January Training
January and February are critical months on the training calendar. My coach will usually recommend increased time on the bike that includes some very long weekend rides. Unfortunately with the weather in our area, these hours are usually inside, and quite often reduced by 15 to 20% or so. What we don't compromise on is the intensity of the training intervals within those hours. The intervals can always be completed inside if the weather doesn't sccomodate riding outside.
Intervals in January and February should be designed to start the development of the skills you'll need for your event(s). If you plan on racing primarily crits, you may want to work on tempo efforts with high intensity sprints every 5 to 10 minutes. If road races are your goal, you may want to work on holding tempo efforts that will also incorporate steady state efforts and/or some climbing efforts. Time trial specialists may want to start working on steady state efforts and power intervals. The basic idea is to start getting your mind and body ready for the type of efforts you'll be needing once the race season begins.
In addition to some specificity training you should work on any aspects of your racing that may have been lacking in the previous year. In otherwords, you may have a sprint that is outstanding but an inability to ride at steady state power wont allow you to be in the right spot to use that sprint. Spending more time on some longer efforts just below threshhold power may help. You can also use shorter but more intense power interval efforts to increase your Vo2 and LT which will translate into better steady state power. The point is that there are a number of ways to improve your performance through interval training and the winter months are a fine time to start this process.
posted by pistolpete @ 9:26 PM
5 Comments
5 Comments:
Peter, should there also be a change in the strength workout sessions for the next three months for the person that competes mostly in time trials? By that I mean, should the power intervals and steady state work now take priority over the leg strength sessions? If one typically incorporates leg strength workouts twice a week, should it be reduced to maybe only once per week? Typically it takes about 2-3 days to recover from a hard leg workout session, and this makes it hard to get in power intervals much more then once per week. Thanks.
I would start to allow your cycling intervals to precedence. You should continue your core and upper body work but I'd taper back on the legs. Ideally you could do your bike intervals and then wait 48 hours to do the leg work or do the leg work later in the day after the intervals. Its always better to get the rest days in and not use the off days for hard gym efforts. Personally I keep pretty much the same strength routine year-round. I focus on lots of core, a decent amount of upper body and some, but never excessive, leg work. I ramp it a little in the winter but it really doesn;t make sense to go heavy in the winter just to drop it once the season starts. Anything you gained will be lost in a few weeks. I've also been logging so many miles (14,000 last year) that I realy use the leg work in the gym for bone strength, hamstring conditioning, and balance. I have incorporated a lot of balance/single leg work in my workouts and with those I'm training. Lots of cyclists can leg press several hundred pounds but they can't do even a few single leg squats or other similar exercises. Its all about power to the pedals and that happens one leg at a time.
Great information Peter, thanks. It is hard to believe that the racing season is just a few months away.
Peter, I'd like to improve my time trial times. Can you help me? It sounds like I need to be doing steady state efforts and power intervals. What does that look like? How often? What would a typical week of workouts look like?
Sorry for the delay. I ws out of town for several days. The steady state intervals are probably the best to improve time trial performance. The key would be to do more of them than the length of your event. If Cleves is your longest event, I'd recommend doing multiple 8, 10, or 12 minute efforts. If a 40k is your goal I'd up those to 15 to 20 minutes each and once again do multiple efforts. This time of the year I'm doing a lot of tempo efforts (3,4,5,6,7,8 x 20 minutes depedning on the schedule) with the idea of building up to the steady states. I'll also start on some power intervals so that I train my VO2 max to as igh a level as possible.
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