Any tips to help my power

warrior4life

Any help with this is much appreciated

I've just purchased a stages power meter, I'm 78kg and managed 300 watts for an hour, what would be the most common method of improving that? I guess it would be some form of interval training?
Currently I just ride my bike 6-10 hrs a week, sometimes fast and sometimes slow depending in how I feel.

I don't want to get too technical, I'm coming off injury issues that have effected me for a few years, I'm hoping to build up to 350 watts for an hr with some focused training and more time on the bike over the summer.

I may do a couple of races and sportives but my main goal is just to feel good on the bike, I just enjoy good fast rides.

Dodger747

Trainer Road

Alex_Simmons/RST

It requires training in a manner that's suitable for your abilities, experience, goals, training time availability, location, psychology and so on. Whether or not you include interval training as part of that depends somewhat on these and many other factors.

RChung

You just purchased a power meter but you're asking now?

It's a tool for measuring your power. It's not a bolt-on motor. What did you think you were going to do with it?

jgsi

Double your training hours.

markynulty

This is a great book which breaks down the notion of power and provides a whole host of workouts:

http://www.bikeradar.com/gear/category/ ... -10-39864/

Training with power takes a lot of mental and physical effort. At first, you won't believe how hard you were going on easy days but how easy you were going on hard days.

bahzob

I'd suggest you get a copy of "time crunched cyclist". It's written with people like you training only a (relatively) few hours per week and has all you need in term of explaining how to test, what the test results mean and how to translate this into a plan.

It also comes with pre prepared multiweek plans that you can follow. As above they are not easy but if you complete them you are pretty much guaranteed to show some improvement + gain some insight into what your strengths/weaknesses are

(The Training with Power book is good as well. My suggestion though would be get TCC first and follow with Training with Power)

supermurph09

I did a blog on the time crunched cyclist, the link is on my signature.

warrior4life

Thanks for the tips those who gave useful feedback. I'll look in to it all, thank you.
As usual there are a few with nothing useful to say. Pretty standard..

nigeldoyle

I would recommend Graeme Street's Cyclo90 or Cyclo90 Masters training. They focus on improving muscular endurance i.e. increasing power output and improving core strength and endurance. I've got the Time Crunched booked by Carmichael. I find it too hard to understand. I much prefer the Cyclo90 Master's program.

Good on you for being able to output 300w for an hour, that's great results.

warrior4life

Thanks Nigel. I'll take a look at that. Looks like I have some reading to do, more than enough to learn everything I need.
If I don't get results I only have myself to blame.

warrior4life

RChung wrote:

You just purchased a power meter but you're asking now?

It's a tool for measuring your power. It's not a bolt-on motor. What did you think you were going to do with it?

I bought a stages because I wanted to know exactly where I was at, no guess work. I now know where I'm at, where I'm strong and where I'm weak.
I want to improve myself by 10-15% and I think it's doable.

I had a powertap back in 08 but never really used it, the only thing I remembered was my sprint and I'm 400 watts down on that but I am 10kg lighter.

I've got a copy of training and racing with power, I'm going to increase my hours as the weather improves and be more focused.
I've felt much fitter in years gone by but it was all just a guess really, the powertap gives me facts.

Super murph I enjoyed your blog.