Training4cyclists

Cycling Training Tips

hypertrophy

Strength Training Without Additional Body Mass – 3

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I often hear that cyclists skip strength training because they are afraid they will gain additional body weight. In this series I will try to explain how cyclists can strength train without gaining extra body weight. This article is number 3 of the ”˜Strength training without additional body mass series’. You can read the rest of this series here:
1. Why additional body weight should be avoided
2. Nutritional tips to avoid hypertrophy
3. Training tips to avoid hypertrophy
4. Tips about strength training

3. Training tips to avoid hypertrophy

When you start to strength train you will make progress in the beginning with little effort. This is not due to hypertrophy, but rather neural adaptations. This explains why beginners experience great improvements in the first couple of weeks when they begin to lift weights.

Maintaining a low body weight is essential in both road cycling and mountain bike, since carrying extra pounds (dead weight) decrease your performance. Actually 1kg can cost you around 1 minute on finishing time on Alpe d’Huez.

I have a couple of training tips that can help you to avoid hypertrophy of your muscles when you strength train:

Short sets of 1 to 5 reps
Sets of few reps apply very little damage to the muscle fibres (protein degradation). This damage is normally one of the parameters responsible for stimulating the muscle fibres to grow. Body builders would prefer sets from 6 to 15 reps, because these longer sets cause more protein degradation which stimulate the muscles to grow. 

Long recovery periods between sets
When you train for neural strength you are interested in a full or almost full recovery between each set. This little move, which is a very social and comfortable time of the training session, makes it possible to keep protein degradation at minimum. It also makes you able to perform lifts at higher level, which in the final end makes you stronger. I recommend you to take a break of at least 2 minutes between sets.

Avoid failure training
This training type is a big mistake when you train for neural adaptations. It might also be a big mistake if you train for hypertrophy, but that is another story. The point is that failure training might trigger your muscles to grow and also there is a risk that your strength gains will reach a plateau too early.

Avoid forced reps
This training type is not made for strength gains. It is from 80’s where people believed in ”˜No pain, no gain’. Again, if you focus on strength gains, forced reps are not a topic. Forget about the ‘No pain, no Pain’ attitude, well if you like to suffer, it is much better for you to suffer during som effective interval programmes made for your aerobic system. 

Be explosive
Well, this advice does not exactly protects your muscles from growth, but I think that it is an important advice for serious cyclists or other people interested in neural strength gains. In the concentric phase of the lift, you should try to barbell as fast as possible in the concentric phase (lifting phase).

Strength Training Without Additional Body Mass – 2

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I often hear that cyclists skip strength training because they are afraid they will gain additional body weight. In this series I will try to explain how cyclists can strength train without gaining extra body weight. You can read the rest of this series here:
1. Why additional body weight should be avoided
2. Nutritional tips to avoid hypertrophy
3. Training tips to avoid hypertrophy
4. Tips about strength training

2. Nutritional tips to avoid hypertrophy

It takes time to build big muscles. Before a muscle would start to grow it needs regular training sessions and plenty of the right calories served at the right time. The keyword is consistency.

You will need more calories than normal because building is muscles not essential for your body to survive. Thus, if you don’t get enough calories, your muscles will not begin to grow.

When a muscle increases its square diameter we call it hypertrophy. Nutrition plays a big role for hypertrophy and therefore I have included a nutritional article in the series about how to avoid additional body mass. Elite cyclists and other serious riders should normally try to avoid hypertrophy since it slows them down on the hills.

So what should you change when you start strength training?
Nothing! The biggest mistake is actually to make big changes when you start to strength train. (I suppose that you already eat a healthy diet with the proper amounts of carbohydrates, proteins and fat, whole grains, vitamins etc. If not, change your diet immediately! )

Avoid hidden calories
Avoid those hidden calories in juice and soft drinks. These calories accumulate and don’t provide value to your diet, but they provide simple fuel which makes it easier for your muscles to grow. You should also avoid products like cake, candy, ice cream etc. Ok, you are a serious athlete I know, so sorry for reminding you about so obvious things”¦

Focus on quality food
Thus, if you stick to your current diet, you will have enough fuel to train hard and recover from the training. You don’t need extra proteins, protein bars, amino acid supplements or anything like this. Save your money ”“ Instead spend them on quality food.

