Every now and then you'll read or hear about some dramatic new (or, more likely, recycled old!) training method that gets huge gains in performances from some group of people.  This happens in most sporting fields.  There'll be some new product making big claims about 20% improvements in some measure of performance and so on .. Glossy adverts, flash websites making big claims, and they've got studies to back them up!

How does this happen and what does it mean, and how can you, as a skeptical cyclist who's seen it all before, make sense of it?

Leaving out sloppy science and badly designed studies paid for by companies trying to sell their product, let's see if we can make some sense out of training and performance.

Firstly, take a look at this graph :

 The X axis is time spent training, the Y axis is performance and hopefully you'll notice that there's a ceiling, that's your genetic potential.  Everyone has one of these, and ultimately that's what decides if you can be an elite athlete or not. The only way to go above your genetic potential is to get involved in doping.

The graph starts at "untrained novice".  In our context, this would be someone who's never ridden a bike in any sort of training sense but can ride without falling over.

As you can see from the graph, initial performance increases are rapid.  A novice, very quickly with good training, progresses and makes rapid gains.  This isn't unique to cycling, it's the same in weight training, running, rowing, you name it .. anything that has a significant physiological fitness component responds in this way to training.

What's interesting, and often misleading, is that even poorly designed training plans can lead to rapid initial advancement, it's call the 'Novice effect' which I've mentioned before.  It approaches the genetic limits slower than an optimally designed program would. 

An extreme example of this would be setting a couch potato up with a program of lap swimming as their cycling training - initially their cycling would improve but it would rapidly plateau, much more rapidly than a program of well designed cycling intervals would.  The novice effect is basically 'something is better than nothing' in this context.  This often leads to much confusion, as we, gullible humans, see what we did initially working (even if it's not optimal, how do you know?) and assume that it's the best way to train.  It might be, or it might not be, the novice effect can be deceiving to the unwary.  This includes a lot of exercise physiologists who use poorly designed studies and very unwise extrapolations to lead coaches and athletes down dead-end paths.  So-called 'evidence-based coaching' is fraught with peril, as so many studies are poorly designed and the subjects badly chosen.

What should, I hope, be obvious from this visual depiction of progress in the graph above, is that it's relatively easy to get significant improvements from untrained athletes, and also, that it's much harder to get improvements from athletes who are close to their genetic potential.  A 20% improvement in a novice is fast and easy, in an elite athlete close to their potential a 2% improvement may take months or years or never.

Marketing people love to use novice improvement to 'prove' that their product is better than everything else and thus, sell you something.  Sometimes, their product is very good, but the data is misleading if it's not viewed in the context of the above graph.

Well, sometimes it's ok ..

Check this out :

It's 90 minutes long. You're likely to not watch it although I'd really love it if you did  ... a potted summary :

Soft drinks and fruit juices are bad.  Very bad.  High fructose corn syrup is a poison.

.

Milk is good, usually, but not always.  Whole milk is good.

Life has two choices, fat or fart!

Fast food is evil.

So for cyclists, what does this matter?

Only touch sugars during the glygogen window (30 mins-2 hrs post training).

Cook your own food.  Avoid soft drinks as much as possible.  Yes, Coke is really bad for you.

From this extract titled "Rower's High"

Physical exercise is known to stimulate the release of endorphins, creating a mild sense of euphoria that has rewarding properties. Using pain tolerance (a conventional non-invasive assay for endorphin release), we show that synchronized training in a college rowing crew creates a heightened endorphin surge compared with a similar training regime carried out alone. This heightened effect from synchronized activity may explain the sense of euphoria experienced during other social activities (such as laughter, music-making and dancing) that are involved in social bonding in humans and possibly other vertebrates.

That might explain why it's much easier to train hard on an ergo (and keep coming back for more!) at our Spin sessions than on your own.

Vitamin D once was thought to be primarily involved in bone development. But a growing body of research suggests that it’s vital in multiple different bodily functions, including allowing body cells to utilize calcium (which is essential for cell metabolism), muscle fibers to develop and grow normally, and the immune system to function properly.

“Almost every cell in the body has receptors” for Vitamin D, Anderson says. “It can up-regulate and down-regulate hundreds, maybe even thousands of genes,” Larson-Meyer says. “We’re only at the start of understanding how important it is.” But many of us, it seems, no matter how active and scrupulous we are about health, don’t get enough Vitamin D. Nowadays, “many people aren’t going outside very much,” Johnson says, and most of us assiduously apply sunscreen and take other precautions when we do.

Although few studies have looked closely at the issue of Vitamin D and athletic performance, those that have are suggestive. A series of strange but evocative studies undertaken decades ago in Russia and Germany, for instance, hint that the Eastern Bloc nations may have depended in part on sunlamps and Vitamin D to produce their preternaturally well-muscled and world-beating athletes. In one of the studies, four Russian sprinters were doused with artificial, ultraviolet light. Another group wasn’t. Both trained identically for the 100-meter dash. The control group lowered their sprint times by 1.7 percent. The radiated runners, in comparison, improved by an impressive 7.4 percent.

