Go Go Power Rangers!!

So the Tour enters the mountains and twitter shifts from talk about camper vans and cobbles to VAMs and W/kg. As I'm not in France this year I thought I'd stick my beak into the argument. First off this is not a rant from a Sky zealot who's cross because people are being nasty about his Froomey Woomey but there are three things that have really annoyed me over the last couple of days.
They are:

1. Using power data and/or performance to suggest doping
2. Using Lance and US Postal as a frame of reference
3. Targeting Froome & Sky

We all heard that Froome had his data nicked and saw the shared video of his Ventoux climb from 2013. To tell you truth I didn't watch the video as I didn't need to, the numbers were blurted all over twitter on Sunday night.
My first gripe with this video is, can we be absolutely certain that this is his power data? Sky seem to think someone has hacked into their files and got hold of it, but is this video the file they're talking about? Who knows??
The second gripe is to suggest that these numbers are out of this world and improbable without "help". His supposed w/kg of around 6.1 certainly doesn't set any alarm bells ringing for me. If you read Allen & Coggan's "training & racing with a power meter" then an FTP of 6.1 w/kg is right in range for a world class athlete. Froome is saying that he's on 67kg mark so that's an effort of around 408w. We all saw the picture of Contador's warm up bike for the TTT, there his FTP was listed 450w, so 408w for a rider of that standard shouldn't be too much of a stretch. Yes I am aware of using Contador as a point of reference certainly isn't proof of "cleanliness" but it does show that 408w is not the mind bending huge number it was suggested to be on Sunday evening.
Sticking with "el pistolero", some people were aghast that Froome dropped him like a bad habit yesterday. Let's not forget this guy just won the Giro! I'd have been a lot more worried had he managed to stick with a fresher Froome & Quintana.
"Look at who he beat" were the cries yesterday, that's like saying Djokovic is doping because he beat Federer.
If Froome keeps that intensity up for the remainder of this tour then yes that will look suspicious but one power file from 2013 and yesterday's stage certainly doesn't prove doping or otherwise.
And no I haven't mentioned HR because so many things have an effect on it that just looking at the numbers without knowing the full picture is guessing, and would still lead me to the same conclusion that it doesn't prove or disprove anything.
I thought Lionel Birnie on the cycling podcast summed it up perfectly, until someone can show that a certain power output is impossible without pharmacological help then we are just making guesses.

My second point is this constant use of Lance as the point of reference for the line between clean and dirty. "Lance did x mountain in x time and now What's his Face has done it in nearly the same time or faster they have to be doping". Again that's just a wild assumption! Was a doped up Lance the absolute pinnacle of human endurance? Even Dr Ferrari himself laughed when asked the question "are we at the edge of what's humanly possible?" I'll agree that once the times of the wild west days of cycling are regularly beaten it won't look good but it doesn't prove anything. We don't know for a fact that those times are beyond reach.
You can't even get good data anyway, I googled "fastest time up Ventoux" and got 2 totally different times and references for our Lance. 48:33 (15km) on cycling news & 57:49 (21km) on Wiki. So what does that tell us? It tells me not to believe all the numbers you get bombarded with on the internet! Maybe they are 2 different accents of the mountain but they don't say that
And I can't help but think these same people that use him as the bench mark were the same people that were trumpeting about him 10 years ago and now feel a little silly. They lay into any team or rider that is dominant in the tour whilst their Livestrong bracelet gathers dust in the corner of their room!

