Strength Training part one (planning)

So the Sussex South Downs Spring Sportive was postponed until May 18th. When I initially received the email I was gutted! I had been really looking forward to the event. That said, on Saturday morning when I heard the wind rattling my bedroom window and saw the snow coming down I was slightly less upset about missing out on the ride. Hopefully come May we will have some decent weather and it will be an enjoyable day. I am quickly seeing the appeal of becoming a fair weather rider and the majority of next winters training regime is going to be spent in my nice warm gym, strength training and on the spin bike!!
Plus postponing the race will allow me more training time so could actually turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

As mentioned before the first few posts will be about strength training. I didn't want to just say "do some squats" so I thought expanding a little bit to talk about periodisation and where strength training can fit into your fitness programme would be more useful. That said its probably a bit too large a topic to fit into one post, so part one is all about planning a strength programme.
For those of you who are serious about your cycling you will have your training programme for the year planned out and hopefully you can slot this strength part into it easily.
 British Cycling members  will have come across their new "insight zone" and may have read the 2 articles by Joe Friel. In these articles he talks about the importance of periodisation for cyclists and then gives some examples of training methods for each part of the training programme. He also mentions the importance of strength but doesn't really expand any further than saying "this can be done in a gym" so I'm going to seize the opportunity and dive into this topic.

I would just like to mention again the point of this programme to get strong NOT big. Training for strength and training to increase muscle size (hypertrophy) are 2 different approaches and where increasing muscle size is ideal for some sports e.g body building, it isn't for cycling. However the foundation of a strong body is vital to all sports whether they are endurance or power based, if your body is weak it will not be able to cope with the demands of a hard training regime. This will lead to increased risk of injury and poor performance in competition.
Another important point is just like a runner will not get strong/powerful legs doing hill runs, a cyclist will not get strong/powerful legs doing hills on a high gear. This is a useful method to improve lactate tolerance and could be placed later on in a programme but it will not elicit the neuromuscular adaptations that are required to increase maximum strength.

The periodisation of strength model involves 6 phases. 1. Anatomical adaptation 2. Hypertrophy 3. Maximum Strength 4. Conversion 5. Competition 6. Transition

Depending on your sport not all 6 phases are necessary, however all programmes must contain at least 3 phases and ALL must start at phase one.
So the first task is to decide what phases are needed for cycling. As mentioned before we don't want to focus on increasing muscle size so the phases we need are 1, 3, and 4. Phases 5 & 6 are also required but I will talk about those in a separate post.
Once we know what phases are to be included it is important to know a little bit about the different types of strength.
There are several types of strength but the ones we are going to focus on are.

1. General Strength: Is the foundation on which we build and is the focal point of the early stage of a training programme
2. Maximum Strength: The maximum force that can be exerted in a muscular contraction, specifically the heaviest load an athlete can lift in one go. This is known as the 1 repetition max (1RM) everyone should know their 1RM for relevant exercises as the load (weight) in all future training sessions is expressed as a percentage of 1RM. If you do not know this any weight training is just guess work.
3. Specific Strength: This is strength focusing on the main muscles (prime movers) of a particular sport. I think we can safely assume what part of the body that will be in cycling, that's right! arms!! (jokes)
4. Muscular Endurance: The muscles ability to sustain work for a prolonged period of time. Once general and maximum strength have been gained this is going to be the main focus of the programme for a cyclist ( conversion phase).  
5. Power: This is strength x speed, in cycling terms it can be a quick break away, or a sprint for the line. Track events over short distances rely a lot on power. It is important to remember that you can't train for power effectively until you have maximised strength.
   
   
   Selecting the types of strength to include is the first step when designing a programme, the second is selecting the exercises.
   With cycling this is fairly simple, the legs do almost all of the work so they are the prime movers. However it isn't as simple as just picking some leg exercises and away we go. Remember phase 1 (anatomical adaptation) and the first type of strength (general)? This is all about preparing the whole body for a hard season of training and competition. So the idea is to start off with more general exercises that will incorporate the whole body, then as we progress, training becomes more focused on the prime movers in this case the legs. 
   Next step is to test maximum strength. As mentioned before knowing one's own maximum is essential for planning a programme. How can you plan to improve something if you don't know what it is capable of? Some believe that testing 1RM is dangerous, however if tested under supervision and after a substantial warm up I disagree. 
   Once the 1RMs are established for the relevant exercises you can develop the programme ensuring that training demand increases progressively.     
   This is a link on the method of testing 1RM and also for those who don't want to push to the maximum or are inexperienced weight lifters, there is a converter that will give you a rough estimate of 1RM. The link I was originally going to post was a bit more concise but was so ridiculously macho that I just couldn't bring myself to do it. This one should cover everything, the only problem is the Americans still insist on displaying weights in pounds not kilos. http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/drobson39.htm Please ignore the point of having to retest 1RM every 5-6 weeks, it is not necessary.
   It is important to note that for this programme I want you to wait until after the first phase (anatomical adaptation) before we do the 1RM testing, just to ensure that the body is ready for some hard lifting.
   
   So to summarise we have established the phases of training we are going to use and the types of strength. My next post will be about the anatomical adaptation phase, including, exercises, sets, reps and intensity (load). Because we are not testing 1RM until after phase 1 the loads during this phase will require an amount of guess work.  As many endurance athletes are not experienced strength trainers the results from the test will not be a true reflection of one's maximum strength. Testing max strength after a good foundation is built is key and will be more beneficial in the long run.
   So in the meantime safe riding and keep your eyes open for part 2