Remember that your strength training focuses on a small volume. Thus, there will only be a slightly degree of extra protein degradation. If you eat a healthy diet there will already be enough proteins ready for your recovery period. I will talk more about protein degradation in the next part of this series.

Strength Training Without Additional Body Mass – 1

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I often hear that cyclists skip strength training because they are afraid they will gain additional body weight. In this series I will try to explain how cyclists can strength train without gaining extra body weight.

Before we start, I will just make sure that everyone understand that we don’t know whether strength training makes you a better cyclist. It’s still uncertain and there is still no evidence (read more on lack of evidence on strength training for cyclists here)

1. Why additional body weight should be avoided

Larger muscle cells (that will say larger square diameter) can generate more power. That is the most commonly known way to increase power, though it is not desirable for cyclists. The problem is that a large muscle mass is heavy to carry and there is a dilution of mitochondrias.

Additional body weight will slow you down when you climb or accelerate your bike.

Notice that I include accelerations, because many riders forget that their body weight also matters when they accelerate their bike out of a corner.

Enthusiasts riding with power meters may have introduced you to the term ”˜power to weight ratio’. That refers to how many watts you can push compared to your body weight. That ratio has a huge impact when you climb (or accelerate”¦)

If you are able to increase your power to weight ratio, you are very likely to improve your performance in mountain stages, but there are also other apects worth considering while fine tuning your body weight, like I talk about here: Maximum power output or watts per kilogram?

Thus, an increment of maximal strength made through hypertrophy will probably not result in a better overall cycling performance. Forget about most principles used by body builders, not because I don’t like body builders, but because their training programs are designed to optimize their hypertrophy.

When I recommend strength training for cyclists, I focus on strength gains through neural adaptations. In another post in this series I will talk about how we can train for neural adaptations instead of hypertrophy.

So I should drop strength training to avoid additional body weight?
No, it is very unlikely that you will gain weight if you use the principles I advocate for here in this article series.

There are some simple tricks you can do to minimize or in fact eliminate hypertrophy. As you can imagine, there are millions of people in the world trying to bulk muscles, but only the most dedicated people are succeeding in their project. The reason for this is that just like in cycling you will have to be very determined about how you train, how you eat and how you live if you want to be successful.

So building muscles is not as easy as you might think.

How a muscle develop force

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This is a short description of how a muscle can develop force:

What is a motor unit

A motor unit is a functional unit that contains a single nerve and all the muscle fibres innervated by the nerve. All muscle fibres are grouped together as motor units and have an average of 150 fibres pr motor neuron.

Hypertrophy

Larger muscle cells (that will say larger square diameter) can generate more power. That is the most commonly known way to increase power, though it is not desirable for cyclists. The problem is that a large muscle mass is heavy to carry and there is a dilution of mitochondrias. Thus, an increment of maximal strength made through hypertrophy will probably not result in a better overall cycling performance.

Nervous regulation of force

Basically there are two ways to control a muscle’s force.

One way is to recruit more motor unit, which will activate more motor units. You can think of this as the brain tells the muscle to use a larger percentile of the muscle’s fibres to generate power. Motor units are recruited to in order of size. Small motor units are recruited before large motor units. This is called the size principle of recruitment.

The second way to regulate force production is through rate coding. It is an increment of the frequency of impulse signals to the motor unit. When a motor unit is stimulated more frequently, the twitches begin to overlap each other, which will generate a larger force.

So now we know the basic physiology behind the mechanisms used to increase the force. It is either to build larger muscle mass, make a better recruitment of motor units or fire a higher frequency of stimuli to the motor neurons.