My final point isn't because I'm British and I see this is as an attack on British cycling. It's because I don't see consistency here!
I got into a discussion with a chap called Ross Tucker, he's in charge of a page called "The Science of Sport" He appears to be at the forefront of trying to expose doping in sport which I have to commend him for.  When I argued against the use of power data he accused me of being "selective with data". Looking through his website I could say the same thing.
In the section "doping in cycling" there's lots of stuff on power and VAM but its all about the tour! Nothing on the Giro or the Vuelta or the Classics!
When I asked him what the w/kg of Contador & Aru were this year he gave me the numbers but then said he didn't even watch the Giro!!!
Now call me mad but if my aim was to lift the lid on doping in cycling I think a grand tour where the two protagonists were Contador and Aru deserved some attention.
Contador, a convicted doper who was supported by Basso, also a convicted doper, and Kreuziger who lets face it has got away with murder. And the Tinkoff back room staff has it's fair share of shady characters too.
Then there is Aru who rides for a team that is run by a convicted (and unrepentant) doper, has had doping bans handed out and is even suspected by fellow riders as being a doper!
He talks about "pixels in the tapestry" and I think he's missed a pretty large pixel there!
Also during the Giro I didn't see half the guff on twitter that I have seen with this Tour. Same can be said for last year when Sky were nowhere.
What I am saying here and this isn't aimed particularly at Ross but everyone who appears to have a bee in their bonnet this Tour is, if you want to expose doping in cycling you have to be doing this at every race with every team otherwise it just looks like you have an issue with Froome and/or Sky.

To finish off do I think Froome is clean? I  honestly don't know but I have to assume he is until it is proven otherwise.
Do I think there is doping in cycling? Yes I do and there is doping in all sport but we can't prove it by looking at power files and/or comparing that to Lance Armstrong's performances.
Like I said above, the questions have to be asked and the pressure put on, but on everybody!
Personally I think ridding the sport of people like Vinokurov and using your scientific knowledge to improve the bio-passport would be more worthwhile than stealing power files.

Maybe I am just a naive cycling fan with my head in the sand?

Old habits die hard!

There are certain aspects of cycling tradition that I love. But when it comes to training and/or nutrition I am all for modern methods and think some people need to be dragged into the 21st century. I experienced this first hand a few weeks ago.
I was down at Herne Hill velodrome waiting to borrow a bike for my track session. A friend and I were discussing training and the gym. We were talking about squats when a guy overheard us and yelled "no no no lads! stay away from the weights! if you want to get strong find a steep hill and cycle up it 10+ times!!"
I laughed and nodded, it was Saturday morning and I didn't feel like getting on my high horse just yet. However I came very close when as we were leaving the same guy yelled across the car park "AND STAY AWAY FROM THOSE WEIGHTS!" 
This got me thinking, do many cyclists still think this?
I don't confess to know everything, far from it in fact, but one thing I do know is that no matter how many times you cycle up a hill it won't make you stronger! It will improve your muscular endurance but not your strength.
I recently picked up on a post on Facebook where a guy wrote that cyclists seem to neglect the importance of all the different muscle fibre types. I think this kind of ties in with the old school idea of hills make you strong. Or is it just a misunderstanding of what strength actually is.

Strength is the maximum force you exert against a given resistance.

Strength is at the basis of all sports to a greater or lesser extent. Obviously for someone competing in World's Strongest Man, strength is of more importance than say a tennis player.
To be cycling specific, strength will be of more importance to a sprint track cyclist than to a GC road cyclist. However that doesn't mean that a portion of the GC guy's winter training won't be strength training because it will.
A muscle is made up of 3 fibre types, the fast twitch which as the name suggests contract quickly and powerfully but tire quickly. The slow twitch which are the opposite, and ones in between that can become more fast or slow depending on our training regime.
Cycling is a sport that uses all 3 fibre types and therefore all types should be trained.
So why won't cycling up a hill make you stronger? because it's the wrong training stimulus. Strength is the maximum force you exert, it requires the firing of fast twitch fibres and therefore can only be performed a few times. Endurance is an action repeated over a long period of time therefore a large force cannot be exerted and requires the firing of the slow twitch fibres.

Muscular endurance is a combination of strength AND endurance.

