Training4cyclists

Cycling Training Tips

Cycling Training Tips from Jesper Bondo Medhus

The #1 Way to Achieve Better Performance

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Imagine if there was a secure and legal way to improve your cycling performance within 6 to 8 weeks…

Think about it.

You can reach a new level if you are ready to take the necessary steps.

Are you ready?

There is one thing that we all know that can possible improve performance: more training.

Yes, it’s obvious and well known. But it is a proven method that has been successfully used for many years.

If you are able to add 20% to your current training volume, there is a good chance that you can ride much faster within 6 to 8 weeks from now.

What does that mean?

If you train 5 hours per week, you should increase your training volume to 6 hours per week. If you ride on avg. 10hours per week, you should increase your training volume to 12 hours per week.

There is no guarantee, but there is definitively a really good chance you’ll get closer to the best physical shape of your life.

However, finding time for more training is a big challenge. Therefore it is not uncommon that many riders say that ‘lack of time’ is the main reason why they don’t perform better.

Even though, I’m a strong advocate for time effective training, I totally agree that you can make significant better results with more training. For example if you are able to add 20% to your training volume, I would be surprised if that did not positively influence your performance within 6 to 8 weeks.

And it’s not that difficult to find 1 to 2hours per week if you try hard enough.

After all, it’s probably the easiest way to improve your performance.

So here is my training advice for you today:
Increase your current training volume 20%. Simple as that.

Interview with Matt Fitzgerald – Author of ‘Racing Weight – How to Get Lean for Peak Performance’

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A few weeks ago I made a review of Matt Fitzgerald’s popular book Racing Weight – How to Get Lean for Peak Performance. I thought it was a great read with many practical examples and illustrations of how athletes can manage their diet to perform better.

However, many readers are not going to read the whole book, but want practical tips that are easy to implement now. So I decided to contact Matt Fitzgerald to ask for some easy digestible tips that you can implement today.

Interview with Matt Fitzgerald

Jesper: Many riders bulk 5 to 10 kg during the off-season. People train less and eat more. What is in your opinion the most valuable advice for road cyclists to limit excess body weight during the winter season?

Matt: Start by giving yourself a limit for off-season weight gain. A certain amount of weight gain is normal and healthy. If you set a numerical cap on it, though, you’ll be less likely to gain too much.

Keeping your diet quality high will help you stay within the limit you’ve set. In my book, I present a diet quality scoring system that makes it easy to stay on track in this regard. There’s also a DQS (for Diet Quality Score) app now available for iPhone and Droid.

Jesper: Can you provide a practical example of how my readers can implement such strategy?

Matt: In the book I talk about something I call the 8 percent rule. According to this rule, you are allowed to go up to 8 percent above your optimal racing weight during the off season. So if your racing weight is 68 kg, you may go up to 73 kg during the off season. This doesn’t mean you HAVE to gain that much weight, and some of it should be muscle, as I recommend maintaining a heavier emphasis on strength training during the off season.

Jesper: In your book you talk about body composition and the strong correlations between fat percentage, body weight and performance. For riders that are new to serious bike training it can be difficult to know what exactly target they are shooting for. Can you provide some numbers that are relevant for road cyclists that want to perform at their best in 2015?

Matt: All cyclists perform at their best when they have close to the minimum amount of body fat that is healthy for them. So even though body weight (or mass) is measured in kilograms or pounds, it’s body fat percentage that really determines an individual rider’s optimal racing weight.

There are several factors that influence the BF% that is realistically attainable for an individual cyclist. These include age, gender, history of being overweight, and genetics. Because so many factors are involved, it’s impossible to rigorously predict a rider’s optimal racing weight. It is possible to make reasonable estimates, though, and I’ve created a tool that does this.

Jesper: What is your argument for using these values?

Matt: The tool works very well. Athletes who actually attain their optimal racing weight (something that few do) typically find that it is very close to the number that the calculator predicted. I should add that the only way to determine what your optimal racing weight really is is to attain it, because racing weight is functionally defined. Specifically, an athlete’s optimal racing weight is his weight/body fat percentage at the time of peak racing form.

Jesper: In your book, you state that ‘the dietary habits and training methods of the world’s best performing athletes define what works’. I like the idea of using the leaders as role models. It’s pretty hard to argue against the nutritional strategy from an olympic champion…

However, there is now evidence that doping play a significant role in professional endurance sports including not only methods to increase endurance for example EPO or blood transfusion but also drugs that will manipulate body composition over time, e.g. insulin, growth hormone, testosterone etc. Should we still follow the leaders (without doping, of course)?

Matt:Yes. The six rules of the Racing Weight program (1. Improve your diet quality, 2. Manage your appetite, 3. Balance your energy sources, 4. Monitor yourself, 5. Time your nutrition, and 6. Train for racing weight) are not only practiced almost universally by elite endurance athletes but also supported by experimental science. They are proven to work just as well for athletes who do not use performance-enhancing drugs as for those who do.

