Cyclingnews Fitness Q&A - April 20, 2010

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Joost Posthuma can't be faulted for not putting in the hard yards.(Image credit: Bert Geerts/dcp-bertgeerts@xs4all.nl)

Got a question for the fitness panel? Send it to fitness@cyclingnews.com. Emails may be edited for length or clarity, but we try to publish both questions and answers in their entirety.

a) Increases power at LT
b) Improves efficiency (less oxygen used per amount of energy generated)
c) Boosts easily sustainable speed
d) Increases mitochondial density (more aerobic enzymes in the muscle)
e) Increases capillary penetration of muscles
f) Converts nearly 100 percent of type IIb fibers to type IIa fibres (so you can use fast twitch fibers for endurance activity)
g) Improves recovery from harder work or racing so you can do more of it without ending up overtrained
h) Increases the percentage of energy that will come from fat at any sub-LT intensity
i) Decreases the blood lactate level for any given power output

If you think about a bike race, who is going to have a chance of winning? The guy who is cruising along chatting, or the guy who is gasping? It doesn't matter how hard the gasping guy can go. It doesn't matter how deep he can dig. If there are a few guys who can go faster than his best speed, but without even beginning to suffer, he's not going to win. So, what do the chatting guys have? They have superior aerobic fitness which comes from good base riding.

Now, later in the race, things heat up and the guys who were chatting earlier are starting to work hard. The guys who were gasping earlier are off the back or hanging on, spent and unlikely to become factors in the race again. After the aerobically strong guys have been going at it hard for a few minutes, some of them start to blow, gaps start to open or the finishing order starts to get established.

Riders who have done no above LT work will be the first to blow. Sustained efforts well above LT improve tolerance for that level of work, perhaps delaying the blow-up moment from 20 or 30 seconds to five or six minutes. Work near LT improves tolerance for and recovery from harder work, so it's important to do the LT stuff before the harder stuff, but only if the base is good enough to get the rider through most of the race without having to go hard. Otherwise the tolerance for hard work makes you able to hold on longer, still with virtually no chance of winning.

Now on to the other half of the question, about hard work making you slower. The research is not particularly clear on how or why hard training makes one aerobically slower. Coaches used to say that when you train anaerobically it undoes the aerobic training. That may be true, but I'm more inclined to think the effect is more indirect: hard work makes people tired so they do less base training or lower quality base training. They gradually lose their base fitness.

What I'm sure of is that when we have people do a good base followed by LT work and more base for another month, and then have them start racing, their best racing form hits a few weeks later. Then, as they continue to get plenty of super hard training in the form of racing in a field where they have to suffer to compete, form begins to disappear roughly 6-10 weeks later. If hard training were the secret to racing ability, they should only get stronger and stronger once racing starts, but that never happens.

Nothing broken on me, plenty of damage to my bike, but I was pretty beat-up from it and had only did some turbo training and rollers before the next weekend's race, which was a large event that I'd been training for for a good few months and had been hoping to get round it successfully. It was a four-day stage race. I really wanted to do well in this race as I felt strong and confident I could do something. I was frustrated as hell.

The pace was high as a lot of continental teams were over to race in this also and they were really pushing on hard. Next thing I knew I got caught up behind a crash and while I didn't go down, I got hit by a bike in the shoulder. I'm not sure that my body had completely recovered from the previous weekend's crash. Either way, I couldn't get back on the group and couldn't push hard enough to go own by myself. I packed the race feeling demoralised and depressed.

Instead of racing on Sunday, I decided to do some hill training by myself. The day was sunny, light winds, all in all pretty perfect. I rode about a mile from home, hit a pothole or a lump and lost the front wheel and went down hard. I reopened all the previous wounds from the last crash, added some new road rash and think I've badly sprained my arm/elbow to the point that it's locking up pretty badly. I've damaged some more bike kit, ruined some more kit and my poor wife has to see me all beat up again.

I feel physically aching and sore all over with an aching head, neck and body. I'm financially drained from replacing stuff and getting bikes looked at. I feel emotionally all over the place and like I'm falling apart as it just feels that everything is going against me on the bike and I can't get a break of luck. It's kinda thrown all my racing plans out the window for the next few weeks I think and I'm worried what state I'll be in when I start again.

Although it's a bummer to have to change your training plans to adjust to injury or illness, the ability to adjust to what your body needs at that moment in time is the trademark of an elite athlete. You have to be able to adjust to what's happening right now. If a chef bakes a pie and accidentally substitutes salt for the sugar, they don't just say “screw it” and serve the pie; they adjust. They throw in a few more ingredients and turn it into a savory pie or they just start over.