So thinking of a hill, lets say Yorks hill in Kent which is short and bloody steep, it will take you around 5 minutes to ride up it. A repeated effort of 5 minutes will not stimulate the central nervous system to increase motor unit  recruitment. What it will do is improve those middle fibre's ability to fire and eventually the hill will become easier or more accurately you will be able to go up it faster. That is put very very simply but I didn't want to delve into biochemistry I wanted to point out that hill training is not strength training.

Just to be perfectly clear I'm not slagging off repeated climbs, its a great way to get some interval training in and to increase your muscular endurance which IS more important than maximum strength. But strength training must come first otherwise you're missing a piece of the Strength + Endurance puzzle.

My review of the Armstrong Lie

As with most cycling fans in the U.K I'd been waiting to watch this film for a while. Having been totally drawn in with 7 Deadly sins and The Secret Race, I couldn't wait to hear Lance's side of the story!
I had been really disappointed with his Oprah show, so much so I didn't even bother watching the second part. I wanted him to come completely clean tell us everything he did and how he did it. Unfortunately I think he held a LOT back.
So with this film I expected to learn a lot more of the dirty goings on that had occurred in the "wild west" days of pro cycling.
However again I was disappointed! There was nothing new regarding his cheating that I hadn't already seen/read. In the interviews with Lance you can still see he's trying to salvage something of his "legacy" and that deep down he still doesn't really think he did that much wrong!

One thing that really gets on my wick and comes from the man himself as well as the people who are still trying to defend him, is this whole nonsense of "it was a level playing field". No Armstrong wasn't the first (or last) cyclist to dope and yes plenty of other cyclists in that era were on all sorts too. But it was never a level playing field. Only the richest teams/cyclists could afford the "best" doctors and therefore the best drugs. Plus some riders responded better than others to the drugs, EPO in particular.
The film only touches briefly on this subject. I really wanted the film maker to give Lance a bit of a grilling in regards to that, especially when at the end of the film he has the front to say "people will look back and say yeah he won those tours"! If that doesn't show someone who was sorry they got caught and not actually sorry for what they did then I don't know what will.

My main problem with Armstrong and why I can never forgive him and what sets him apart from other doped cyclists, for example, David Millar, is the Godfather like control he had over the sport at that time. This film picks this up quite well, you really get the sense of how the Armstrong machine just crushed anyone who stood in their way. It's a shame most of the footage is from the 2009 version of Lance not the '99 - '05 version where I think you would get a lot more of an insight into his control and bullying.

Maybe one day the extent of his control and the extent of the corruption within the UCI will come to light but I cant imagine it will happen any time soon.

To sum this film up I'm going to quote my what girlfriend said about it. "Good but I thought it would be jucier"!

Strength Training Part 3 (Maximum Strength)

Now I'm going to try and keep this as concise as possible so you can just have the vital info and crack on!
I think I have banged on enough now about how important strength training is to cycling. Yes muscular endurance is more important but you can't have that quick burst of power without working on your maximum strength!!
First we make the legs bloody strong then we can go on to make them powerful and improve their endurance capabilites.
So when you are training maximum strength the weights are heavy and the reps are few. There are many sets but you get a good long rest in between. The programme I am doing myself follows this protocol.
85 x 4 x 6 
So recapping from the last post 85% 1RM 4 reps, 6 sets.

I only selected 4 exercises because the fewer the exercises means you can perform more sets. so the programme is as follows.

•  Squats  85 x 4 x 6
• Single leg seated hamstring curl 85 x 4 x 6
• Deadlift 85 x 4 x 6
• Stiff - leg Deadlift 85 x 4 x 6 

The rest interval should be at least 3 minutes. This is very important because you want the creatine phosphate to be fully restored before the next set. If this does not happen, at the end of the routine your stores will be exhausted. Once stores are exhausted the body compensates by creating more which in simple terms is larger muscles. In some sports, and when strutting along the beach, larger muscles (hypertrophy) are required, however in cycling they are not. Unless you are a sprint track cyclist of course!!

