Why the Best Use of Your Off Season May be to Take out a Gym Membership
By now most competitive cyclists are aware that augmenting your on-the-bike training with some gym work can significantly help you reach your performance goals, but why exactly is that? In this article we’ll discuss the direct benefits of a strength-building program, and in particular why you should incorporate it into your off-season routine.
Many endurance athletes have been reluctant to take out a gym membership, either because they think that the whole gym scene is just not for them, or commonly because they think that adding muscle in the gym will increase their overall weight and hence slow them down on the bike particularly when climbing. As a consequence a lot of athletes either avoid the gym completely, or they may dabble in resistance training, but falsely believe that a high rep /low resistance approach will net them the best results and avoid ‘bulking up’ with unwanted muscle mass.
Let’s address this concern from the get-go: while an increase in muscle size – ‘hypertrophy’, will to some degree eventually manifest from a sustained resistance training program, this does not always equate to a bad thing. Indeed an increase in lean muscle mass will generally increase your resting metabolism – more calories are needed by your body in its resting state. Your weight loss or weight maintenance goals are more easily achieved with a greater percentage of lean muscle mass. If you do put on a couple of pounds in new muscle, this is largely offset by your body’s new-found ability to burn through calories at a higher rate. Secondly, studies have shown that hypertrophy will occur only after several weeks of training and that during the first eight weeks or so of a resistance training program, adaptations will take the form of efficiencies to the neural system which we’ll discuss below. Finally the science has shown that athletes who genetically possess a relatively large proportion of fast twitch muscle fibers may have a greater potential for increasing muscle mass than individuals possessing predominantly slow-twitch fibers. This means of course that if you are a lightweight climber type of cyclist, the chances of you putting on a significant amount of extra muscle mass is small however much you can lift in the gym.
On the subject of using lighter weights through more repetitions, this is not the ideal way to realize the benefits associated with a strength building program. If you do a whole lot of squats or deadlifts with a light weight, you are essentially just replicating what you would be doing out on the bike. In order to realize all the benefits from weight training, you must lift heavy. In gym-speak this is often expressed as a percentage of the most weight you could perform a given movement with for one repetition – your ‘one rep max’ (1RM). Your lifts should be at a high percentage of your 1RM – enough so you can just make it through 8-10 reps with the last rep of each set at close to failure.
After discussing a couple of the common myths around strength training for endurance athletes, let’s look at why you should be hitting the gym and exactly how anaerobic training and resistance training in particular, will make you a better athlete.
You want a better sprint
If you race a lot of crits, race on flatter courses, and consider yourself a sprinter, then this goes without saying. Bigger muscles with efficient, well trained firing mechanisms generate more force faster, and more force through the pedals means more watts. If you find yourself in a less-than-ideal position when it comes to the dash to the line, the extra horsepower can make all the difference.
This advantage is often overlooked by people who consider themselves non-sprinters. We all know that so often, in amateur racing at least, a solo breakaway can have a big chance of success if the course is undulating and you’ve got the aerobic fitness to pull it off. So often the guys behind you just can’t get organized enough to chase you down. However, more often you’ll find yourself out there in a reduced bunch of like-minded and determined breakaway companions. Short of the classic last KM flyer, it is all going to come down to who can put down the most watts in the last 200M. At this point you will be thankful for all the squats, leg presses, and deadlifts you were doing in the off season.
You need to race harder, longer.
Resistance to fatigue is no doubt a marker of fitness and one of the goals we all set ourselves when doing any kind of training. Whether doing vo2 intervals, or steady-state Z2 rides, we can outride our competition by increasing the time it takes to reach exhaustion for any given effort intensity through dedicated training sessions. What a lot of athletes underestimate is the power of resistance training to increase our muscles’ time to exhaustion.
Anaerobic exercise including heavy weight training results in substantial reductions in muscle and blood pH values. With adaptations to consistent acute changes in blood acidity (i.e., increased hydrogen ion concentrations), buffering capacity can improve. This increased capacity allows you to better tolerate the accumulation of hydrogen ions within the working muscles, resulting in delayed fatigue and greater muscular endurance. Resistance training and other anaerobic efforts such as intervals performed above lactate threshold have been shown to significantly increase buffering capacity.
You want to avoid getting injured.
Bicycle racing is an inherently dangerous pastime. Sometimes it feels like it’s not a question of if you’re going to get injured, but when, and how long and painful will it be to get back to riding and racing. To compound the risk, sitting on a bicycle seat and turning the pedals around is obviously non-weightbearing, meaning that despite all the hours of training, the body has no real stimuli to adapt and strengthen the connective tissue and bones, leaving them vulnerable to breaking and stretching.