When researchers tested the vertical jumping ability of a small group of adolescent athletes, Larson-Meyer says, “they found that those who had the lowest levels of Vitamin D tended not to jump as high,”

A number of recent studies also have shown that, among athletes who train outside year-round, maximal oxygen intake tends to be highest in late summer, Johnson says. The athletes, in other words, are fittest in August, when ultraviolet radiation from the sun is near its zenith. They often then experience an abrupt drop in maximal oxygen intake, beginning as early as September, even thought they continue to train just as hard. This decline coincides with the autumnal lengthening of the angle of sunlight. Less ultraviolet radiation reaches the earth and, apparently, sports performance suffers.

Sunlight is one easy, if controversial, fix. “Most dermatologists will still tell you that no amount of sun exposure is safe,” Johnson says. But Larson-Meyer and other Vitamin D researchers aren’t so sure. “There’s no good, scientific evidence that five to thirty minutes of sunlight a few times a week is harmful,” she says. Or try supplements. “1,000 IU a day and much more for people who are deficient” is probably close to ideal, Larson-Meyer says. This, by the way, is about double the current recommended daily allowance. Most experts anticipate that this allowance will be revised upward soon. Consult with your doctor before beginning supplements. Overdoses of Vitamin D are rare, but can occur. Finally, stay tuned. “In the next few years, we’re going to be learning much more” about the role of vitamin D in bodily function and sports performance, Larson-Meyer says.

states :

PURPOSE: Activated vitamin D (calcitriol) is a pluripotent pleiotropic secosteroid hormone. As a steroid hormone, which regulates more than 1000 vitamin D-responsive human genes, calcitriol may influence athletic performance. Recent research indicates that intracellular calcitriol levels in numerous human tissues, including nerve and muscle tissue, are increased when inputs of its substrate, the prehormone vitamin D, are increased.

METHODS: We reviewed the world's literature for evidence that vitamin D affects physical and athletic performance.

RESULTS: Numerous studies, particularly in the German literature in the 1950s, show vitamin D-producing ultraviolet light improves athletic performance. Furthermore, a consistent literature indicates physical and athletic performance is seasonal; it peaks when 25-hydroxy-vitamin D [25(OH)D] levels peak, declines as they decline, and reaches its nadir when 25(OH)D levels are at their lowest. Vitamin D also increases the size and number of Type II (fast twitch) muscle fibers. Most cross-sectional studies show that 25(OH)D levels are directly associated with musculoskeletal performance in older individuals. Most randomized controlled trials, again mostly in older individuals, show that vitamin D improves physical performance.

CONCLUSIONS: Vitamin D may improve athletic performance in vitamin D-deficient athletes. Peak athletic performance may occur when 25(OH)D levels approach those obtained by natural, full-body, summer sun exposure, which is at least 50 ng x mL(-1). Such 25(OH)D levels may also protect the athlete from several acute and chronic medical conditions.

Of course, it makes it clear that this is a "may improve" issue, and that this probably only applies to people who are Vitamin D deficient.  Exactly what that means isn't clear.  I suspect most cyclists aren't in much danger, our tan-lines suggest plenty of sunlight, but over winter when we train indoors etc? 

It's certainly interesting!

Amongst other things we spoke about on Tuesday, Tom asked "why are Tabatas only 8 reps?".  I had to tell the truth, I don't know.  Maybe quality dies off after 8 and there's no return?  That's the protocol and so that's what we did.  But.... We're always open to suggestions, so now there's a new drill, the Tomabata!  It's 10 reps of a Tabata interval (20s on/10s recovery) where a normal Tabata is 8 reps for 4 minutes in total.  Eh ghads!  5 minutes of torture!  Ok A stream'ers, when you're lying in pools of your own vomit at Spin next week, blame Tom, it was his idea!

This week I got unstuck doing squats, I'd been bogged down at 185kg for about 3 weeks, not able to consistently get three sets of three with any sort of form.  This week I bit the bullet and got up to 190kg, and have now done two sessions of 190x3x3's.  That's ok ... Tuesday's turnout at Spin was healthy despite the dreadful weather that kept a number of people home, wisely choosing not to travel.  Tonight at DISC I suspect I'll be pretty slow - Yesterday's squats have significantly disrupted homeostasis and I'm feeling very flat!  Thanks to Hans Seyle ...

I've seen a draft of the full article for October's Ride Cycling Review and it looks pretty snazzy.