I can assure you that, as a clean endurance athlete, you are not likely to reach your optimal racing weight by lowering your diet quality, failing to manage your appetite, etc.

Jesper: I know that IF there was a magic formula for optimal eating or training, everybody would use it.

However, if you were supposed to re-write your book today, are there any recommendations you would adjust now or expect to adjust in the future?

Matt: Actually, I got a chance to revise the original Racing Weight for a second edition that was published in 2013. I still consider this edition fully up-to-date and therefore would not make any significant changes.

Jesper: Are there any ‘trends’ in nutritional strategies you expect that will get more attention in the future, for example post-exercise practices or use of protein supplement?

Matt: Lately I see more elite endurance athletes engaging in the practice of carbohydrate-deprivation workouts. It entails doing a long training session without what would normally be considered adequate carbohydrate intake before and during.

It is done only occasionally, once a week or so, and its main purpose is to increase the fat-burning capacity of the muscles during exercise, but it may also have a very small favorable effect on body composition.

Jesper: Ok, final question. From my personal experience, practical tips and tricks are more valuable than ‘eat no more than 30% fat’ or similar. Instead, it’s more effective for me to eliminate all the kind of low quality food items I’d better not eat. Simply, make all cakes etc. out of reach.

Matt, do you have any tips in this category that you would share with my readers?

Matt: One helpful tip is a complement to the example you just gave. In addition to keeping unhealthy foods out of reach, try to keep healthy foods always within reach. Have healthy snacks such as fruit and nuts available everywhere: in the car, at your office desk, in your airplane carry-on bag, etc.

Thanks to Matt Fitzgerald for contributing with his knowledge about nutrition for endurance athletes here on Training4cyclists.

If you want to learn more about effective nutritional strategies there is a recent review of ‘Racing Weight’ on Training4cyclists and you can find a couple of other books from Matt Fitzgerald over at Amazon and his personal website here: www.mattfitzgerald.org.

Power sprints – Your Secret Weapon to Powerful Attacks

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Have you ever tried to launch an attack in a cycling race or maybe even an attempt to make a race-winning move? If you have, you have probably also experienced the most likely scenario: the other riders closes the gap without struggling, because your attempt lacks power.

How can you learn the skill to make more powerful race-winning moves?

If we take a look at the initial phase of your attack, all you need to focus on is neural strength. If you watch a power meter file from your most powerful attempts, you are very likely above 1000Watts or even higher.

Such efforts require activation of all relevant muscle fibers available. But you can lift up your maximal power significantly, if you train this speciality.

In this article, I’ll give you suggestions to improve your initial launch of a powerful attack.

Power sprints as part of transition from winter training

In the last couple of years weight lifting has gotten more attention from cycling coaches and athletes. More coaches believe that you can gain advantages if you use weight lifting as part of your winter training.

One of the challenges is to secure that all the time spend in the weight lifting gym can be converted to better performance on the bike. Since road cyclists and mountain bike riders are mostly interested in neural adaptations, choice of exercises should also be very specific.

In weight lifting you get stronger at the movements and lifting patterns you train. So there is only a limited transfer of strength gain from one exercise to other exercises. And you see the same when you jump over at your bike again.

So even if you make a 50% gain in your 1 repetition maximum (1RM) squat, you shouldn’t be disappointed if you don’t pedal 50% higher power outputs during sprints. As I said previously, there is only a limited transfer between exercises.

One of the coolest things about power sprints is that you can easily combine these sprints with other intervals.

There is not much recovery required after a couple of sprints, so you can perform scheduled aerobic intervals later in the same training session. Since these sprints are almost ‘recovery-free’, I use them frequently in training programs both winter season, pre-season and in-season.

Typically one to two times per week and always during the first hour of the training session.

How to improve your explosiveness with power sprints

From a very low speed (0 to 5 km/hr) make an explosive acceleration for about 10 seconds. Use gear ratio 53 / 14-17 teeth. You can do both seated and standing sprints. Full recovery (at least 5 min) before the next power sprint.

Perform five to eight sprints per training session.

Power sprints are great to make neural adaptations. They’ll help you make more powerful launches of attacks and sprints. It is probably the closest you’ll get to heavy strength training on your bike. And it is probably the most specific way you can do strength training.

Thus, I also recommend these power sprints in combination with weight lifting during the winter season.

Please note that this little exercise doesn’t cover all aspects of race-winning moves. So you still have to pay attention to anaerobic endurance, VO2 max, threshold power etc.

Review: Racing Weight by Matt Fitzgerald

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As a cycling coach and medical doctor you have many niches to master. Nutritional advice is just one of them. In the past years, I have had several requests from road cyclists and triathletes about nutritional advice and strategies to achieve optimal racing weight and performance.

It seems like many athletes tend to ask very specific questions and get lost in all the different advice and products available. So cooking the knowledge into scientific-based recommendations is challenging. And picking the essential advice from hundreds of different studies of varying quality into useful, pragmatic guidelines is even more challenging.