If you're unsure about any of the exercises then check this youtube page https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6TRaqsCQQBI0QF6aSBz4nw

Now the guys on here are all absolute monsters but they do know their stuff when it comes to this type of training so if you can get through the macho nonsense its useful stuff!

I wouldn't recommend the max strength phase for any longer than 6 weeks for us cyclists before moving on to the conversion phase. Normally this would be performed in prep phase of your yearly programme i.e. in the winter before the racing season starts, but I wanted to get all this stuff out before then so you can have a good read and hopefully fit it into your programme. I'll be revisiting this topic after the summer to recap everything.

However if you decide you want to work on your strength during this season I would recommend doing it after a big event and leading up to another one. So for example I completed the South Downs Sportive 2 weeks ago and I have to drag my arse up Alp D'Huez in July so I am doing 2 weeks of strength training twice a week before I move on to Muscular endurance.

One last point, as you progress through the max strength phase you need to vary the loading pattern so for example a 6 week programme's loading pattern will look like. Low - Medium - High, Low - Medium - High. 

Start by adding a set, then increase the weight, remove a set, add a set, then increase the weight. For my 2 week strength stint I will add a set on session 2, increase the weight by 5% on session 3 then add a set for session 4. So more medium - medium - high.

After the strength phase we will move to the conversion phase where we will work on muscular endurance and power.

In the meantime enjoy the lifting and safe riding!

Strength Training Part Two (Anatomical Adaptation)

So I completed the rescheduled South Downs Sportive. It was a great event and a really pleasant ride. I clocked a time of 4h:39min which I was really pleased with especially as I had a spectacular fall 10 minutes into the ride. Training had been going well I had been on the conversion phase of strength, so moving from maximum strength to muscular endurance. It had been a mixture of bike work and weights. The legs felt good, I didn't have the niggle in my left knee that I had just before Hell of the Ashdown so that was a welcome bonus and testament to what a proper strength training programme can do for us cyclists. I'm now having a week of just light bike work before I write a whole new programme and this has allowed me time to get back on here.
So to recap from the last post we know there must be a period of maximum strength training before we focus on muscular endurance and power.
However before we hit the big boy/girl weights there has to be a period of getting the body ready for the tough regime to come. This is known as anatomical adaptation. The main objectives of this phase are to prepare the tendons, ligaments and muscles not only for the training regime but a season of competition. At this point we do not focus on muscles specific to the sport, i.e. legs, we involve the body as a whole and will include core, back and upper body work also.
Another aim of this phase is balance, so for example balancing the strength of the flexors and extensors of joints. In cycling terms an obvious example is the hamstrings (flexors) and the Quadriceps (extensors).
For cycling and more specifically the legs, balancing the strength does not mean making the quads and hamstrings as strong as each other because that can not be the case. The quads are larger muscles and therefore always stronger than the hamstrings in a ratio of 3:2. So the aim of this phase is to ensure the quadriceps don't become too strong in comparison to the hamstrings, ever wonder why footballers get so many hamstring injuries? The same goes for the muscles around the ankle, gastrocnemius (calves) and tibialis anterior. The calves are obviously a much larger muscle, but cannot be allowed to become too strong in comparison or this will also increase the risk of injury, think of runners and shin splints.
Balancing the 2 sides of the body is vital as is strengthening the stabiliser muscles.
For cycling the stabiliser muscles will be the upper body and core. Core strength is hugely important and could be (and probably will be) a whole separate post.
All these issues have to be addressed before we move into more specific training.
A great way to incorporate the whole body into a work out is with circuit training.
For those who are not familiar with circuits it is where do an exercise, then move on to the next, then the next and so on in a "circuit". The beauty of circuit training is that you can do it with or without equipment and hit several parts of the body in one session.
As we are cyclists we will be doing a fair amount of leg work in this circuit, however, we will be including some upper body and core work.
Before I list the exercises it is important to note a few things.

