Are you an athlete who isn’t running to their potential off the bike? Are you someone who constantly feels weak when riding hilly courses? Are you new to triathlon and don’t know where to start? If you answered YES to any of these questions—than this is the article for you.
For the majority of athletes, your muscles will break down at some point in a race, but the stronger athletes fatigue less, or they fatigue later.
If you have put in the weekly hours of training than your cardiovascular system isn’t the problem, so when you go back to the drawing board the immediate fix isn’t to add more training volume. Instead, the key to success will be adding workouts geared toward improving your overall musculature.
Triathlon training is broken into two categories, specific training and general training. At all times you should be training both sides of the spectrum. Unfortunately, when an athlete shifts too far to one category, the ladder falls and they lose certain qualities they’ve worked hard to develop.
A good example would be if you are gearing for a hilly race that features short climbs and you spent the final eight weeks only working on your top-end threshold and speed. The good news is that you will develop a great top end, but you’ll also lose the general endurance that holds you together to the finish line.
The same could be said for the final 12 weeks in preparation for a hilly IRONMAN when you focus only on steady aerobic riding and neglect the appropriate intensity that matches the course demands. You will develop the endurance needed to complete the race, but the hills will empty your tank.
If you want to be a successful athlete, you should train more frequently in the general phase, where you’re focusing on developing your durability as well as your speed. As the race season approaches you should include race-specific workouts only once a week.
However, the majority of your workouts should be done in a bigger or easier gear than what you will be racing in. Spending most of your time developing better endurance, muscle durability and overall speed will get you to the finish line faster than others.
3 Winter Cycling Workouts for Building Muscular Strength
1. Biggest Gear Flat Sprints
These sprints are done in the biggest gear you have starting from a complete stop. These sprints only last 10 seconds and you are going at 100-percent maximal effort.
The first five seconds I encourage you to be out of the saddle and then sit down once you are up to full speed. Because these are done at a maximal effort, they require full recovery between each.
Start with six repetitions and three minutes of rest between each repetition. The goal of this session is maximal power! If done correctly, you will fatigue quicker when trying to reach your peak wattage as the session progresses.
These sessions are what I call “raising your ceiling” workouts. Your end goal is to is to improve your threshold and if your maximal power is relatively low to where your threshold is, your threshold potential will always remain low.
I find that most triathletes ignore these sessions as they don’t find the value, unfortunately it’s these same athletes who remain slow season after season.
2. Seated Hill Repeats
These are the bread and butter of a triathlete’s training routine and they should be repeated weekly or biweekly depending the phase of training they are in.
The intensity of these efforts should be between 105 percent and 120 percent of your threshold, and your cadence should be between 60 and 70 rpms. You should start with 10, one-minute repetitions with only one minute of rest between each.
As your training progresses, you should add two additional interval repeats every two weeks while trying to maintain the same power output. Your heart rate will not elevate to where you’re out of breathe, but your muscles will experience heavy levels of fatigue.
This session is also very good for teaching athletes how to “feel the pedal stroke” and the correct places to apply pressure. If you are not pushing above your threshold, you aren’t going to get the benefit of this workout.
3. Low Cadence Extended Intervals
As your fitness grows, so does the length of your intervals. These intervals are what we consider “supporting sessions” early on in your training as they support the high intensity sessions you are primarily focusing on. As the racing season nears, they become the focus of your training plan. Starting these efforts at Threshold power, progressing to Sweet Spot power, and finishing them at a Tempo power is the best plan of progression. Triathlon is an endurance sport so when we get to our competition phase, doing longer low cadence sessions are the staple sessions for building the durability needed to minimize fatigue in the later stages of the race.
How To Balance Your General and Specific Training
Some athletes are born stronger than others. If you were constantly picked last for dodgeball, there is a good chance you should be focusing more of your time on Maximal Sprints and Seated Hill Repeats in the early part of your season. The athletes who are gifted with good force production have greater athletic potential than athletes with limited force production.
If you are someone who scores well on the one-minute Power Profile Chart, you should spend more time doing the Seated Hill Repeats and Low Cadence Extended Efforts in the off-season.
The best part of adding these sessions to your training routine is that they will help you run faster off the bike. Simply riding your bike in an aerobic zone does little to condition your body for the demands of your race.
The stronger your legs are, the less they will fatigue. While all of the new indoor riding programs make riding the trainer more enjoyable, they also encourage poor training habits. These programs have a place in an athlete’s weekly plan, but it shouldn’t replace the structure needed to take you to the next level.
In closing, if you have not had a professional bike fit or if you experience knee pain while doing any of these three workouts, then I wouldn’t recommend you do them without consulting a coach, or modify accordingly.
