increasing power

dazed01

Over the past couple of months I have found more time to ride and I feel my endurance has improved noticeably - where I'd normally hit the wall at 3 hours, I feel much more able to ride for longer and recover better between climbs. What I'm struggling with though is just lack of power.

I'm fine with long gradual climbs - I think because I weigh next to nothing I can spin up these all day. When it comes to a sudden steep section off road, I end up I just can't power up them like others.

Equally, on the flat I just don't have the leg power to turn over a big gear and struggle to maintain a decent speed.

Are there any workouts on the bike that might help?

DCR00

Look into Westside Barbell training. Not bike focused, but focuses on power and strength. If you read carefully, its relatively easy to adapt the key movements to compliment cycling.

Also have a look into unilateral movements

http://www.pinkbike.com/news/mtb-streng ... -2010.html

I combine the two. Def works.

njee20

Hill reps, short sharp hills.

dazed01

thanks - i definitely have a strength imbalance so those unilateral exercises could be pretty useful.

with the hill reps - is that similar to doing intervals then? just short periods of 100% and recover on the way back down?

is this a good way to increase overall speed - like prolonged higher intensity??

97th choice

Nothing scientific or proven, but I feel ive improved my power by not spinning up climbs as I used to but getting out of the saddle and hitting them at a lower cadence in a harder gear.

njee20

with the hill reps - is that similar to doing intervals then? just short periods of 100% and recover on the way back down?

That's exactly what it is. There's nowt magic in the body, training your weaknesses will make them strengths. You can just attack every climb on a ride, but you're likely to be tired and the quality won't be there. If you find a hill and make a proper session of it you'll get more benefit. Ride up for (say) 1 minute and note where you get to. Roll back down slowly (a couple of minutes),then have another go and try and get further. Repeat. If you feel tired go home, sessions like that are far more beneficial when you're fresh.

dazed01

with these, or any sort of longer 15/20 min intervals does it make a difference whether you're trying to push a bigger gear or whether you increase cadence in your usual gear??

i guess both would have the same effect of increasing your HR and training your body to work at a harder intensity?!?

njee20

Very simplistically higher cadence increases strain on your CV system whilst lower cadence puts more strain on muscles.

For what you're looking to achieve I'd be looking at a big gear out of the saddle effort. You're basically looking for maximal effort - the sort of speed you'd not put out on a normal ride (hence doing it as a specific session). Spinning up a climb is unlikely to have the desired results.

Stu Coops

Not just hill reps either if your lacking in power but your cardio is strong then just keep pushing big gears on flat or rolling routes to strengthen the muscle groups, you will never get leg strength just spinning up climbs as it's more cardio based than pure leg strength.

Road bike is excellent training for this is you have one, also leg press at the Gym couple of times a week.

PhunkyPhil

Stu Coops wrote:

Not just hill reps either if your lacking in power but your cardio is strong then just keep pushing big gears on flat or rolling routes to strengthen the muscle groups, you will never get leg strength just spinning up climbs as it's more cardio based than pure leg strength.

Road bike is excellent training for this is you have one, also leg press at the Gym couple of times a week.

Leg presses won't help your cycling. Your legs are already strong enough to cycle as you aren't able to put as much force into a pedal stroke as you are into a leg press so being able to leg press more weight is pointless.

Have a look at information on average effective pedal force which will explain this as you put more force into your feet standing up than you do pedalling.

You need to train the various subsystems of your body to cycle faster. You need to find your threshold either by power (preferable but out of most our budgets) or heart rate and then cycle slightly above this threshold to improve this sub system.

njee20

Increasing FTP won't really help - we're talking about anaerobic levels of power output. Riding just above FTP won't do much for the OP.

Leg presses would be a good gym exercise (or squats), but IMO there's no substitute for riding your bike.

YeehaaMcgee

For what it's worth, I found am immense increase in leg power, by sticking to higher gears and low cadence on climbs. Still in the saddle, but using strength instead of RPM to get me up the hill. Do that on every climb for a few weeks, and I'm sure you'll notice a big improvement.
No need to go fast, just keep those legs turning the pedals, and use the leg muscles, not honking it with your body.