We have to plan ahead to summer now.  Our DISC and spin sessions will be winding up at the end of September and two of the DISC sessions in September won't run, the 6th because it'll be father's day and many regulars won't make it and the 20th because that's the practice day for the 2009-2010 SSS.  So what'll we do over summer?  Last summer we did some unstructured sessions at Blackburn on Sundays and also at DISC on occasion, but this summer there seems to be a bit more demand.  We also ran a Tuesday morning session at BBN last summer which worked well, and we may revive that one.

We've built some really good momentum at Spin over winter with, as mentioned, huge numbers (peaked at 31!) and it would be a shame to lose all that, but I'm not sure how we'd fit anything in.  Over summer there's crits on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursdays where most of the racing riders will be, and the trackies will be doing afternoons at Blackburn or evenings at DISC if they're not doing more endurance stuff on the road, but the DUCCs and a few of the non-racing people want to keep going. I'm welcome to your suggestions please.  Remember Blackburn's Summer of Track on Saturday afternoons and of course (how could you forget?!) the Summer Sprint Series for the sprinters.

I'm thinking we might do a race skills (road bikes and/or track bikes) on Saturday mornings again.  Maybe once a fortnight?  It's a trip for some, but for others it might be worth doing and maybe we can sell the idea a bit - I have a basic syllabus that I developed for the DUCC sessions that can be expanded on and fine-tuned and with some marketing may be worth doing more of.  No-one actually teaches race-craft that I'm aware of except us and that's a possible way to not only keep the regulars involved over summer if they're not racers, but also to allow more honing of race skills for those who do race but want to work on tactical development.  Again, if you're interested or have any suggestions, contact me please!

Every now and then I buy a copy of Bicycling Australia, generally against my better judgement.  It's Ride's poor cousin at best, but like a McPlastics thickshake, every now and then I'm drawn to buy it, knowing I'll feel awful afterwards.

The May-June 2009 edition is no surprise.  A few years ago BA published some stupid article glowingly praising a fraudulent snake-oil product called "Oxy Shots" (go ahead, have a look at the website, it's .. breathtaking!) which claimed to improve oxygen saturation in the bloodstream by drinking (yes, drinking!) oxygen.  Absolute bull, but there you go, and the muppets at BA endorsed the thing, gave it a whole page and the reviewer had never heard of placebos (despite apparently having a coaching qualification ...).

So what have they done this time?  "Lact-Away".  Yep, A page's 'review' of a product that claims to buffer the body from something THAT DOESN'T EXIST THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE! Our old friend Lactic Acid!  Really!  Blood lactate is a fuel and is used in the Cori cycle to produce glucose, it's not a performance inhibitor and LACTIC ACID DOES NOT EXIST IN HUMANS!  The reviewer even mentions that she (I assume ... Shannon Johansen sounds female) started feeling like she was lactating more readily than usual.  She breastfeeds while riding?  Ok .... Strangers in the house and all that?  Bizzare ... Anyway .. How would she know her blood lactate levels without a test?  You can't feel it.  Given that the active ingredient in this stuff is vinegar and salt (if you want to buffer the PH of your blood, sodium carbonate is known to work, and there's protocols for it and it's almost free at the supermarket, not that I recommend it), suggesting that the mugs buy a $125 bottle of this stuff to 'see if you're the one that gets a 20% improvement' is a poor joke at best, and downright irresponsible at worst.  Looking for a magic potion to improve performance?  BA, EPO works ... maybe you can promote its use?

If you really want to know what causes muscle pain and performance decreases, read this article.  It's a little dry .... Here's a relevant quote :

In summary, it appears that the intracellular accumulation of lactate per se is not a major factor in muscle fatigue

And even more interestingly :

Experiments in which lactate was infused into whole animals while the muscles were stimulated to fatigue by nerve or direct muscle stimulation, found that the presence of extracellular lactate, which likely decreased pH_i, reduced failure of sarcolemma excitability and restored force production (emphasis mine!)

"Lact-away", no, actually, I'd like MORE blood lactate.

So that's my BA thickshake for this 6 months or so.  Fools and their money, and I was the fool again!  Hopefully I'll resist the urge next time.

Type 2b muscle fibres are the ones sprinters want the most of.  They're the fastest of the two fast twitch fibres found in human muscle tissue.  The more you have, the faster and more powerfully your muscles work and the faster you can go.  Enduros don't want these at all, they're next to useless for endurance work.  Enduros spend their time trying to convert type two fibres to type one.  Type one, or 'slowtwitch' fibres are the ones that go all day, but 10 times slower in contraction speed than fast twitch fibres.

A very interesting article on 'Overshooting' is here.

The gist of it is :

a pattern of heavy resistance training followed by decreased activity causes first a decrease then an overshoot in the proportion of the fastest fibre type in the trained/detrained muscle group.

