Has anyone had experience with cycling power and strength repeats for dryland training. I'm talking about out of the saddle repeats of 30 to 90 seconds in a big gear, uphill and a low cadence. I believe Koch and Endestad used to do this type of training.
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Big Gear Hills For Dryland Training
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Posted 8 months ago #
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timg, could you say a bit more about what your specific training goal is for doing this specific type of workout & a bit about what else you are doing?
I skied w/ both Koch & Aldun years ago & yes they would do this type of workout - along with lots of other things. But nordic racing has changed lots since then. Today, training that was only done by sprinters is now a regular part of all nordic race training.
Posted 8 months ago # -
The training goal is to improve power and strength for uphill skating and diagonal. Lee Borowski's recommendation is quarter squats 30-100 reps at 150% of body weight. Squats are too hard on my lower back so I prefer leg presses. Without ready access to a leg press machine, big gear hills are my alternative. Either slow for strength or fast for power
Posted 8 months ago # -
Working to increase power & strength are the right goals for modern nordic racing but I suggest there are better ways to use limited training time than standing big gear climbing on a bike. I too did these lots in the past. The bike will not do much for core & upper body power & strength. And that's vastly more important today than it was during Koch and Endestad's day.
Without knowing more about you, here's some general advise.
Serious weight training (hi weight/low reps) is now a more significant part of a XC racer's training & development. For example, recent studies have shown a high correlation between max-bench press & nordic race performance. The same has not been found for leg press & longer races but sprint speed & leg strength have been clearly demonstrated.
Through mid-August you'd build strength & go into maintenance mode (med weight/reps) for the rest of the season. There are all sorts of approaches & books on weight training. Of the one's I've read, I especially liked The New Rules of Lifting: Six Basic Moves for Maximum Muscle because of its use of multi-joint exercises.
A couple alternatives to the back squat from this book are the dumbbell split squat (one leg) & the lung with rotation. These will do what the bike can't, improve your balance & core strength as well as leg strength.
Koch used an inclined roller board for upper body strength/power training. When set at a steep angle & sitting on your knees, these are great for core & upper body strength building. These are relatively easy to build with a few boards & a set of wheels of some used roller blades.
But your statement that you find the squat too hard on your back probably means you need to do more core strength work. I had the same problem (especially with the dead lift) when I started serious weight training.
I too wanted to use the leg press but suggest an alternative. I found that when I moved from my almost exclusively endurance training program to the use of multi-joint free weight training, I had many muscle strength imbalances. I had done hi rep, machine based single-joint strength training for years. Some parts of me were really strong, others not so much. To let the weak parts of my body catch up, I had to use a longer adaptation phase, use lower weights, improve my warm-up routine & really concentrate on learning good weight lifting form. The New Rules book is helpful on all these but finding a good weight trainer or class for some lessons wouldn't hurt either. You can also find plenty of YouTube video on weight lifting form.
Plyometrics are also a well established training component for increasing power. Again there are a ton of these - medicine ball throws, box jumps, face smashers & getting air during your push-ups to name just a few.
During this time of the nordic season, interval training starts to dominate as you reduce strength training. So what kind of intervals will do the most to improve leg & upper body power? Chris Carmichael's the Time Crunched Cyclist presents plans for doing just this in a short time period. His very narrow heart rate zones are impractical off the bike or running on flat ground, but his mix of types of intervals - short very high intensity & longer at threshold will do the job with limited training time.
If you do not have roller skis, your best alternative would be hill bounding. But you use shorter poles for bounding than for skiing - mid torso length. But a set of roller skis is realy hard to beat for dry land nordic training.
Best of luck!
Posted 8 months ago # -
Here's something much more detailed from USSA that fits strength & power training into an overall training schedule.
Posted 8 months ago #
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