BODY BUILDING

strength training isn’t just about the off-season. Over the years, I’ve seen a good benefit to continuing with off-thebikestrengthworkduringtheseason.inparticular,working on core stability strength year-round is really important to be able to maintain a strong torso from which you can put Gandrew pinfoldn power down into the pedals.

the thing i’ve started doing more often with everyone is more sprinting. Obviously, we’re going to structure this around athletes’ goals, but even with triathletes or my Leadville clients, we’re doing way more sprinting. What I’m seeing is a muscular/neuromuscular adaptation to the sprints, which is a very high-level contraction.

Think about moving a pile of bricks from one side of the room to the other – I use this analogy with strength training a lot. You can lift really, really heavy weights or you could do a 1-lb. weight. If you’re only lifting the 1-lb. weight, all you really have is that endurance strength. Whereas, if you’re so strong that you can lift the whole pile of bricks or 300 lb., you can probably lift 50 lb. or 50 bricks and move them across the room.

The analogy to a cyclist’s body is that the harder you contract, the more motor movements you can contract, the faster you’ll be able to go. Certainly, you’ll be able to sprint, but at the end of those endurance races, something like Leadville, you need to contract every motor unit. You really start to call on everything. Sprint work done previously will have improved activation patterns among the different muscle fibres (slow-twitch, intermediate and fast-twitch) and improved efficiency to help you go longer.

For a sprint workout, it could be a one-hour workout with five sprints with lots of recovery. I would say a minimum of seven minutes recovery between each of

sprints.( peter glassford’ your five good