That's good!

a large increase in training volume for approximately three months will decrease the proportion of IIb fibres in the trained muscles; a subsequent reduction (not cessation) in training volume relative to the heavy resistance training phase should not only reverse this decrease but lead to a significant overshoot in the proportion of IIb fibres. In consequence, the potential for the rapid and forceful muscle contractions so crucial to sprint performance should be enhanced.
This conclusion is in line with the current training practices of many sprint athletes: a heavy resistance training phase followed by a taper in training volume and intensity in the lead up to the competitive season(9). And on the evidence of the Copenhagen research, others would be advised to follow their example, with three months of heavy resistance training followed by three months of relative detraining, with relatively reduced training volume in the run up to key targeted events.

Interesting.  One study found an increase from 9% to 18% (double!) the proportion of 2b fibres after a heavy block of training and then a layoff.  Ratios on their own are easily misinterpreted but that's a very significant increase.  It's rumoured that the British track sprint squad used this phenomenon to great effect in their preparation for Beijing.

Does this mean we should slack off before big sprint meetings?  It would seem so, at least in terms of heavy strength work.

Many of us have experienced DOMS at some point or other in our lives.  DOMS is Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness.  It's a mildly painful muscle soreness that comes 24-48 hours after exercise, usually an exercise you haven't done before or haven't done for a long time, and that involves eccentric contractions.  Eccentric means lengthening under load.  Imagine holding a weight in your hand and lowering it, so your bicep is extending, not contracting, under load.  That's an example of an eccentric contraction. 

What causes it?  Many will say 'lactic acid', and they'll be wrong.  There is no such thing as lactic acid in the human body.  Ever.  It just doesn't happen. I've ranted on about that before, but just to be blunt, from wikipedia :

Contrary to popular belief, this increased concentration of lactate does not directly cause acidosis, nor is it responsible for delayed onset muscle soreness.^[1] This is because lactate itself is not capable of releasing a proton, and secondly, the acidic form of lactate, lactic acid, cannot be formed under normal circumstances in human tissues.^{[citations needed]} Analysis of the glycolytic pathway in humans indicates that there are not enough hydrogen ions present in the glycolytic intermediates to produce lactic or any other acid.

Here's the best explanation of what DOMS is and how it's caused that I've ever read.   Well worth the 10 minutes of your life it will take to read. Some key points from it :

• Pain killers (NSAIDs etc) don't help. In fact, using many of them in 'normal doses' decreases protein synthesis.  Do not use NSAIDs (ibroprufen, naproxen etc) when doing strength training, they reduce the effects of the training AND don't reduce the effects of DOMS.
  
• The burning sensation when exercising very hard is not related to DOMS
• Muscles will adjust to soreness with time. If you’re unaccustomed to doing a particular exercise or activity, you can bank on being sore the next day or two. But if you keep up the activity, you’ll soon stop getting sore.
• DOMS and actual muscle growth don’t have much to do with each other, no DOMS does not mean no muscle growth, and DOMS does not mean muscle growth.  Correlation is not causation!
  
• DOMS seems to be inflammation of intra-muscular connective tissues
• DOMS itself is not a by-product of muscle fiber inflammation. Being sore does not mean that your muscles are undergoing growth. They might be undergoing repair, but these are not the same things.
• DOMS itself will be caused by any eccentric exercise that you do for enough total reps. The less accustomed you are to that type of exercise, the worse the soreness will be after the fact. This can be squats, or a long walk down a hill etc.
  

Enduro cycling is interesting.  It's a real mish-mash of requirements, unlike other endurance sports it has a (sometimes significant) over threshold power component.  Many races end in sprint finishes, the nature of the sport is such that riders can't just ride at their threshold power output and expect to win in anything except a time trial.  Attacks, short hills, sprint finishes etc mean the endurance road racer must have a mixed bag of adaptations to training. Road racing and MTB racing is primarily aerobic in nature, but not entirely.

What about long, slow distance?  Traditional base miles, go out and ride for 1,000km before doing any intensity?  What's the stressor that that introduces?  Energy use.  The stress of the body running low on fuel forces it to adapt to burn more fat.  Not as a weight loss thing but as an energy source.

Getting back to Seyle's adaptation syndrome, it boils down to this, thanks to Lon Kilgore for the concise summation :

The crux of the correct application of Selye’s theory is to understand that a disruption of homeostasis must occur in the physiological system of interest in order for adaptation and fitness improvement to occur in that same system.