Taking care of yourself now puts you in a better position to still have a fantastic season. If you don't focus on letting your body recover and heal, then you're serving yourself a giant slice of salt-pie and giving yourself a greater chance of having a mediocre season. You also need time to recover emotionally. During times of high stress we are more likely to get injured so give yourself some time off. When you first get back on your bike maybe you won't be as strong as you were at the beginning of the season, but your strength will come back.

Now - what were you thinking about when you were riding in the pack earlier this season? You were probably in the moment and focused on staying on the wheel in front or seizing opportunities to move up in the pack. As you get back into racing and you feel yourself getting nervous, ask yourself: 'Where does my focus need to be right now?' If you give yourself a break and get back to the basics, you still have a great season ahead of you!

However, if you found that there was adequate free movement in either direction and that you didn't have to make any adjustments, then repeat the accelerate and coast cycle with the right foot. Sometimes the central nervous system tends to protect one side more than the other and a right sided issue can have left sided fallout and vice versa. If you find the right cleat angle to be less than ideal; once you have it adjusted correctly, recheck the left side.

The importance of mechanical stress to the maintenance of bone mass has been clearly demonstrated by the dramatic and rapid loss of bone mass that occurs during weightlessness - eg, space flight, or bed rest. In addition, cross-sectional studies comparing athletes to non-athletes have shown that individuals who participate in high-impact, weight-bearing sports - eg, gymnastics, have greater bone density than their sedentary peers or athletes who participate in non-weight-bearing sports - eg, swimming or cycling.

We recently published two papers that showed that runners and strength-trained individuals had greater bone density of the spine and hip than cyclists (J Strength Cond Res. 2009 Mar;23(2):427-35.; Metabolism. 2008 Feb;57(2):226-32.). These results are consistent with the recommendation of the American College of Sports Medicine for bone health: weight-bearing endurance activities (including those that involve jumping, such as tennis and jogging) 3-5 times per week and resistance exercise 2-3 times per week are recommended to preserve bone health during adulthood.

Thus, while there is reasonable evidence that running positively affects bone density, provided dietary energy, calcium, and vitamin D are adequate, the minimal amount of running required to produce a measurable increase in bone density remains to be determined. To answer this question definitively would require long-term dose-response studies in humans. These studies would be very challenging logistically.

Because bone density changes very slowly, the intervention period would need to be at least 6 months long. Many different 'doses' of running would have to be tested to find the minimal amount of running required. As you can see, the difficulties associated with recruiting subjects, as well as the time and monetary costs, are prohibitive. Thus, studies in experimental animals have provided key information to help determine the 'optimal' exercise for increasing bone mass.

Studies in experimental animals have shown the following: only the bones that are 'stressed' are strengthened (as is true with skeletal muscle); high-impact, dynamic physical activity that involves movement in multiple directions produces the greatest gains; and, bone becomes non-responsive to additional loading after as few as 40-100 loading cycles (impacts) and regains its responsiveness after about eight hours of rest.

To increase bone density, an alternative activity to running is jump-training or plyometrics. One study in young women showed that 10 vertical jumps per day, three days per week for six months significantly increased bone density of the hip and lumbar spine (J Appl Physiol. 2006 Mar;100(3):839-43.). We are currently testing the efficacy of plyometrics to increase bone density in men with low bone density of the hip or spine. Stay tuned.

Your 20-40 minute run every two weeks plan will probably do a small amount to increase your bone density, but has one fatal flaw. People who run only every few weeks and run as long as 40 minutes when they do so very frequently end up with running injuries. This experience is not universal of course, but most people need more regular running conditioning to be able to handle 40 minute runs without getting hurt.

Scott Saifer (www.wenzelcoaching.com) is head coach, CEO of Wenzel Coaching.com and has been coaching cyclists professionally for 18 years. He combines a master's degree in Exercise Physiology with experience in 20 years of touring and racing and over 300 road, track and MTB races to deliver training plans and advice that are both rigorously scientific and compatible with the real world of bike racing.

Carrie Cheadle, MA (www.carriecheadle.com) is a Sports Psychology consultant who has dedicated her career to helping athletes of all ages and abilities perform to their potential. Carrie specialises in working with cyclists, in disciplines ranging from track racing to mountain biking. She holds a bachelors degree in Psychology from Sonoma State University as well as a masters degree in Sport Psychology from John F. Kennedy University.