This was especially frustrating given all the effort I was putting into it: not just under the barbell, but also in studying both the science and practice of lifting, and experimenting with different training approaches.

I'd had the usual initial rapid improvements that all novices experience, when your body is learning to use the muscle it already has more effectively. In my case, this lasted for about ten weeks, after which period further gains evaporated. I spent the next five or six months in a futile effort to tweak the novice linear progression approach (low volume, high frequency, high intensity), with little to show for it.

It was obvious at this point that there was no more blood to be squeezed out of that stone, so I switched to a real training plan (higher volume and more varied intensities). This helped a little, but still I wasn't progressing anything like I wanted.

Then, almost exactly one year into my strength training, the problem finally dawned on me.

Eating! One of the few concepts that just about everyone in the resistance training world actually agrees on is that, to gain muscle and strength, you must have an energy surplus. I'd heard this scores of times, yet I'd somehow managed to convince myself that it didn't apply to me. I thought it was just for skinny ectomorphs who find it very hard to gain weight. I assumed that so long as I consumed excess protein, my body would use this to build muscle and use body fat for energy.

This was wrong; the body wants to hold on to its stored fat, ready for the next famine which could be just around the corner. It would much prefer to use protein for energy and retain fat stores than to build new muscle and burn fat.

So, in late November, I thought 'why not give eating a try?'. Since then I've been gaining about 2 kg of weight per month, almost all of which appears to be lean mass (according to both the mirror and the US Navy fat calculation methods). I'm also seeing sharp, almost linear, increases in my rep maxes on all my major lifts. Better late than never.

But even after this fantastic turn of events, I was still having a terrible time with my Squat. The Back Squat and the Overhead Press are my key lifts, and with my relatively long torso and short limbs I'm well built for them. Now that I was chomping down well over 4,000 calories each day, my Overhead Press was flying up. So was my Hex Bar Deadlift, Bent-Over Row and even the Bench Press (which is a much lower priority for me). The only major lift apart from the Back Squat that wasn't improving fast was my Chin-Up, which I put down to bodyweight gain largely offsetting strength improvements.

But the Back Squat was just not right. Constantly resetting the weight wasn't helping; even when doing light sets of 8 I was gasping for breath halfway through.

Again, there was what was in hindsight an obvious solution.

Technique! Although I was bracing myself at the start of a set, I was simply releasing all the tension (and much of the air in my lungs) on the eccentric phase of the first rep. Subsequent reps were even worse, as I wasn't even properly resetting my breathing at the top. Once, I fixed this, the improvement was immense. I also made my stance a little wider so as to only drop down just below parallel, a much more comfortable depth for me than getting really deep.

So now I'm moving again. My diet is great, and I've iterated my gym work to give me consistent, sustainable gains. I've settled on a basic plan of 4-week cycles with what I call semi-linear progression. Let's say the target is 5 sets of 8 reps. In this case I'll go for 8 reps on every set. If I get them, the weight notches up next time; if I miss any on later sets, I keep the weight the same and try to get them next time. I increase intensity between mesocycles, e.g. sets of 10, 8, 6, 4 over sixteen weeks.

I've decided to concentrate on building strength and muscle mass until I get to a decent level. I modified my sprint training plan to reflect this. I'm not far off 300 lbs for my Back Squat 1RM; if I can get to my 315 lb target (about 1.6 times bodyweight) by mid-June I'll reward myself with a 16-week cycling-focused program. Otherwise, I'll lock myself in the gym for the rest of the year.

My ultimate goal is 405 lb for the Back Squat and bodyweight for the Overhead Press. At that point I'll follow my plan as written, but until then I'll just do one cycling peak each year.

...

#cycling #training #strength

The transition from endurance to sprint training was pretty abrupt, but not difficult; my cycling volume has come down to around 6 or 7 hours per week and I'm actually spending more time in the gym than on my bike. Most of my cycling has been base training combined with short, overgeared sprinting. No group rides, no tempo or threshold work; almost everything has been either very easy or full gas. This is to ensure my cycling is as complementary as possible to my weight training.

In fact, it's so clear to me that strength is the limiting factor in my sprint performance that I've been almost exclusively focusing on it throughout this period. 6 days per week lifting weights in a garage in South Carolina wasn't the most fun way to spend the summer, but there's no disputing the results.

