More thoughts on Winter Training

I was talking with Will Peveler, exercise physiologist at NKU, about the increase in strength training that endurance athletes typically incorporate into their training during the winter months. I told him that the people I train/coach all comment that after a workout with plenty of lunges and squats that they can "feel" certain muscles when they ride that they never felt before. This is obviously a good sign that the exercises are stressing muscles used in cycling. Recruiting these muscles is going to be beneficial in adding more power to the pedal stroke. The cycling motion itself is using these muscles but not as completely as the exercises in the gym.

My question to Will was why would the endurance athlete stop these exercises once the race season starts if we know that after just a week to ten days that the muscles will start to revert to their previous condition and after a month it's as though we never did the training at all? I've always kept pretty much the same workout program year-round and taper it along with my time on the bike for key events. Will thought that made sense but he also noted that he couldn't produce any studies that backed it up. I'm going to stick with my year-round strength training. Maybe Will will assign this question to some students. Could be interesting.

Another topic is the idea of using the winter to build base miles with many long, moderate hours on the bike. The one problem with this is the challenge of getting in a lot of hours on the bike in the winter. I'm ok with maybe two hours a day, sometimes three, but I wont ride an indoor century (although its tempting---I'm sure I have enough live Skynyrd and Allman Brothers to go for several days). The most recent TriAthlete Magazine had an atricle by exercise physiologist Matt Dixon. He makes the point that your weekly training should include time in every training zone, from the lowest to highest intensity, to increase your aerobic base and to train your body to use stored body fat. The key is planning how much time in each level and allowing for adequate recovery. the months of January and February have always been my most intense training on the bike, and my coach has been recommending this for the last nine years. The difficult two and three hour rides in the winter usually allow me to get right back into the longer rides in the spring and start racing close to my peak power of the previous year. Ideally we take that peak power a little higher each year right about the time my key events are on the calendar.