How to get rid of Cement Legs
posted on January 18th, 2010 in Cycling, Ride Reports, Strength Training by Stephen
When I first started personal training, suddenly I found myself standing for several hours a day. I was a young guy, so that didn’t seem to really bother me. However, it effected my cycling greatly! My wattage, training strength, and racing abilities were suffering….. it was like I was pedaling squares. But this was the opposite effect that I was looking for – I wanted a flexible schedule to train so that I could be a stronger racer!
Basically what was happening is that a lot more blood was pooling in my legs that what I was used to. I was in the early part of the race season – April – and this was having ill effects on me.
It took me a couple weeks of figuring out how to counter-act the required number of hours that I now had to be standing all day. It was mainly trial and error that I even figured it out. What I started to note was that by Sunday, I would begin to feel like my usual self on the bike. But that made sense, because I was working Monday thru Friday and training and/or racing on the weekends.
What I had to do was ‘spin-out’ my legs every evening after work.
Whether I went out and cycled mid-day or not, at the end of the day, I had to spin. Even if it was a day off the bike, I would go down stairs and spin on the rollers for 15-20 minutes. I wouldn’t do a hard ride, I would just get on the bike and spin an easy gear. I normally didn’t even get my Heart Rate over 130 or so – I would just get the blood pumping some. The difference that this made for me was huge. I felt like my old cycling self again and not someone that had trouble holding the race-pace.
An added benefit to spinning out the legs was that to occupy your mind, you can do spin-ups and ILT’s. So your spin will get faster, smoother and more effective with less loss of energy all at the same time.
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Cycling Circuits
posted on December 10th, 2009 in Strength Training by Stephen
I have a workout by the same name. I did this because it is a great way to think of a good workout for an Athlete. Circuit training.
As I was riding with a friend yesterday he was asking me about workouts for cyclists. It slowly became apparent that he was just doing some exercises with no basis of why. I can remember doing the same thing with my cycling training when I was a category 4 rider and all I did was the group rides…..but when I got serious and wanted to improve my cycling using a plan was a huge improvement and boost for me to upgrade to a category 2 rider the following year!
The same preparation that goes into a cycling training program should go into a cyclists weight training program! Don’t use machines! Use Body weights and then add Free-weights!
Another guy asked me about doing weighted squats. Asked him to demonstrate a squat for me. As he squatted, he could not get to parallel and his heels came off the ground, which is pretty typical of guys. So, I showed him the difference in the way he squats and the way I squat. How and why the mechanics of it were different. Part of the reason that his heels come up is because he is not engaging his glutes, and using mainly the quads. Tight hamstrings may also be a contributing factor to this also.
If your squat isn’t using proper form, WHY would you then want to add weight and Amplify improper form? That leads to injuries! You will get much more out of your workout if you correct the muscle imbalance.
Pretty good workout video of Lance at his home gym. Notice that there are no machine based exercises!! You shouldn’t do them either.
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A Pro Workout
posted on November 18th, 2009 in Cycling, Cycling Tips, Ride Reports, Strength Training by Stephen
Tim came by the studio today for a workout, which consisted of 30 seconds and of: 30 seconds Balance Squats, 15 seconds rest; 30 seconds Hamstring (carpet)slides 15 seconds rest; 30 seconds Hover 15 seconds rest; 30 seconds push-ups 15 seconds rest; 30 seconds Cable Pull-downs 15 seconds rest; REPEAT 2 more times.
2nd circuit Body Rows, Single Leg Lunges – weighted, Dead Lifts, Band Rotations, Hovering on a BOSU.
By doing each exercise followed by an exercise of a different muscle group, you are challenging your cardiovascular system and firing up your metabolism. Also, you get your workout done quicker!
To follow that up, and continue preparing for old man winter, we did a chilly 1 hour spin on the bikes in the rain.
I didn’t get video of this workout, but here is a video of how NOT to work with a Stability ball:
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StrongerCyclist.com is the site of Stephen Carhart, personal trainer, author, and cyclist.