Why is it that professionals and those with lots of time, spend their winter doing steady training miles? One of the core components of our sport on the road is endurance. Its essential that we are efficient to maximise our endurance, and one of the main areas where efficiency can be achieved is in energy production. If you can put out as many watts as possible while being fuelled by fat, then you can save your precious and scarce glycogen stores for the more intense power-endurance efforts like climbing, bridging, breaking and time trialling. The pros develop their fat-burning abilities by getting in as many hours as possible at 75 -85% Max heart rate. We can do the same. There are, however, other ways to stimulate metabolism of fat, involving timing and intensity of exercise and nutrition in order to train your hormones. Not got enough time train? Reda the next post to find out more about hormone training and fat utilisation………
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Members have just come back from a quick 4 day in Majorca. Its amazing to think that just four days of riding, doing, say, 60 miles a day, is SO much more than one normally does. As such, it’ll take a bit of a while to adapt properly. Think of training adaptation as the bit that gets you to grow new things – muscle tissue, mitochondria, blood, enzymes, hormones. To make these things, it needs the right building blocks, so keep good quality and varied protein coming in in good amonunts. Also take a good multivit, and I recommend a course of Branched Chain Amino Acids and Glutamine – this keeps the hormone balance in the Human Growth Hormone half of the field (Lean) rather than the Insulin end (Fat). I’ve had commentas about how hungry those of you who have just come back are – please do try and keep your food intake of a high quality. Cakes and buns are so attractive, and you may feel you can justify them after a tough week. You can’t. Eat 5 quality, small meals a day, by all means, but don’t slide into processed or sweet or excessive processed carbs. Stick to Hunter-gatherer foods, and plenty of them – Good organic lean meats, fish, nuts, berries, fruits, leafy vegetables. Lastly, you need to recover to get the full training effect to turn you into a faster rider. 4 days on the bike should really be followed by 4 days recovery – a light swim, stretching and especially light yoga, a gentle walk, some easy 30 minute turbo sessions will help. Nutting yourself will dilute the effect of the training block with no real beneficial effect. Be patient, and trust in The Force. Today’s probably the last of the crisp, very cold days, where riding has been lovely, as long as you don’t fall off. Now the weather turns wetter, amd much windier, so there are still many and varied excuses to stay off the roads. If you can stand it, then turbo training options are many and varied, giving you targetted, controlled sessions developing your aerobic capabilities. Try using any of the Endurance sessions listed at the bottom of this blog, and work your way steadily through them. Having said that, this eekend looks good, so do try and get out with the club. I think that training around this time of year is most usefully done on flatter roads, as this eliminates the culture of sprinting up the hills, and resting for the rest of the time in case there’s another hill round the next bend. While Im at it, have a look at www.jbst.com for some nice turbo sessions, and also have a look at www.trainright.com for some interesting stuff about Lance’s training at the moment. There’s a lot of it about! I’m assailled on all sides by Flu from work and home, sinus infections from home, winter vomitting virus from home and school. Therefore, when I woke this morning still feeling pretty done in after last night’s circuits, I quickly concluded that not overdoing it was by far the best option, so I drove in instead of my scheduled commute. I’m still feeling frustrated by that, but would be a lot more frustrated if I had flu and was off for 2 or more weeks! This constant evaluation of your own training load, and your reaction to, and recovery from training sessions, is vitally necessary to allow you to effectively progress withoutslipping into the danger zone. As part of this on-going training blog, we’ve incorporated a weekly set of off-the-bike training on wednesday nights, coinciding with the Core-yoga-circuits we do at West Wycombe. I was originally going to convert this into a turbo session, to increase the specificity of our training as we move into the new year, but I’ve been outvoted, so we’re going to continue core circuits until the end of January. There’s very good reasons for training through ranges of motion not normally used while on the bike, as all-round strength is very useful to balance inequalities in power between sides, and to prepare you for falling off. Also, there are exercises we can do which are more intense than we could make them while on the bike, so giving us extra preparation for the coming season. Many of us have found that variation is often the stimulus to overcome a training plateau, and that stimulus is desparately needed by all of us who turn up and bang out the same old performances year after year. If you’re under 60, you can get better. If you’re over 60, are you looking to steadily get slower as you age? Come to Core Circuits and reverse that trend!! I like to do Endurance based sessions at this time of year, keeping a steady HR for a good proportion of time. Turbo tonight not so hard as before Christmas – to force growth of blood components, Mitochondria and fat burning componentry. I like “Just sitting there”. Warm up till you get to 80% Max HR, then oscillate your HR between 80% and 90% for 40 minutes. Use the two boundary HR’s, and every 3 minutes, as your prompt to change something. Thus, say: 15 minutes Warm up, which leaves you in, say, 53×16 at 80% HR. This is a multiple of 3 minutes, so change up to 53×15 and ride for three minutes, during which HR will rise, to, say 86%. At 18 minutes, change up again, to, say, 53×14 and ride for as long as it takes for your HR to reach 90%. At this point, change down again, to 53×15 and ride till the next 3 minutes are up. Change down again and ride for 3 minutes, or until HR drops to 80%. Keep toggling up and down between the two values, using your gears, until your 40 minutes are done. Then cool down, stretch and bask in the warm glow of another good session well done |
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