Of course, something else occurs to me, is that people's definition of "climb" differs hugely depending on where they ride. If you don't have actual big hills to climb, this may not work

BloggingFit

YeehaaMcgee wrote:

For what it's worth, I found am immense increase in leg power, by sticking to higher gears and low cadence on climbs. Still in the saddle, but using strength instead of RPM to get me up the hill. Do that on every climb for a few weeks, and I'm sure you'll notice a big improvement.
No need to go fast, just keep those legs turning the pedals, and use the leg muscles, not honking it with your body.

Of course, something else occurs to me, is that people's definition of "climb" differs hugely depending on where they ride. If you don't have actual big hills to climb, this may not work

+1

Riding for years with no Granny Ring forced me into grinding climbs rather than spinning up them so I would recommend trying this out and avoid dropping down.

For staying seated just move forwards and flatten your upper body as the gradient gets steeper so you're on the nose and almost laying down on the bike to keep the front down. You can even hover and inch or so off the saddle but try and resist standing up as you'll more likely break traction on the rear.

Unfortunately difficult to practice the technique unless you're on a climb.

kayo74

I found what has helped me over the last 6 mths has been working on my core strength simple exercises plus adding medicine ball exercises and have noticed a big difference in strength.

_HENDO_

njee20 wrote:

Leg presses would be a good gym exercise (or squats), but IMO there's no substitute for riding your bike.

True but you do pick up imbalances from riding one foot forward more often, more left turns on trail etc.
squats are great, lots of variations too.

ric/rstsport

dazed01 wrote:

Over the past couple of months I have found more time to ride and I feel my endurance has improved noticeably - where I'd normally hit the wall at 3 hours, I feel much more able to ride for longer and recover better between climbs. What I'm struggling with though is just lack of power.

I'm fine with long gradual climbs - I think because I weigh next to nothing I can spin up these all day. When it comes to a sudden steep section off road, I end up I just can't power up them like others.

Equally, on the flat I just don't have the leg power to turn over a big gear and struggle to maintain a decent speed.

Are there any workouts on the bike that might help?

It sounds like you lack absolute power at FTP, as well as more intense power (MAP, and anaerobic and neuromuscular power). While these acronyms may (?) be new to you (or slightly confusing), the good thing is that all these aspects are perfectly trainable on the bike :-).

FTP is (in simple terms) the highest power you can sustain for about 60-mins. While MAP is your best 60-sec power at the end of an incremental ramp test to exhaustion (a proxy for this is an all-out 5-min smash out). Anaerobic power would tie in with a maximal 30 to 60-sec effort, while a neuromuscular effort would be best 5-sec power. There are more precise definitions for all these, but i'll try to keep it readable with the simpler definitions.

You (presumably) climb reasonably well over a long duration because as you've identified you're very light, and must have a 'reasonable' sustainable power. However, i presume it's only reasonable (rather than good or excellent etc) because you mention that on the flat you have a lack of (sustainable?) speed. This suggests that your relative power to weight (mass) is good, but your absolute numbers aren't.

With the sudden steep sections theres two aspects here: being able to deliver high power to get you up the steep rise, and the technical/skill aspects of applying power correctly and being able to get best bang for your power.

To increase your sustainable power you need to be doing hard efforts that last between 5 and 20-mins, of which some should be done uphill and others on the flat. you could also do more 'basic' efforts that are slightly easier (but still moderately intense) that last between 45 and 90-mins.

For the shorter steep efforts you could try finding a small, steep banked climb and from a low speed smack up the climb as hard as you can for 10-secs (the climb should be this short). As you do this you should drive down the pedals, but also actively pull back and up (note, that this isn't something i usually advise, except in MTB and starting efforts on a velodrome). Off-road in MTB you're often faced with wet/slippy surfaces and you need a more even pedal stroke to prevent wheel slippage that would occur if you just drive the pedals down (as you tend to do in road cycling).

There's probably a ton of threads in the road section on increasing sustainable power.
Ric