Low cadence turbo sessions

Stick some books under the front wheel and do 10 mins alternating...

Interest!

I'd recommend doing a good few of these long sessions with no breaks. My experience of the high mountains is that the long climbs are 1h+ of 50-70rpm at high (and very high) leg forces. You need good muscular endurance at these low cadences.

I've recently been doing this on the road just using my highest gear and no others (50x12 on my summer bike) for continuous tempo sessions between 1h and 1.5h. It makes a pretty tough workout, but on a flat training loop it does feel like a hard climbing session.

phreak wrote:

nmcgann wrote:

I'd recommend doing a good few of these long sessions with no breaks. My experience of the high mountains is that the long climbs are 1h+ of 50-70rpm at high (and very high) leg forces. You need good muscular endurance at these low cadences.

I've recently been doing this on the road just using my highest gear and no others (50x12 on my summer bike) for continuous tempo sessions between 1h and 1.5h. It makes a pretty tough workout, but on a flat training loop it does feel like a hard climbing session.

That's kinda what I was thinking. I've been doing similar kind of things most of this year but at a higher cadence. Being able to grind for an hour is something else again, almost as much mentally as physically.

just do as NapD says do 10 mins intervals followed by a short period at reduced intensity, even 30 seconds is enough to break it up mentally. Physically its pretty much the same as doing it without stopping.

lochindaal wrote:

Cycling isn't a strength sport.

Hi Alex, could you explain this. My thought would be the stronger your legs, higher power and hence higher Power/weight ration -> makes better cyclist

I'm asking the question not debating your answer

A popular cycling misconception is that strength = power.When Boardman did 440 watts for 1 hour his leg strength/force was approx 28kg on every pedal rev.If you are able to get out of an arm chair you will be applying more than that!.

Strength is not a limiting factor, instead cycling is an aerobic sport and the best way to train to go faster is to focus on increasing power at threshold so around 80-92% of 1hour power output will have you flying up the cols.(along with optimised body mass).

hope this helps until Alex replies

lochindaal wrote:

Cycling isn't a strength sport.

Hi Alex, could you explain this. My thought would be the stronger your legs, higher power and hence higher Power/weight ration -> makes better cyclist

I'm asking the question not debating your answer

Hi lochindall,

Strength and power is not the same although many get this confused, Alex is quite correct to say that cycling is not a strength sport - rather it is a power sport. For instance top professional climbers (Schleck, Contador) are generally not strong but are exceptionally powerful (for the durations that are relevant to them at least). A top weightlifter will have very strong legs but may not be able to produce a great deal of power (particularly for longer durations).

I posted this next bit a short while back;


Power to weight is usually talked about in watts produced relative to body weight in kilograms - W/Kg.

Peak power is rarely discussed in hill climbing but much more commonly (and usually much more importantly) it is longer periods of time ie 20 - 60 minutes that you will hear about with climbers. Bike weight is not factored into this figure, so when you hear about a rider being able to produce 5W/Kg that is simply power produced per kilogram of current body weight, it is that simple.

For sustainable power output - 20minutes or above, adding muscle and therefore weight will not* aid in generating more power. That is why the top climbers are about as thin as they can be without sacrificing sustainable power output.


Murr X

*There can be exceptions to this but it is not often the case.

lochindaal wrote:

Cycling isn't a strength sport.

Hi Alex, could you explain this. My thought would be the stronger your legs, higher power and hence higher Power/weight ration -> makes better cyclist

I'm asking the question not debating your answer

Sure, you've had some good answers already.

It's partly a matter of semantics - but important semantics.

In exercise physiology (which is what we are discussing when talking about what training etc will improve cycling performance) it's important to be very clear about what terms like strength and power mean. They are totally different things but unfortunately they are often (wrongly) used interchangeably.

Strength is the maximal force generation capacity of a muscle or group of muscles. By definition, maximal force occurs at zero velocity.

Power is the rate of doing work. The rate at which we can sustain doing work varies depending on how long we are performing the effort. So for example, we can sustain a high power output for very short periods, or a lower power output for longer durations.

As has been mentioned, the forces involved in endurance cycling are quite low, and significantly less (like nearly an order of magnitude less) than our maximal force generating ability.

What dictates our ability in endurance cycling (i.e. anything lasting longer than ~2 minutes) is our ability to generate power (i.e. frequently apply significantly sub-maximal forces) via aerobic metabolism.

Our limiter is an aerobic metabolic one, not a strength one. So what we need to improve performance is training that lift our aerobic capabilities (oxygen transport, delivery and utilsation). The sorts of changes we look for include increasing the number and density of mitochondria (the energy production plants inside our muscles), the density of our capillaries, our VO2 max, increased maximal cardiac output (by increasing heart stroke volume), increased lactate threshold. End of day these are what improves our aerobic abilities and enable us to sustain more power for longer. We do this by riding bikes, not by lifting weights.

Indeed training to increase our maximal force generation capacity (strength) has no impact on our ability to sustain power output over longer durations and in fact it can be counter productive since the physiological changes required to increase strength run counter to those needed to improve sustainable power output.

Strength training can add mass via hypertrophy for no gain in sustainable aerobic power.
Strength training tends to reduce mitochondrial density.
Strength training also tends to reduce capillary density, and increase the diffusion distance between muscles cells and the blood, making it harder for the exchange of gases and key metabolites.

While strength is a factor for non-endurance events that are very short (think track sprint/BMX), even in these events the forces are rarely maximal*, and there is a point beyond which more strength does not help and can be counterproductive (can slow you down).

* the only time one can apply close to maximal force is the first pedal stroke of a standing start. After that the forces decline quickly to being significantly less than maximal - hence it's the rate at which we can apply force (i.e. power) that matters, not the amount of force per se. Sprinters need to apply high forces for sure, but they have to do so at very high leg velocities - and the forces are still way sub-maximal.

Thanks Alex. Very informative.

So, in terms of training our aerobic systems, is there any benefit to riding up hills in a non optimal gear - ie a fixie? I've often felt that a week of hard fixie commutes has had a positive effect and I've felt "stronger" when returning to the race bike.

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

robrauy wrote:

So, in terms of training our aerobic systems, is there any benefit to riding up hills in a non optimal gear - ie a fixie?

If you expect to need to ride/race with such non-optimal gearing, then yes.
.......
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One of the things to bear in mind is that a lot of amateur riders simply won't have the power to be able to achieve a high enough cadence on typical gearing up a long mountain climb to keep the leg force low.

It's instructive to play with cyling power/speed calculators to see what comes out as the likely speed for some typical power/weight/grade combinations (e.g. 75kg+10kg, 230W, 8%). 10-11kph is quite typical and road compact gearing (eg. 34x28) won't give that speed at 90rpm - more like 70rpm.

A rider better be prepared to handle low cadence/high force for an hour or more on these long climbs - or have mountain bike gearing (e.g. 22T chainring and a 11-32/4 cassette).

phreak wrote:

That's it. On a 10km/10% grade climb I'd probably be doing around 60rpm, even in the small ring, so it seems to make sense to train at that kind of rpm for an hour to replicate it. It doesn't seem likely that such training can be done on the road over here very easily so it's a case of ramping up the 'hill' on the turbo and grinding away at my usual tempo power output for an hour.

Or get more suitable gearing.