I've added 160, 125 and 110 Watts to my 1-, 5- and 30-second power since 2020. As this is despite spending less time than in previous years training anaerobic capacity on the bike, I'm sure this is almost entirely down to increased strength and muscle mass (as the scientific literature would predict). And since my strength is still relatively low, that means I should have plenty more potential for improvement.

My 1-rep max on the back squat is currently 1.35 times bodyweight, with my deadlift is close to 1.7. The research I've read indicates that a squat in the range of 1.5-1.6 times body weight is the minimum level of strength necessary before you even need to worry about power training. Around 2.0-2.1 x would be sufficient such that extra strength beyond this would likely be superfluous.

So at this point, after 10 months of hard work, I'm still quite a way short of the bottom of the sweet spot range, and it was with that (and my frustratingly-slow progress) in mind that, closing out the season, I also made the decision to continue focusing on strength through 2022.

Following a 1-month hypertrophy block as a lead-in (currently underway), I've decided to do two consecutive 18-week Strength blocks, then maybe as a little carrot move to a Speed Endurance cycle followed by one Taper/Event block, before closing out the training year.

When I start the Preparation phase next October, it will be the first time I actually follow a whole year of my annual plan as written. By then I expect to have got my back squat up to at least 1.6 times bodyweight, with my deadlift over 2.0 x, and these numbers should increase to over 1.7 and 2.1 after another 18-week Strength block to start the following training year. So by spring 2023 I should finally be strong enough that I'll be ready to focus squarely on my cycling again.

I addition to my quite low general strength, another thing that inclines me to believe that it's force rather than velocity that's limiting my power output is that I consistently hit my peak power numbers at ridiculously high cadences (145-155 rpm). Clearly I don't have a problem with velocity.

If, as I believe, my sprint cycling performance is indeed strength-limited, I expect my power numbers on the bike to continue to increase close to linearly in line with strength gains through this period. This will confirm that I'm on the right track with my training focus.

...

#cycling #training #strength

It became increasingly clear to me over this period that it was time to move on from endurance riding. I discuss this in detail here.

In the meantime, the hybrid training that I was left with was a little too much for me to handle and wasn't properly focused, so once I'd finally committed to making a clean break from endurance cycling in favour of sprinting, the first thing I needed to do was come up with an entirely new training plan.

This took quite a lot of effort (due in part to the relative lack of available material on sprint cycling as compared with endurance cycling), but in due course I came up with something that seems like it might be workable. Or at least a decent starting point.

The results can be found here. I'll go through the details (which are of course still in flux) next time.

The big changes continue. My garage gym is fully operational, and I've spent the last couple of months figuring out a decent strength training regimen; finding a good balance between strength training and cycling; as well as actually working on the technical performance of each lift.

I've mentioned before that strength training is now a major component of my plan, and since (despite previous dumbbell dabbling) I'm basically a beginner, I decided to extend the off-season period to 6 months this year. I want as big a platform as possible on which to build power.

I've got to a point where I'm pretty happy with my squat technique, and have been making good progress on this most important lift. My main target is to get my squat up close to 300 pounds by the end of this phase (late May). Based on my progress so far, I think I've got a good chance of doing so.

See my Training Plan for full details, although my actual lifting remains in a state of flux as I attempt to balance it with my cycling. My main priority is building strength, but I don't want to lose too much aerobic capacity.

Although from next year onwards I'll stick to the 7-day microcycle outlined in the Plan, this year I've been experimenting with a two-week cycle, in which I lift on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Tuesday, Thursday. There are rest days on Mondays, a longish Base ride on the middle Sunday, a Neuromuscular ride on the second Saturday and a mixed-intensity aerobic ride to finish the cycle on the second Sunday. The other days have easy commute rides, plus Leg Speed rides before each weights session. That's a total of about 8 hours cycling per week

This obviously devotes a lot of time and energy to strength at the expense of cycling, but as I currently have so much more to gain in the former I think it's a worthwhile trade-off. Next year I'll be at a much higher starting point with my strength, so sticking to the more balanced training detailed in the Plan will probably be the way to go.

So with 12 weeks remaining in the Off-Season, I've got 30 Squat days, 12 Deadlift days, 6 RDL days and 6 Mid-Thigh Pull Days, plus upper-body work, still ahead of me. If you want to build power (force x velocity), it makes sense to first develop a lot of force, and then later work on your speed (with explosive lifts and plyometrics). That's what I'm doing.

