Training4cyclists

Cycling Training Tips

central adaptations

Improvements through a cycling career

by Leave a Comment

When you start your cycling career, central adaptations increase your performance rapidly in the first three months. After one year of training you will discover that it takes more time to gain improvements. Now you will have to think more about how to train to keep improving. At this time improvements are often due to peripheral adaptations.

When you have trained seriously for a couple of years, you will experience that more training is needed before you get significant improvements. At this time you get the feeling of a training vacuum. You train more than you have ever done before, but your form does not change at all.

This is a critical moment in every serious riders´ career. The common outcome is that you sooner or later realize that you are not making further progress with the current program. You take the consequences and start making things different. This could be quitting, switching coach, switching club, different training methods, more training, less training, new bike, new wheels, eating nutritional supplements or getting so desperate that you take drugs. But often you will not realize that the problem is a training vacuum, because you have optimized cycling performance through proper training, eating and resting. Instead you victimize your coach, club or material because your performance has reached a plateau.

In the final part of your career cycling efficiency, tactics and experiences play a bigger role. You will use your knowledge about race tactics to eliminate eventually stronger opponents. You can win races without being the strongest rider, but making the correct moves at the correct moments, because of your gut feeling.

Peripheral Adaptations to Cycling Training

by 2 Comments

As a cyclist you are interested in a perfect working aerobic system and the skeletal muscle is certainly a part of this. Fortunately skeletal muscles are very adaptive to training.

A weight lifter will not gain the same changes as a cyclist would. The specific requirements are different and so are the peripheral adaptations in the skeletal muscle.

Increased capillary density

The capillary density increases after periods of cycling training, probably due to a greater demand for oxygen. This oxygen demand stimulates the growth of the capillary bed.

This is a unique adaptation that prepares your body for new challenges.

The diffusing distance between blood and cells is reduced when the capillary density is increased. A shorter diffusing distance makes the exchange of O2, CO2, substrates and metabolites faster.

The increased capillary density also results in a larger surface area available for this exchange, which gives a faster flow rate through the muscle.

During maximal cycling the trained musclue will receive a larger blood volume/min than the untrained muscle will.

More myoglobin

Like hemoglobin, myoglobin is able to bind, store and release oxygen. Myoglobin facilitates oxygen diffusion in muscle fibers that depend on aerobic metabolism.

Cycling training increases the content of myoglobin. More myoglobin means more diffusing forces, which results in a higher oxygen delivery in the skeletal muscle.

More mitochondrias

Increased number and size of the mitochondrias in the skeletal muscle shows us how important these small power fields are for the oxygen transport.

There are also at the same time an increase in a wide range of oxidative enzymes including those in the citric acid cycle.

Better use of free fatty acids as fuel

It is wellknown that the welltrained cyclist is able to cover a larger percentage of the energy demand with free fatty acids and triglycerids as fuel. This gives the welltrained cyclist an advantage because he saves his limited stores of glycogen for later use.

Even for welltrained cyclists with a low fat percent, the amounts of fat available as fuel is more than enough. In fact there is enough fuel for a very long time without hitting a gas station.

The degree of free fatty acids used is changed in the trained part of the body, for cyclists that is primarily the legs. Other parts of the body uses the same amount of free fatty acids as before training.

Larger glycogen stores

With training glycogen stores in the skeletal muscle will increase. It is though important to notice that glycogen stores is very close related to training status and dietary status.

If you train very intense your glycogen stores might be very low afterwards. If you eat a very carbohydrate-rich diet like pasta, rice or bread, your glycogen stores will increase. Carbohydrates are stored in the liver (25%) and the rest is stored in the skeletal muscles (75%).

Central Adaptations to Cycling Training

by 9 Comments

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.

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.