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.

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#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.

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#cycling #training #strength