So, roadies and MTB racers doing long races need to stress the body by running it low on energy reserves.  This doesn't boost VO2max, but it does force an adaptation to metabolise more energy from stored fat and an adaptation to store more glygogen.  Lon writes it well again :

Long-slow-distance training is energy substrate depleting in nature. It has been shown many times over that glycogen stores can be totally depleted with this type of training, and depletion of an energy substrate should be considered a fairly significant homeostatic disruption of metabolism. It would not be prudent to consider only complete depletion as a disruptive stress, partial depletions should be considered disruptive as well IF AND ONLY IF the depletion is larger than previously experienced by the trainee. This type of training can also exceed the body’s ability to metabolize fat for energy. Driving a metabolic system beyond its normal range of operation or to failure is definitely a disruption of homeostasis. Combined, the stress of glycogen depletion below normally experienced levels while simultaneously exceeding fat metabolic capacity drives an improvement in storing and utilizing these two energetic substrates and results in being able to run longer – thus endurance has improved but VO2max has not improved.

So, LSD has a place. It's probably not as important as increasing aerobic capacity is for roadies and other enduro cyclists, but it is important.  How much needs to be done?  That's an interesting question.  The balance between high intensity intervals (E3 and above) that stress the aerobic system and energy depleting training is a challenge to get right and varies from athlete to athlete.  Long, slow miles gets a rider better at riding long, slow miles. We also need to boost aerobic capacity by doing high intensity work.  Something that really stresses the aerobic capacity of a rider, for example riding at just above a sustainable power output is good for raising thresholds, as is doing shorter, high intensity riding with limited recovery, such as 1 minute ITT efforts with 1 minute's recovery between efforts.  These are spectacularly good at driving increases in aerobic capacity.  If all you do is base miles, all you get good at is base miles.  Intervals are vital to driving up your performance as an enduro cyclist and it's possible to use your time more effectively than by rolling around for 8 hours on a weekend ride.  E3 and to a lesser extent E2 riding is very energy depleting, longer blocks of E3 will force the body to run low on fuel, and adapt to the need for more without spending unsustainable amounts of time on the bike.

Source : http://www.lonkilgore.com/aerobic_paradox.pdf

This is just a brief note about a training method used by some strength and power athletes with some success, not a full examination of the issues etc.

Traditional training models generally work like this :

Base - Low intensity, high volume

Peak - High intensity, low volume

Take the athlete from base to peak, taper for a few days or a week, and they'll be right.  That's what all the books on cycle coaching say.  They talk about varying training loads such that when volume increases, intensity decreases and visa versa.

That's how it's done, right?

Not necessarily.

To work it out, it's helpful to go back to the fundamentals every now and then.  What happens when we train?

Hans Seyle's adaptation syndrome kicks in.  Roughly paraphrased this is "what doesn't kill us makes us stronger".  Or at least, that's one way to look at it.

So what?  What happens when we train?  What are we trying to achieve? 

We're trying to ride our bikes faster.  Trite, I know .. and simplistic.  For how long?  Sprinters, around 10-30 seconds, enduros, 2 minutes to 10 hours or more, but we're all trying to go faster.

When we train, we disturb our bodies.  We stress them.  They respond to stress by adapting to it, and supercompensating if we get it right, so we improve at what we did to stress the body.  How? 

Hormonal fluctuations and tissues opening to the hormones present.

Essentially when we train, we stress the body, it releases hormones into the bloodstream which then get taken up by the stressed tissues and they change accordingly.  The greater the stress, the greater the hormonal response.  Strength athletes have been using exogenous tricks to do this for many many years.  Common exogenous tricks include drugs like nandrolone and the like (the anabolic steriods), EPO (blood boosters) and so on. They're illegal, so we can't use them, but we can learn from them.

There's been some very interesting work done recently in the US concerning training methods that focus more on hormonal levels and less on conventional wisdom when it comes to designing training programs.  Increasing both volume and intensity at the same time and then a big back-off period is one of the methods being discussed.  I'll write more on it next week.  For now, have a read if you can find it :

Pendlay, G. and L. Kilgore (2001). Hormonal fluctuation: A new method for the programming of training. Weightlifting USA 19(2): 15.

It's time I hit the 'Haus and then went to Blackburn to bust some legs on ergos!

This last two days have been mainly easy days, I lifted moderately heavy on Wednesday in the 'Haus (5 x 5 @ 150kg squats, 1 set of 10 130kg deadlifts, total tonnage 5,050kg) after Tuesday's spin session and on Wednesday night had a couple of short E1 rides for a total of about an hour and a half's riding.  Thursday was just an easy tootle to the LBS and back, no lifting and today was again around 45 minutes all-up E1 stuff. 

Tomorrow I'll lift heavy when I get back from the Baw Baw if I'm not too knackered from riding the motorbike out there. It's time to bump it up to 162.5kg squats again. I'll be trying for 5 sets of 3 reps, and depending on how that goes will up the deadlifts to 140kg.  130kg was hard, but I think I can manage 140kg for 10.  We'll see about that anyway. If it's not done on Saturday I'll do it on Sunday after Lucie and I go for a kayak paddle ... My arm's slowly getting better after the bursitis incident on Monday, I guess I'm starting to get old though, injuries take a bit longer to heal and mystery injuries crop up without explanation.