I'll report on the results in a more substantial update in 12 weeks time. By then I'll have some baseline power numbers (peak, 15- and 30-seconds, and 1-, 5- and 20-minutes) for you as well. Then we'll see how much I can increase these over the 8 weeks of the Pre-Season, when I ramp up the intensity both on and off the bike.

For now, patience is the necessary virtue.

UPDATE: 22nd February

Well, right after I published this I ended up making several more major changes.

Trying to juggle both strength and cycling training in the way I outlined above just wasn't working, so I bit the bullet and accepted I need to schedule both on the same days. As strength training is the priority at this time of year, that goes in the morning, with my key rides in the late afternoon. This is how track sprinters (from whose training I've borrowed heavily) do things.

So Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday are the big days of the weeks. Lifting in the early morning, maybe a recovery commute ride afterwards, then a cycling session after I get home. Tuesdays are standing starts, Thursdays are power jumps (overgeared sprints), and Saturdays feature a little high-intensity aerobic work to prevent me losing too much top-end fitness. Sundays are a nice easy base ride, Mondays are rest days, and Wednesdays/Fridays are recovery commute rides.

I also had to take a full week away from the gym and hard rides. I'd got into my thirteenth week of full-body weight training 2-3 times per week, and all my lifts had stagnated or even started regressing for a couple of weeks. I'd left it way too long to take a break. For the rest of the off-season it'll be 4 weeks on, 1 week off (and I really should know better by now).

I also spotted some bad technique creeping back into my squatting, no doubt due to increasing the load too quickly. So I've dropped back 15 pounds and installed a mirror in the garage to keep an eye on myself. No folding over, knee valgus, or stopping above parallel allowed!

Let's see how this affects things. See you in May.

#cycling #training

However, one good thing that came out of this was the chance for me to step back and get a bit more perspective on my cycling: what I was doing, what my goals are and how best I could optimize my training for them. It was great having the freedom to just train however I wanted to, without worrying about anything else.

Sunrise in Bluffton

Last year I accumulated a total of just under 900 hours of riding. This didn't turn me into a Tour contender; it merely made me exhausted and perpetually overreached. Who could have predicted that? After several months riding around 20 hours per week, at the end of the year it finally started to sink in that I was doing far too much cycling and that this wasn't good for me.

This year I backed right off over the winter, then built up a little again going into the spring. You can see a snapshot of the results in the figure below.

My VO₂max trends since I've had my power meter

I somehow managed to squeeze the occasional threshold test in between all the endurance rides; the figure shows that my returns on all that riding in 2019 didn't amount to much. And bear in mind that the graph shows my VO₂max results; my top-end power numbers went horribly downhill over that same time period.

By the end of summer 2018, when I'd been riding for one year, I was one of the stronger riders on the hardest ride in my area: the Unlimited Saturday group ride in Savannah (I certainly wasn't the fastest, but definitely well above average). The following summer, by contrast, I didn't make it all the way around once, and usually got dropped within 15 minutes. Conclusion: volume approach not working.

Springtime by the May River, Bluffton

This year, after backing off over the winter, my numbers picked up nicely through the spring (by which point I was exclusively riding solo). In May I got my highest 20-minute power (307 Watts), before tailing off in June, again due to overreaching.

Growing tired of this pattern, July was when I started making huge changes to my training plan (my actual literal training plan), progressively reducing my volume through the rest of the summer, by the end of which I was all the way down to about 8 hours per week.

This really paid off in September. I put in a few really big efforts, smashing my previous best 5-minute power by 25 Watts (from 366 to 391) and 2-minute power by 48 Watts (452 to a nice even 500).

I had my best VO₂max scores at the end of the season, but that's because I was 6 kg lighter in September than I was in May and VO₂max takes bodyweight into account — my raw power numbers on the threshold tests have stayed pretty constant.

My training software now tells me my W' (anaerobic capacity) is around 38-39 kJ, which is humongous, while my Critical Power (FTP) wattage is still mediocre, stubbornly stuck in the mid-270s (around the level it's been for the best part of a year). More evidence that I'm better suited to shorter efforts than long endurance rides.

Golden Cheetah shows where my strengths lie

Xert confirms this, and also suggests that riding around 200 W on a base ride is way too high. I've reduced the upper bound of my endurance zone accordingly.

Another revelation to me this year was learning how to properly analyze my training, by breaking down volume and intensity to look at each individually:

At least in the range of 10 to 19 hours per week, the lower the volume the greater my fitness. Maybe < 10 hours would be even better?

