Cycling Training Tips

How to Boost Carb-Loading Before a Cycling Race

How to Boost Carb-Loading Before a Cycling Race

Most cyclists and triathletes have heard about and experienced the consequences of insufficient carb-loading before races. Carbohydrate loading has been used for many years to boost performance in cycling races lasting more than two hours in duration. While there are various methods of carb-loading, the process involves consuming large quantities of carbohydrate-rich food to fill

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How To Use a Heart Rate Monitor for Cycling

A heart rate monitor is one of the most used tools for pacing strategy during intervals or competitions, analyzing of performance and detection of overtraining. Polar heart rate monitor watches make very precise measurement of the current pulse. This information can be very useful for an experienced user who understands the exercise physiology behind heart rate regulation.

Getting started
One of the best ways to learn to use a heart rate monitor is to use one during training. Don’t buy one of the top models from Polar (cs600, s725 etc.) – these watches are not made for beginners. Instead try one of the basic Polar monitors for a beginning. These watches are cheaper and easier to deal with. There are also several other manufacturers of monitors and some of them are probably cheaper. My point is that for a beginner who has never tried heart rate monitors before, it might be a clever idea to buy one of the cheaper models for a beginning and then buy a more advanced heart rate monitor when you know which kind of data you are interested in. A Polar cs600 is a great tool for experienced riders, but is very likely to be overkill for a beginner.

Notify how your heart rate reacts
When you have bought a heart rate monitor: Get out on the roads! Spend a month with your regular training program, just wearing the monitor, but notifying how the heart rate reacts to the efforts. It is very interesting to study the heart rate and very quickly you will discover that you start to use the monitor for pacing. At this point you are already getting paid back for your investment, since you train harder and are more motivated during the ride.

Watch your own heart rate monitor – not your training partner’s…
The fact is that you can only compare heart rate values with your own previous registrations. The reason for this is that we all have a different anatomy of our cardiovascular system. But these systems are all based on the same physiological mechanisms. Thus, we can learn from each others’ physiological experiences and adaptations, but we can’t compare individual heart rate values. E.g. your resting heart rate is 58bpm while your friend’s heart rate is 42bpm, still I can’t say which one of you are in the best shape nor have the highest VO2 max.

Your maximum heart rate is correlated to your age, but that does not mean that we all fit in to 220-age formula. There is a huge standard deviation because we all are anatomically different. Just like with the resting heart rates, maximum heart rates does not predict performance.

Be patient
It is not necessary to use a special heart rate focused training program when you start to use it. As I said, just wearing the monitor for the first month is a very good education. I remember when I started to use a heart rate monitor for the first time back in the mid 90’s. At that time I had read some literature about general exercise physiology and heart monitors, but I lacked practical experience with the monitor. The result was that I made some target intervals for my heart rate which triggered the alarm system to beep most of the time. After a few of these rides I started to ride without target zones until I knew more about how my heart rate reacted during cycling. The lesson I learned was that you have to be patient and wait a while before you start doing intervals based on heart rate target zones.

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5 Simple Tips for a Better Recovery

When you train hard, you deserve to get good results. One of the best moments to improve your performance is the first hour after your training session. Here are 5 simple tips for a better recovery:

Cycling recovery

  1. Drink water
    60% of your body weight is water, so there is buffer system to cover water loss during training. Nevertheless this water loss has a huge impact on your performance and must be replaced as soon as possible. Plain water is under normal circumstances adequate for rehydration, since solid food replaces the electrolytes lost during exercise. Thus, if you eat properly, you do not need to take any supplements to make it up for the electrolytes. Under very hot conditions it is though necessary to replace electrolytes as well as the lost water.
  2. Eat carbohydrates
    Blood glucose concentration regulates the secretion of insulin, which works as an anabolic steroid for you after training. Thus, we are interested in eating carbohydrates to stimulate the secretion of insulin and get all the benefits of this naturally hormone. Insulin promotes the uptake of glucose from blood into cells (advanced version will come later), stimulates the synthesis of glycogen and promotes synthesis of muscle proteins.
  3. Eat proteins
    This is not an advice I will keep for strength lifters and body builders only. Muscles cells are built of proteins and they are broken down during training. Endurance athletes also need proteins immediately after training to recover from their effort. Just like carbohydrates, proteins stimulate secretion of insulin, which help building up the muscle again.
  4. Change clothes
    Get some dry clothes on immediately after training or competition. You can easily get a cold if you do not change clothes. And do it before you start to freeze, please. I have seen it a lot of times, when people are chatting after a race. Exactly that moment is one of the easiest moments to get ill. It is a very frequent mistake that happens again and again. Please do not do that mistake.
  5. Cool down
    Take a short ride in small gears. It helps your muscles to recover from hard intervals or races. Removal of lactate and other metabolits is enhanced when you do light exercise. Depending on your overall fitness, I will recommend you do a 5-20 minutes ride after each training session.

