Strength training for hills

Smithster

I've put quite a bit of effort in earlier in the year to improve my Hill climbing capabilities, and although I am no super star at this part of my cycling, I have improved.

My improvement came from turbo work earlier in the year, operating at a higher cadence when climbing hills, pacing, and well basically climbing lots of hills.

Regarding further strength training for more improvement, someone mentioned me today that you should (when training), try pushing a bigger gear at a lower cadence to get stronger, then switch attention to spinning at a higher cadence when your not.

Any truth in this, would it help?

Cheers

imposter2.0

No truth at all. You don't need to be 'stronger' - just 'fitter'. There have been countless 'strength' threads on here - worth doing a search.

Smithster

Imposter wrote:

No truth at all. You don't need to be 'stronger' - just 'fitter'. There have been countless 'strength' threads on here - worth doing a search.

I thought not, I've read most threads previously, but then someone comes along and throws a seed of doubt in your mind!

I'll stick with what's working for me.

diy

It depends where you are in your journey to getting fitter and which part of you is failing. If you are basically running out of puff to go any faster, then you may not get benefit from focused exercises. If you already have cyclists quads then there may not be any short cuts either, however, if your muscles fatigue before your hit your max and you are haven't been doing serious cycling for a long time, then you could benefit from some focused exercise. e.g. squats and lunges.

You don't need a bar and weight but if you have some great:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQDSXAo8-ig
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEc5p5EQOWw

I wouldn't go for body weight though - you are after high rep, but the above two show the technique - first one has very good technique.

imposter2.0

diy wrote:

however, if your muscles fatigue before your hit your max and you are haven't been doing serious cycling for a long time, then you could benefit from some focused exercise. e.g. squats and lunges.

Sorry, I think that's very misguided advice. Muscle fatigue will be down to a lack of aerobic conditioning, not a lack of strength. In that sense, the most 'focused' exercise available to address that would be riding a bike.

Smithster

Imposter wrote:

diy wrote:

however, if your muscles fatigue before your hit your max and you are haven't been doing serious cycling for a long time, then you could benefit from some focused exercise. e.g. squats and lunges.

Sorry, I think that's very misguided advice. Muscle fatigue will be down to a lack of aerobic conditioning, not a lack of strength. In that sense, the most 'focused' exercise available to address that would be riding a bike.

I think that's what the guy giving the advice thought. That it was train strength first, then aerobic conditioning and leg speed later.

Whereas, I thought that if I could get up every hill I've climbed this year including some steep ones like Hardknott Pass. Then I've all the strength I need, and the only way to get quicker or climb hills more comfortably is to increase muscular endurance/aerobic capacity.

Sorry to be a pain at bringing up an all to familiar topic!

bahzob

Since you are referring to "hills" rather than mountains I guess the sort efforts are the short sharp ones that are typical in the UK, around 2-6 minutes at a very intense level by the end of which you are swimming in red mist and HR is close to max.

These efforts are often referred to as "VO2". If you search here or elsewhere there are lots of different workout for this area. It's one of the hardest so, while its good to have 1 or 2 drills that can act as a barometer on how you are doing it's also good to try a variety simply to help keep motivation. They are ideal for doing on a turbo, provided you spend a total of 10-15 minutes (summed across work portion of intervals) in your VO2 zone you should notice improvements.

It's worth doing these in all possible pedal styles from low seated cadence(50rpm or so) through to high standing cadence (80rpm+ out of the saddle) through to spinning seated at 100+rpm. Again part of the reason for doing this is to provide variety but also in the real world this helps you cope with sudden changes of condition. In this case you don't want to keep changing gears, this wastes power and loses momentum. It's much better to have the option of simply changing style.

Also there is no single best approach, riders vary for a variety of reasons at all levels e.g. Froome vs Contador. By trying different approaches while doing VO2 intervals you will hit on one that lets you do the best efforts, this would be the default for hills.

Smithster

Cheers bahzob. That more or less confirms what I was doing on the turbo earlier in the year, and with riding with other riders now and watching there style. The penny has kind of dropped about changing my style to suit changes in pace or gradient rather than swapping gears.

Another question if you could answer it. For longer hills rather than shorter sharp ones, say for instance the 'Cat and fiddle' or something like the road out of the Goyt valley up to the Cat.

In these cases, what kind of efforts would you be putting out there, am I right in thinking that you would be maintaining a pace just under your threshold?

pollys_bott

Smithster wrote:

For longer hills... what kind of efforts would you be putting out there, am I right in thinking that you would be maintaining a pace just under your threshold?

For me, yes. First Alp I did was Col d'Ornon, 11k @ 6.5%. Had never done anything like it before but knew that if I didn't go much above 160 bpm I'd be OK. Twiddled up it nice and steady and was fine. Practise at different intensities to know how long you can ride at each level: for example a rolling 60-70 miles in 3.5 - 4 hours will see me bottom end of Zone 3 (145 bpm) and I'll be top end of Zone 5 (180bpm) for a 24.30 evening 10.

Take the Cat & Fiddle Strava segment for example. KOM is Alex Dowsett with a time of 22.02. Looking down the list I'd hope I could slot in about 20% of the way down which is around the 31/32 minute mark. Could I hold 180 bpm for that long? No, so if I wanted to give it a thrash I'd ride it around 170bpm and see how that went. Clearly if I was doing it at the start of a long ride though I'd ride it under threshold, don't want to burn too many matches too early.

Smithster

Pollys Bott wrote:

Smithster wrote:

For longer hills... what kind of efforts would you be putting out there, am I right in thinking that you would be maintaining a pace just under your threshold?

For me, yes. First Alp I did was Col d'Ornon, 11k @ 6.5%. Had never done anything like it before but knew that if I didn't go much above 160 bpm I'd be OK. Twiddled up it nice and steady and was fine. Practise at different intensities to know how long you can ride at each level: for example a rolling 60-70 miles in 3.5 - 4 hours will see me bottom end of Zone 3 (145 bpm) and I'll be top end of Zone 5 (180bpm) for a 24.30 evening 10.

Take the Cat & Fiddle Strava segment for example. KOM is Alex Dowsett with a time of 22.02. Looking down the list I'd hope I could slot in about 20% of the way down which is around the 31/32 minute mark. Could I hold 180 bpm for that long? No, so if I wanted to give it a thrash I'd ride it around 170bpm and see how that went. Clearly if I was doing it at the start of a long ride though I'd ride it under threshold, don't want to burn too many matches too early.

Thanks. That makes sense