In contrast, higher average ride intensity produces better fitness.

There's a strong negative correlation between my VO₂max and volume, and an even stronger positive correlation between VO₂max and intensity. This confirms what's become ever clearer: I need to focus on intensity and back off the volume.

From what I've read on this subject, it appears that a big factor in determining an individual's training response is their muscle typology. Most people are fairly evenly balanced between slow- and fast-twitch fibres, but there are outliers in either direction. Those who are slow-twitchers tend to respond better to higher training loads and volume, while such training is bad for fast-twitchers, who can produce bigger power over short durations but are much more susceptible to fatigue.

New Riverside, Pritchardville

So for the last three months of the season, I reduced my riding to around 10 hours per week, and I've averaged just over 12 for the whole year. You can see how this change of direction has already benefited me, by comparing my best numbers from this year with those of last year:

Power numbers 2019 versus 2020, courtesy of intervals.icu

There was actually a small improvement in my 20-minute power, but it was over shorter durations where I really went to the next level. And that's what I want to build on in 2021; in particular, I want to see how high I can get my peak power.

Xert breaks down my profile like this:

Xert says I'm a Pursuiter (but I'd rather be a Road Sprinter!)

Last year, when I was doing huge volumes of riding, the profile was pretty flat all the way around. But now that I've adjusted things back in the direction of sanity, my true phenotype seems to be revealing itself.

I know I'm never going to be a pure sprinter, but I do think I could potentially add a couple of hundred Watts to my peak power if I specifically train to optimize it. And that's what I'm going to do: I've made even more radical modifications to my plan for next season.

The volume is going to be reduced even further. As it currently stands, my plan for 2021 adds up to 350 training hours on the bike, plus another 150 or so riding on very easy bike commutes. So either 7 or 10 hours per week, depending on how you see it. But my commute rides are very very easy — heart rate under 100 bpm the whole time — so I don't think that really adds much stress at all; in terms of training load, it's about 1/3 of a base ride, so maybe you could say I'll be doing the equivalent of 8 hours cycling training per week (400 for the year). I'll end up with 600 hours this year, I got 900 last year and 800 the year before that, so any way you look at it it's going to be much less than I've ever done previously.

I cannot ride under these conditions!

But perhaps the biggest change will be the addition of year-round weightlifting. Up to now I've been doing a modest amount of dumbbell training, generally only once per week, so I certainly haven't progressed very far yet. It's probably not a coincidence that the one period where I was lifting twice per week happened to be when I got my best peak power numbers, which tailed off again once I went back to a single weekly session.

But now I'm going to be doing two lifting sessions per week most of the year, and three each week for 12 weeks from December to February. And I'm going to have a proper setup in my garage: power rack, barbell, bench, platform and about 400 lb of weights to start with. And proper lifts: squats, deadlifts, power cleans, just like the trackies do! No more dumbbell lunges for a while.

Although I won't be copying their methods exactly — I'll need more aerobic endurance so I can make it around a tough group ride for a couple of hours without getting dropped — I've taken a lot of inspiration from how track sprinters train.

My searching somehow unearthed a PhD thesis, buried inside of which is detailed training periodization for the New Zealand track sprint team leading up to the 2012 London Olympics. This was a real eye-opener. There's also this website, which gave me a few ideas about microcycle organization, i.e. how to fit weightlifting into a cycling training plan.

So, I'll have a real strength-training program (not an afterthought like it's been up to now). The main challenge will be balancing weightlifting training load with my cycling, but that's why the volume on the bike is coming way down. If I get it right, I expect to see big improvements at the end of the power-duration curve that I care about (and actually I think improving my strength is also the best chance I've got of making significant further gains to my FTP).

Millstone Landing, Hardeeville

I originally started cycling just to try to lose a bit of weight, but that phase didn't survive the first week. I rapidly started devouring anything and everything I could get my hands on regarding cycling and training for it. I went through what I now recognize as a not-unusual phase of totally overdoing it, and now that that's hopefully behind me I think it's time to see just how far I can take this.

Ultimately, the most important reason why I ride bikes remains getting and staying healthy, but I find that taking something seriously makes it much more rewarding, and as regards cycling, this has the added benefit of being the best way to health.

That is, as long as you retain enough perspective and discipline to keep things in balance. And that's my biggest challenge for 2021.

#cycling #training #review