Speaking of lifting ... I'm a bit ashamed to say I was a bit bored on Thursday and watched a bit of 'the biggest loser' (the biggest loser is the person watching that rubbish... never again).  They had the punters all lined up in a semi circle with Olympic bars on their shoulders - except they weren't on their shoulders, they were way back off their necks on padding.  A big no-no when squatting heavy - it increases the moment arm around the lower back and increases the risk of lower back injury because to keep the weight over the lifter's feet they have to lean further forward, and they'll slump sooner or later and put a huge dynamic load on the lower back.  To make matters worse, they were doing it to failure and they were loading up the weights while the punters were holding the bars.  This made for asymetrical loads and twisting on the lower back as the 'trainers' (dangerous idiots) pushed the weights around while the punters were holding them up.  You wouldn't dream of doing that to experienced and strong lifters, let alone this bunch of untrained gumbies.

Could they do it in any more of an unsafe manner?  I'm not sure ... That was a pretty comprehensive catalogue of things not to do when holding a bar on your shoulders.  They got away with it ... But it was terrible.  So very irresponsible.  They should have had them progressively deadlift greater weights or something if they wanted to do something like that, at least a failure wouldn't risk blowing a back to pieces so badly. They'd just not be able to pick the bar up.  Shame on you, whoever came up with that stupid and dangerous stunt.  Lifting isn't a dangerous activity if it's done properly with good instruction from people who know what they're doing and with progressive and managed overload.  These idiots, on the other hand, threw essentially untrained people (who were no athletes) into a situation where they had to hold a (relatively) heavy weight in a biomechanically poor and dangerous position (padded out from their traps) while it was loaded up to a failure and twisted and pulled while they were doing it.   If I did that to anyone I was working with I'd expect to go to gaol for gross negligence when they got hurt.

Anyway ... Tomorrow I'm off to take photos of the lads racing the Baw Baw, I'll be at Winch Corner where it's an ~20% gradient.  Good luck to you all doing it. Pay no attention to the chalk writing on the roads! I've also been in touch with the bloke who built one of the AIS's sprint training ergos (the 'Wombat') and arranges wind tunnel testing - watch this space, we may have some slots to get into the tunnel and test sprinters for aerodynamics.

While trolling the 'net today I stumbled onto an interesting article on Pez news about Chris Hoy.  Interesting to see the gear choices in particular.  Chris says he's running 52x14, or 100.3 gear inches, for pretty-much all his racing.  Compare that to the gears Gary Neiwand rode at Sydney in 2000 (92") back in the Charlie Walsh days.  Looking at pictures of Hoy, he has the leg muscle to push that sort of a big gear and be able to accelerate it.  Probably not as snappy as Neiwand on 92", but his top speed is less limited by cadence, and more by sheer horsepower, and if you watch how Hoy races, he's got a very long sprint (he's been the kilo world champ after all) and he rides away from the front of keirins.  Strong ...

Roady sprinters often sprint in 53x12 (119") or bigger, but they don't have to start from slow speeds to do it, so don't have to worry about the huge amount of torque required to get such large gears up to speed, they have leadout trains and they generally have spindly legs by comparison to track sprinters.  If you put Sean Eadie next to Robbie McEwen, for example, the difference is ... significant.  One of the riders who contested the sprint at the Australian titles a year or so ago peaked at a feeble 1350 or so watts, and that was a top 3 position at the nationals out at Buninyong.

I wonder if bigger gears for track sprinters favour those of us who are a bit older, it's generally accepted that as we get older our peak power drops due to less nerve innervation into muscles, but strength doesn't drop so much, perhaps this means that the older we are the more we gain from using bigger gears, thus relying on torque moreso than high-rpm power?  My experience recently suggests that I'm faster on bigger gears, my F200 on 98" was significantly faster than when I rode it on 91.8".  Then again, some riders are great at spinning like the clappers and they're well into their 40's.  The 'ideal range' for RPM vs power seems to be around 120-130 rpm for most of the riders I've tested on the Powertap.  Once you get above that power drops off reasonably quickly.  Picking the gear that lets you use your peak power is going to help.

I got what I wanted out of summer 2008-2009 on the bike.  I got my flying 200 down below my initial goal (13.5 outdoors) way back in November (round 2 of the sprint series), revised the goal to a 13.2 outdoors, and surprised myself with a 12.916 at DISC on the weekend, which tops the 13.2 outdoors.  So, mission accomplished with interest.

