PEP BootCamp
posted on August 1st, 2011 in Cycling, Cycling Tips, Reviews, Strength Training by Stephen
Want to get stronger, faster, and leaner this year?
Then you need Preparation for Endurance and Performance (PEP)
PEP Bootcamp is a fitness program that includes top notch fitness instructions, nutritional coaching and motivational training all designed to get you in the best shape of your life in the shortest, safest possible time regardless of your current fitness level.
PEP is a workout that:
• will develop CORE strength
• be able to recruit more muscle fibers
• is based on intervals rather than reps or weight
• teaches your body create more power
• teaches your Heart Rate to quickly drop between intervals = faster recovery!
• prevents over-use injuries through variation of exercises
• creates stability of all muscles and joints
• increases functional strength that applies to sports
• improve flexibility with advanced foam roller techniques
PEP is a workout that will challenge every muscle in your body and get
you ready for the upcoming race season!
PEP is an endurance workout that affects the whole body with continually challenging exercises.
This promotes a greater release of growth hormone and increased levels of lactic acid
production, which will enhance the body’s ability to remove this waste product when
competition arrives.
Don’t let the next 6 months be the same as the last 6 months. Do something about it.
You CAN do this. The Unstoppable Fitness Formula can work for you. All you have to do it let me “prove it ” to you over the next month
if you sign up right now, I am dropping the price by $50 – this week only.
Classes are: Tuesday/Thursday 7:15am-8 and @9:00am-9:45.
Where: Athletic Training Services – 3872 Roswell Rd. – Suite A-9 – Atlanta, GA 30342
-about a mile from Chastain park
P.S. 30 days from now you’ll either be a month older and possibly a few pounds heavier, or, you can be a 5-10 pounds lighter and 30 days closer to your fitness goal. You decide which on you would rather be one month from now. Make sure you make the right choice
call for a PEP Introductory session
FOR MORE INFORMATION, email STEPHEN using the Contact page
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Strength Plateaus
posted on February 21st, 2011 in Cycling, Cycling Tips, Strength Training by Stephen
Fairly often I have people that hear about the success of my client(s) and then asks me for a set workout that they can do, or to make a few changes to ‘mix-it-up’ for the program they have been doing……
I can do that, but I can not keep this workout from creating a plateau for you. No one can. In fact the definition of Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. A ‘set’ workout plan is not much different. If you go to the gym & do the same machines with the pin pushed into the same number each time you are there, then you can expect the same as last time. The fact is that although you may be stronger than not doing anything, but you also are not using your gym time to it’s fullest potential.
National Elite Track Pursuit Champion Daniel Holt demonstrates a side plank:
You have to keep mixing things up and keep the body guessing. If you do the same things repeatedly then the body adapts and continually attempts to do the same amount of work while recruiting less muscle fibers. This is actually the reverse effect that people are looking for as I wrote about in Cycling Strength.
If you are finding that you are in a Strength Plateau, then you should consider if you are over-training, or getting in-sufficient recovery. Are you going to hard or riding too hilly a course on your easy days? How is the hydration? the nutrition? too much volumn? too much intensity?
A workout program must have a progression of challenging exercises to get the desired results on the bike. If I got someone to do the hardest workout the first time they came into the studio, they may not be able to walk back in 2 days later. Thus, in order to get different results, your workouts have to change and continually challenge your body. Only through challenging your body and recovery do you get strength gains.
So, we start with the basic exercises, and see how the body responds and adjust accordingly.
Next we make sure that both legs are putting out an equivalent amount of energy into the pedals.Then we go for dramatic strength increases, so that we can do plyometrics which will add the explosive power to this increased strength.
Going through this phase of exercises takes several months. Only through proper challenges and recovery do you get optimal strength gains that allow you to break through strength plateaus!
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Train slow, move slow, Train Fast and Move with Power
posted on March 10th, 2010 in Cycling, Cycling Tips, Reviews, Ride Reports, Strength Training by Stephen
Train slow, move slow – train fast, and move with Power!
This doesn’t just mean that if you train fast you will have power……
I went out for a spin on a Friday before some Gold Sprints at Peachtree Bikes – but I realized I would waste my time attempting to sprint that night. My legs didn’t have the turn-over required to spin a gear that fast to do well in the sprints. I was having to put too much effort into attempting to spin much above 100 rpm’s…. but it is to be expected, especially when you consider where I am in the training plan.
Although this is disappointing, it is not unexpected, I have been doing a full cold, wet, snow/ice winter of gym workouts this year. Not a lot of heavy lifting, but more true strength building exercises, including weighted lunges & single leg squats. To complement the work in the gym, I have been doing hill repeats at least once a week. When I’m doing the hill climbing my RPM’s are around 70, and the focus is on leg strength – not cadence or Heart Rate. So currently my legs are more used to slowly grinding their way uphill, not turning over the pedals for the county line sprints. So, to suddenly ask my legs to turn over 150 RPM’s for 60 seconds is not suddenly going to be possible!
The good thing about a training plan is things are in phases and I know that the leg turnover comes around much faster than the strength building. Although it has taken most of the winter to build the strength of doing 1 leg squats, it will only be a matter of several weeks to get the legs to increase their turnover again.
As the strength from climbing is combined with the efficient pedal turnover the end result will be power to the pedals. And now that we are into the plyometric phase of the training regime, this is already taking place.
As disappointing as this is b/c I’m not racing in a great event, I know that as I add more speed to my training that the form and turnover of my legs will be a greater reward for the small sacrifice. This is truly where having a plan for the season allows small things like this much more understandable when you are able to look at the big picture and remember the seasons goals, not just what sounds fun this week.
When you are training for a big goal or event sometimes the mind and body respond in funny ways. Some weeks are very challenging physically and sometimes they become challenging mentally. I always let my clients know ahead of time that this is part of the process of becoming stronger. I can even tell them which week in their training plan it will happen & why it will be better the following week.
I find that 1 of the best things about accepting these thoughts as part of the process is although they still pop-up, you don’t dwell on them. Although this does not prevent these self-defeating thoughts from entering the mind, it does help you accept them and push them aside, understanding that it is expected and only temporary. And that just around the corner from this is growth and Strength!
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StrongerCyclist.com is the site of Stephen Carhart, personal trainer, author, and cyclist.