Weight training in the gym can result in both increased bone mineral density (BMD) and adaptations that increase our tendons’ ability to withstand greater tensile forces. Forces generated by increased muscle contractions subsequently increase the mechanical stress on our bones, and the bone itself must increase in mass and strength to provide an adequate supporting structure. Additionally, tendons, ligaments, and facia adapt to consistent anaerobic exercise that exceeds a certain threshold of strain. This strain threshold is seldom, if ever, reached during regular riding, including hard sprints.
Because bone and connective tissue respond favorably to mechanical forces, the principle of progressive overload – progressively placing greater than normal demands on the exercising muscles – applies when training to increase bone mass or connective tissue strength. While these adaptations don’t happen overnight, a good gym program should always incorporate progressive overload, and if these workouts are something you can stick with for the long term, you will see gains beyond stronger muscles and higher endurance, and perhaps save yourself a long and painful trip to recovery after injury.
You want to maintain or lose weight.
Winter is the time when many of us start to pack on a few pounds. It is often assumed that the body’s natural response to the cold winter months is to add on some insulation and perhaps there is some truth to this especially for those of us who live in the far North or South of our respective hemispheres where the winter months are indeed cold. And dark. And often wet. The more likely culprit is that we’re just eating the same as we did through the summer, but with a far lower calorie-burning exercise load.
As mentioned previously, although muscle is pound-for-pound more dense than fat, the more of our body that is made up of lean mass (muscle), the more energy it takes to sustain that body – our metabolic rate will increase and we burn through more calories even at rest. Putting on some muscle mass is therefore not always a bad thing for the endurance athlete. Unless you accompany your weight training campaign with an associated increase in calorie consumption the net result of your efforts is likely to be a drop in body weight as well as a gain in strength. If that sounds like a recipe for success, you would be correct although that last point about over fueling for your gym workouts is certainly important – many people assume a high calorie demand for a gym session, and this is not always the case. Loading up with carbs as you might do before a two-hour ride is probably not something you need to do before hitting the gym for an average lifting workout unless you are going to throw in a bunch of cardio work at the same time, which in itself is not a good idea as we’ll explain below.
Top tips on becoming a gym rat
The gym is a very foreign and occasionally intimidating place to walk in to for many endurance athletes. There are plenty of resources online to get you started, but a great way to begin your new routine would be to get together for at least one session with a personal trainer. It may cost a few bucks, but you’ll save in the long term by not wasting your time doing stuff that is not getting you to your goals. This is very important – you need to get the techniques right, you need to get the volume of work right - amount of sets, amount of reps per set, and you need a program that specifically targets the muscles that you, as a cyclist, want to train. You need a program that incorporates progressive overload – sets that get harder incrementally each week. And just as in ‘regular’ bike training, you’ll need to know when to rest up. Just like doing intervals or endurance training, the real changes occur in the time between efforts.
It's also important not to totally swap out your on-the-bike training for your new-found love of weight lifting. Each work out type compliments the other. For example, if you do end up increasing your muscles’ cross sectional area (CSA) through hypertrophy, this will ultimately result in a muscle cells that are less dense in mitochondria and muscles with decreased capillary density. You can compensate for this by adding in weekly longer endurance rides at zone 2 where both mitochondrial and capillary density are stimulated to increase. Just don’t ride on the same day as your lifting days, or at most limit riding to a shorter Z1 /Z2 cruise AFTER your gym work. A high cardio load such as a long and/or hard ride will leave you with too much central fatigue to successfully complete your gym workout. At best you will compromise your training potential and at worst you could end up overtraining and needing time off from ANY workout.
An eight to ten week program of 3 to 4 sessions per week in the gym over the winter will pay dividends. During this time, adaptations to the heavy lifting regime will manifest in the form of improvements to the muscles’ neural systems – muscles will fire more efficiently, especially the otherwise little-used power fibers – the type 2x fibers that are rarely stimulated for use. When your muscles eventually start to lay down new fiber and grow in cross section, added strength and endurance will follow.
When the Spring comes around and you have the motivation and need to get back on the bike more often, don’t give up the gym completely. A maintenance session or two per week will ensure you hold on to all those gains throughout the year. Just maybe avoid the big legs day in the gym right before a race or your local weekend group drop ride.
If you’re looking for more personalized advice on incorporating a resistance training program into your winter routine, consider contacting us at Dialed Performance Coaching. We offer personalized, structured training programs that fit in with YOUR schedule and are based around YOUR goals. At just $175 per month, it is for sure the most effective way to get into the shape of your life and take your cycling to the next level..