What to do for next summer?  I have a few years left as a MMAS2 rider, so I think the Vic masters sprints are something I'd like to at least make the semi finals of.  To have done that this year I'd have needed to have ridden a 12.5 to get into the top 8.  Possible?  Can I find half a second in a year?  That would also have me riding in the A grade group at the sprint series.  I don't think that's too far out, or too easy.  So for 2009-2010 my main goal is a sub 13s flying 200 outdoors and a 12.5s flying 200 indoors.  I'd also like to squat 5 x 5 at 180kg and get my cleans up to 100kg.

I'd like to get my standing starts quicker so I can be a better asset for the Blackburn masters team sprint as well.  I have no interest in kilos or 750m ITTs for now.  As much as I admire the kilo champions, it's an event that sucks to do.  It's too long to be a sprint (1 minute+ is too much for anaerobic systems) and too short and fast to be an enduro race. It takes a special breed of psycopath to ride the kilo well and I'm not one of them.

I'd also like to keep the aboc website at the top of the google search results for cycle coaching in Australia, so will need to keep on writing articles and hopefully entertaining you all with my writing.  Suggestions for articles and content are much appreciated, please send them on through.  Along the way there's plans to write a book on sprint training for cyclists (yes, I'll be picking the brains of the best around here to do it) and also a guide to bike fit that dispels some of the myths (like KOPS, Lemond methods etc) that will be the product of the experience I've gained fitting hundreds of people at the LBS over the last few years. I'm going to improve the facilities in the PowerHaus (better lighting, more space etc) too.

What else?  Continue to work with the Foxy Ox and to build up aboc as a coaching resource, run more camps up at Hotham, break even on our winter DISC sessions, find a few seconds in Em's legs so she can shine at the Aussies next March and keep on having fun coaching and racing.  To keep on riding with friends as much as I can squeeze in and get my kayak roll working again.  Look at maybe doing a level 2 AS&C or Cycle coaching course if time and budget permit.

Of course, this season isn't over.  Round 6 is in two weeks.  Bring it on!

Not quite off-topic. I'm trying to work out how much energy gets burnt up doing strength training in the Powerhaus and the Mermet etc.

So, today, squats.

I did :

12 x 20kg (empty bar)

8 x 60kg

5 x 100kg

5 x 5 @ 145kg as my work sets. The prior sets were warmups.

Depth is I think ~0.8m, I'll take that as a good enough guess for now.

How much work is that.  in terms of tonnage it's really only worthwhile to look at the work sets, so I lifted 3,625kg as my working load.

That's one measure, but it's not all that useful really. My 1rm for these full squats is probably around 163kg if I use Brzycki's equation to extrapolate from my 5 rep sets, which isn't 100% accurate, but it'll do... So I'm lifting ~88% of 1RM 25 times.  Reasonably intense.  But still not what I'm interested in here.

Work is defined as force x distance

Force is mass x acceleration

Mass is easy! 145kg ... Acceleration is gravity, 9.8m/s^2 - we'll assume the weight is moved upwards slowly, it's too hard otherwise.

Distance is 0.8m

So our force is 145 x 9.8 : 1421 N, which gives work as 1421 x 0.8 : 1136.8 joules - roughly. Let's say 1100 as close enough (conservative estimate).  25 reps all up at that weight : 27,500 joules.  Roughly 27 Kilojoules. Is that much? Nope! The human body is around 25% efficient.  So to get 27 Kj the body will use around 4 times that, so roughly 100Kj. My BMR is around 11,000 kj per day. 100 kj isn't very much!

This lot of sums doesn't take into account the energy used to build muscle after the training session, the effect of extra muscle on RMR and BMR etc, it's purely a rough (very) estimate of how much energy gets used to do these lifts.  Have a look at wikipedia's brief summary of EPOC for more on post exercise energy use.

Power's another interesting measure.  If I assume I'm lifting the weight in ~1.5 seconds (pretty close, but I haven't timed it), let's see how many watts that is.

Power is work / time

So for a 145kg squat, lifting 0.8m in 1.5s, what's that in watts?

We already know work from above, each rep is about 1100 joules, divided by 1.5 seconds, that's about 733 watts.

Compare that to a 50kg clean, where the weight moves from the ground to the shoulders (in me, that's about 1.5 meters), in a second (a clean is very quick).  Work : (50kg x 9.8m/s^2) x 1.5 : ~735 joules - not much compared to the squat at 145kg, but it is a lot less weight (to get the same work, the clean would have to be ~75kg), power is, assuming 1 second for the lift : 735 watts. That's more than the squat at 145kg. It's no wonder that 5 reps at 50kg doing cleans feels as hard as 5 squats at 145kg!

It's so much easier to do these sums on a bike, Powertaps and SRMs make it a doddle ... They just tell you the numbers. For weights work, one of these does, but it's not cheap and it ties you to their website where they store your data - no thanks.

 We had a good night at DISC tonight, everyone did sprints! Fun!

