 5am...