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Central Adaptations to Cycling Training

Cycling training forces your body to make both central and peripheral adaptations to the physical demands. Central adaptations are increases in both blood volume and total hemoglobin (Hb). The Hb concentration, better known as hematocrit, remains unchanged or even slightly lower for top athletes. The total blood volume increases after a few days of training due to an increased plasma volume. Later on there will be an increase in the amount of red blood cells (erythrocyts). An increase in the total blood volume is very useful since that will make the stroke volume larger. Thus, the heart can pump more oxygen transporting cells out for every stroke it makes and works more efficient. Since the maximal heart rate remains unchanged the maximal cardiac output is increased. This is a very important adaptation to cycling training. There is no difference in the (a-v) O2 uptake between welltrained cyclists and untrained. It is simply not possible to deoxygenate a larger percentile out in the capillaries. Thus, the delivery of hemoglobin is mainly dependent of the maximal cardiac output.

Adaptations in the heart

The higher stroke volume achieved through cycling training is mainly caused by an increase in the cardiac chamber size and an expanded total blood volume. The heart adapts specifically to the physical demands met during training session. A weight lifter will not get a larger chamber, but instead have a thicker wall in the left ventricle. This adaptation is supposed to meet the requirements for heavy lifting with high blood pressures. Remember that the heart is a muscle itself and needs training. Also it becomes better for what it is trained. So if a top cyclist decides to stop training or get injured, their heart will return back towards normal proportions. Just like any other muscle the heart needs regular training to maintain its fitness.

Hypertrophy is not the only adaptation in the cardiac system. The ventricle gets more compliant which means there is less resistance during filling. This allows stroke volume to increase and less work for the heart. And more importantly it also allows the heart to maintain an increased stroke volume during hard exercise. It is not possible to train your maximal heart rate, that factor will never grow, it might even decrease slightly for elite cyclists. To increase the maximal cardiac output you have to increase the strokevolume. Remember that cardiac output = stroke volume x heart rate.

The coronary vascular system is increased to meet the increased O2 demand for the larger ventricle.

Resting heart rate

You will probably already have noticed that your resting heart is lower when you are in good shape. This is because of a larger stroke volume or more correctly a bigger parasympathic drive on the sinus node. It is easy to monitor your resting heart rate, just put on your Polar rim when you wake up and relaxe for a couple of minutes. You will quickly discover that your heart rate is influenced by many factors. Physical or emotional stress gives a nervous response that accelerates the pulse. Different stress hormones also affect the heart rate. A good reason to know your normal level of resting heart rate is that you can use it to discover overtraining or illness. If your resting heart rate is 10-15 beats above normal, you might have a disease. In that case I will recommend you take your temperature and look for other symptoms. Avoid intensive training or races if you don´t feel well.

Remember that your resting and maximal heart rate are not comparable with your friends heart rates. Therefore you have to know your own heart rates because these are the only beats to worry about.

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Respiratory adaptations to cycling training

Training has only a little if any affect on the pulmonary system. You do not get a large lung capacity from training, you get it from your parents. Very specific training of the inspiratory muscles might increase the vital capacity about 3%.

Cyclists have a slower breathing rate than non-cyclists because of a larger tidal volume. This makes their breathing more efficient. Cyclists are able to achieve a smaller end-expiratory volume and larger end-inspiratory volume because their respiratory muscles are stronger and more fatigue-resistant. During exercise plasma lactate will increase and raise your ventilatory rate to wash out CO2 and stabilize pH. The primary respiratory changes with training are more likely secondary to a reduced lactate production during exercise. The ventilatory rate is primarly driven by the level of CO2.

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