In short, stretching statically before sport will reduce your performance and does not reduce injury risk. Dynamic/full range of motion and mobility stretching is ok, but the old school 'stretch static before you train/play' is out!

This is why we don't do static stretching during our training sessions.

Extract here from one study :

Duration of stretch does not influence the degree of force loss following static stretching.
Brandenburg, J.P., Journal of Sports Medicine & Physical Fitness Dec 2006: Vol. 46 Issue 4. p. 526-534

Abstract: Aim. There is an emerging body of knowledge indicating static stretching (SS) acutely and adversely affects muscle performance.

The practical value of this research is limited considering the lengthy stretch durations under investigation. It is unclear if stretch durations typical of those used pre-exercise similarly affect muscle performance.

The purpose of this study was to determine if SS using more representative stretch durations affects
muscle performance and to establish if changes in muscle performance were influenced by the duration of stretch.

Methods. Following 2 familiarization sessions, 16 recreationally trained males and females participated in 2 randomly ordered experimental sessions. In each session maximal effort hamstring performance was assessed prior to and immediately after 1 of 2 stretching protocols.

During one of the protocols participants were required to hold each stretch for 15 s while stretch duration in the second protocol was 30 s. Both protocols consisted of 3 repetitions of 2 stretching exercises. A Kincom isokinetic dynamometer was used to assess hamstring performance during isometric, concentric, and eccentric actions.

Results. For each of the three muscle actions a repeated measures ANOVA revealed a significant main effect of time (pre- vs poststretch, P < 0.05) but no interaction effect (time x SS protocol). Furthermore, the stretch-induced deficits in muscle performance were consistent across muscle action type.

Conclusions. SS incorporating stretch durations typical of those employed pre-exercise were sufficient to impair muscle performance and the duration of stretch did not influence the degree of force loss. Inclusion of SS, even with short stretch durations, in preparation for
strength activities is not appropriate.

I wrote an article in the tips & hints section of the site today. summarising some stuff I've been reading and asking people about here and there about the effects that aerobic training has on strength and power training. In short, strength training doesn't hurt enduros, but enduro training has a negative impact on sprinting.

The article is here.

Clothing companies, coaching manuals, riders, coaches ... all talking about lactic acid.

Get this:

There is no lactic acid in the human body. It's a MYTH! It's WRONG!

From the article on it in wikipedia :

• oxidation to pyruvate by well-oxygenated muscle cells which is then directly used to fuel the citric acid cycle
• conversion to glucose via the Cori cycle in the liver through the process of gluconeogenesis.

So if someone starts talking about how their wondergarment reduces lactic acid buildup, or how their magic drink helps the body flush it out post exercise etc... You know they're full of something, because there's no lactic acid there in the first place.

Today, after finally finishing "Practical Programming for Strength Training" Mark Rippetoe And Lon Kilgore, and lessons learned from the AS&C course, I've changed my lifting program.  I'm basically a 'novice' in terms of strength development (not surprising, I've only been in the Power House for 4 months).  They define a novice as someone who's still able to improve at every workout (subject to a few backoffs and unloads every few months when you plateau), an intermediate who needs a structured week to improve, and advanced as needing month blocks or more as you approach your genetic limits it's harder to improve.  They say do 5 sets of 5 until you're no longer a novice lifter, as it's the most efficient way to use the time lifting and is a good balance of strength and hypertrophy.

The basic idea at this point is to keep it simple,  I'm doing squats every session, in 5 sets of 5 reps, with the aim of the final set being very hard to complete.  If I get all 5 sets of 5, next session, the weight goes up.  These are full (as full as I can on a reconstructed knee anyway) squats.  Today, 5 x 5 @ 130kg.  That's a tonnage squatted of 3,250kg. When you look at it like that, it's quite a lot of weight.  Anna Meares did 4 reps at 140kg the week before she rode an 11.178 flying 200 at Vodafone, I know I can do one set of 140kg 5's because I did that last week, so I'm stronger than Anna at squats! She's a little faster than me though...  A predicted indoor F200 time for me at the moment based on flying 100's is around 13.7s, and that's waaaaay too slow.

I'm doing jump squats every second session, deadlifts every second session (alternating them, basically) and lunges every second session.  That doesn't quite add up yet, I'm still working on the details.  Also doing bench every session, and either wide arm pullups or bent over rows every second session, so each session is around 4 exercises with a mix of pushes and pulls on the major groups.  Three Power House sessions a week, Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. This meshes in with ergo sessions on the bike and DISC on Sundays over winter.  Over summer we'll be doing a lot more work at the Blackburn velodrome.

One of the key things to remember is that the Power House training is a means to an end, not an end in itself.  If I can end up deep squatting 200kg or so, that'll be great, but what I really care about is riding faster.  It's going to take time and patience, and I may end up being dog-slow at the end of it anyway, but there's only one way to know, and that's to give it a go.