Racing Weight for endurance athletes

Matt Fitzgerald, a journalist with solid insight into endurance training and nutrition has written a book that is highly recommendable. It’s called ‘Racing Weight’ and represents a serious introduction to the available knowledge about nutritional strategies for endurance athletes.

One of the things I like about this book is its pragmatic approach to sport nutrition. It’s not just another attempt to become the sport nutrition bible. Instead, it has a very practical and useful approach to make understandable tools and concepts that actually work for athletes.

Throughout the book Fitzgerald refers to many professional athletes and use their approach as ‘golden standard’. In other words: If a world class endurance athlete uses one nutritional strategy, he is probably doing most things the optimal way. So when african runners are some of the fastest long distance runners in the world, you shouldn’t tell them they eat wrong.

If it works for the best endurance athletes, they must be doing something right

The mantra from Fitzgerald is the following:

‘The Racing Weight system is based on the weight-management methods for endurance athletes most often take to attain their racing weight are by definition the most effective weight-management methods for endurance athletes because the objective of weight management in endurance sports is better performance. The surest way to reach racing weight is to simply copy these practices.’

So in this book, Fitzgerald introduces his own concept to appetite control and weight management. Yes, almost every book about nutrition has it’s own route to success.

Nevertheless, I think the tips to control diet are reasonable and well argued. Also, he keeps telling the differences between serious endurance athletes and regular people that want to lose weight. It’s a different situation and so it should be attacked differently. Losing weight only makes sense as long as it equals better performance.

Even though I like the pragmatic concept to set world class athlete as ‘golden standard’ for what works, I believe it’s wrong to completely ignore the fact that doping is an integral part of world class endurance sports.

History has shown that many of these athletes have used methods that not only improve endurance using injections of EPO or blood transfusion, but also several drugs that manipulate body composition over time – for example insulin, growth hormone, testosterone etc. However, the best athletes in the world do have very sound nutritional principles you can learn from to improve your own diet and performance.

Conclusion: Recommended for endurance athletes that want to optimize their race performance

The overall impression of this book is very good. The recommendations presented in this book make good sense with what I’ve previously studied about nutrition.

So if you want nutritional advice with a slightly scientific touch, I believe Fitzgerald has done an excellent job to cook down many different tips into digestible, practical recommendations for endurance athletes.

You can purchase a Kindle or physical edition of Racing Weight at Amazon.com.

Boost Your Anaerobic Performance with Race-Winning Intervals (3 interval sessions)

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Imagine if you were able to make much stronger attacks at the most decisive moments in a cycling race.

If you could push 50-100 Watts more and keep it there just a little longer.

Could it make a difference? Could it possible increase your chances of winning?

No doubt.

The good news is that you can actually boost your anaerobic performance with very small adjustments to your current training.

And you don’t have to work harder, but you need to pay more attention to the specific skills you want to train.

You can call them Race-Winning Intervals.

Let me explain…

Most road cyclists enjoy riding long endurance rides lasting 1to 2hours and sometimes up to 6+ hours.

Some of them include structured intervals focusing on lifting their functional threshold power and VO2 max on a regular basis.

It all makes good sense.

But it is only a small minority that use structured intervals targeting anaerobic power and endurance. If you ask me, it’s a big mistake.

Why? Because the shorter races you ride, the more important your anaerobic skills are.

So there is actually a HUGE potential if you train these skills the right way (because most of your opponents don’t).

Here is a story from a rider who took his anaerobic performance to a new level with race-winning intervals:

I’ve done a few crits but being 69kg and more of a climber I’ve always struggled to get in the points. I always lost positions in the last lap or two, generally ended up between 10th and 20th.

So I started doing your anaerobic interval sessions on the turbo trainer – I did about 6 or 7 sessions over 3 weeks.

24th June I was 10th
8th July I was 6th
15th July I was 1st – won by breaking away on the last lap using my new found anaerobic endurance (1 lap is just over 1 minute)

Very pleased, thanks for the sessions!

Gary Bury

As you can see, anaerobic performance can make significant changes to your race performance. Remember there is not much difference between the aerobic endurance of podium and top-15 riders.

Most podium riders are able to make harder attacks or sprints than the rest. Some of these riders are gifted with these skills from their parents.

Well, I agree, that is quite difficult to change when you read this…

Nevertheless, anaerobic performance is quite trainable and you can make enormous improvements in short time.

It is actually much faster than developing aerobic power.

Here are three examples (1-1.5hrs) of how you can improve your anaerobic power and endurance:

Race-Winning Intervals #1 (last Kilo jump)

15 minutes – warm up (increasing intensity)
5 x (60sec. maximum intensity + 9 min. recovery)
Cool down

Race-Winning Intervals #2 (long sprint)

15 minutes – warm up (increasing intensity)
8 x flying 500m sprints + 9 min. recovery)
Cool down

Race-Winning Intervals #3 (hill sprint)

15 minutes – warm up (increasing intensity)
10 x (20sec. slow start, hill sprints + 6 min. recovery)
Cool down

If you perform 6 to 8 of these sessions during the next month, I expect to hear more success stories like the one mentioned above.

Give it a try!