• Firstly if you are new to strength training then the anatomical adaptation phase will need to be longer than if you are an experienced trainer. This may sound obvious but moving too quickly to the max strength phase will increase the risk of injury. 
• As mentioned in my previous post testing your 1RM is vital to planning a programme. However if you are new to strength training this is not advisable. I will give the intensities of the loads in % of 1RM if you have not tested your 1RM because you are new to this type of training then select a weight that you can do 10 repetitions with and reps 8, 9 and 10 are tough but doable. 
• Warm up and cool down, I won't bore you with why this is important just take my word for it.
• This is only the strength part of your overall programme you will still be doing your rides as well.
• If possible when you do any cardio work try and focus on aerobic capacity, this means long rides at a manageable intensity. However I am aware that I have written this post during the competition season so this may not be feasible for serious cyclists. 

For the sake of ease I will write the programme from my own point of view (as in this is what I will be doing in the gym). There will be 9 exercises that will work legs, core and upper body. The programme will last for 6 weeks and will progressively get harder. Try and do this at least 2 x per week as well as your rides. 

Exercises will be written as Exercise name, Weight (%1RM), x Reps x Sets (how many times you do a whole circuit)

e.g. Leg Press, 60 x 10 x 2 

After you have completed one circuit rest for about 2 minutes before starting again. 

1. Back Squat 40 x 10 x 2
2. Ab Crunches n/a x 15 x 2
3. Press ups n/a x 10 x 2
4. Leg Press 40 x 10 x 2
5. Plank n/a x 45secs x 2
6. Seated Row 30 x 15 x 2
7. Goblet Squat 40 x 10 x 2 
8. Russian Twist 3kg x 10 x 2 
9. Shoulder Press 30 x 10 x 2 

Week 2 Add 10% to each weight (except Russian twist where you will add 1kg) keep reps and sets same

Week 3 Keep weights the same add 5 reps to each exercise, increase plank to 1 minute

Week 4 As with with week 2 increase weight by 10% keep reps/sets same

Week 5 Keep weight and reps the same, add 1 more set to all exercises

Week 6 Add 10% to weights keep reps/sets the same

If you are unsure of any of the exercises then YouTube is great or you can ask one of the instructors at your gym. 

After 6 weeks of this you will be ready to go onto the next phase which will be maximum strength, during this phase we will focus almost entirely on the legs as they are the prime movers although core work will still get some attention.

If you have any questions please post a comment or you can ask me on my new twitter account linked to this blog @conditionforthe 

Have fun guys and safe riding!! 

 

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
   

For track cyclists (Journal review)

Happened across this article and thought it may be useful to track cyclists, especially those that compete over several events during a day.
As we all know warming up is an essential part of performance, it is always thought of as an injury prevention tool. But did you know that it has been demonstrated that there is a ~4% per degree improvement of vertical jump as muscle temperature increases. Also during track sprint cycling, peak power output increases between 2% - 10% per degree (C) that muscle temperature increases.
It is important to keep in mind those that compete in longer duration events the risk of glycogen depletion during extensive warm ups.
So seeing as performance improves as muscle temperature rises, the exact opposite is also true. This can be a problem when riders experience delays between warm up and event or between multiple events. This article looked at the effect of artificially heating the legs after a standard warm up using heat pads and insulated pants.
Cutting a reasonably long story short, unsurprisingly the heated pads improved the sprint performance after warm up when compared to standard tracky bottoms and also tracky bottoms with insulation.
It may seem a bit obvious but when its been tested thoroughly it really hits home! So for you guys that compete at multiple events throughout the day the warmer you keep your legs between events the better!

I'm not sure you can get heated pants down Decathlon or on Wiggle so it may mean digging your nan's electric blanket out of the loft!!!

For those interested in the full article it is.
Faulkner et al. Reducing Muscle Temperature Drop after Warm-up Improves Sprint Cycling Performance. Med. Sci. Sports. Exerc, Vol 45, (2) pp. 359-365 2013 

Part one of my strength training for cyclists is coming soon