how to really train

yeah, i thought the adage was if yr nose is in the wind, you will never win

not unless you have made a perfectly timed solo attack in a crosswind 10k from the finish and they never catch you

today i eated for lunch:

Chipotle chicken/black bean burrito (no chz, no sour cream, ha)
Superb giant ass slice of cheese pizza
Really huge 5" diameter chocolate chip cookie

^^^^how not to really train when you are 15 lbs over "race weight." u_u

you are fricken nuts

;_;

proud'a u hunt3r

ok not biking but dang i just ran intervals around lake of the isles and yeeow

so much more bang for your buck imo

running is excellent as far as time efficiency but is terrible for your cycling.

not as terrible as a really huge 5" diameter chocolate chip cookie.

i am not concerned about my cycling

the only thing cycling is good for, fitness-wise, is more cycling

it doesnt seem that bad for the xc skate?

what the shit is cankles doing here

we're a broad church these days!

i'll tell you what i do not miss: the high impact of running, esp in the winter when you have to avoid grass/dirt because of mud.

yeah sure, i get a knee twinge here and there or back of knee ache that takes 1-2 weeks to work through but it's nothing like the damage that running did to my body.

we're a broad church these days!

came to absolve me for sin of gluttony. in the face of persecution by known food nazi. >:|

it doesnt seem that bad for the xc skate?

― malicious humor victim (Hunt3r), Thursday, March 11, 2010 5:50 PM (24 minutes ago) [IP: 67.132.3.242] Bookmark

i was actually talking about this w/a college buddy of mine, who's a former collegiate XC guy and cat-nothing cyclist (but who's v knowledgeable, lots of buds race in srs cats, etc.). the main issue with cycling is that literally no other sport (maybe speed skating) is so mechanistically repetitive in its motions. you're never really called upon to use accessory muscles, proprioception is virtually never tested, your arms don't do shit, there's no impact, etc.

so while it can be good CROSS training for other sports (cardio work, low-impact leg work, etc), you'd be hard pressed to say that switching to an exclusively cycling-oriented training regimen would make you better at, say, soccer. or, to be more specific than "better," improve soccer-oriented fitness.

or: five identical candidates start at a given baseline (avg fitness), all aspiring soccer players. one XC skis exclusively in the off-season (and trains like a XC skier), another downhill skis exclusively (and trains accordingly), the third trains like a sprint/middle distance runner (and trains, etc.), fourth does only rowing (etc), and the fifth reads this thread about how to really train.

i posit that the first four dudes will see improvements in their general soccer playing ability (not skills, but fitness), and the cyclist will be the same, or worse. moreover, the first four will see improvements in their ability ~in all five activities~ and the cyclist will not at all

is so mechanistically repetitive in its motions. you're never really called upon to use accessory muscles, proprioception is virtually never tested, your arms don't do shit, there's no impact, etc.

for devil's advocacy: okay then so running is less repetitive and ~proprioceptive~ then cycling because your foot strikes the ground and arms swing back and forth (mostly for balance mind you)?

i will argue that my back/shoulders/arms are more defined from cycling then from running:
1) neck, back, upper arms from helping support your torso in an inclined state/in the drops.
2) upper arms and shoulders from climbing out of the saddle.
3) lower arms from gripping and braking on long descents (seriously the first several times I descended long mountain passes, my hand and lower arm muscles cramped like crazy after a couple miles).

and legs are about the same at any rate.

i mean i don't totally buy it, maybe if you're on the rollers for 2 hours but if you're actually RIDING, it's a bit more interactive then you may think? on long rides i'm always switching my hand position, getting out of the saddle to give my lower back a rest, pointing my toes and heels in different directions to switch up blood flow.

rollers are more like the road than the trainer

if proprioception is self perception/awareness of one's body's position in space, i think mtbing racing is highly proprioceptive, track and criterium significantly so. a non-racer might not get that. general road riding, usually not. but i would need you to do the knowledge on proprioception for me.

from my conversations with xc race guys, bike guys often have terrible squatty xc free technique and a hard time getting out over the skis for the glide.

however ime it sure feels like the muscle groups and general movements on the lower body overlap significantly. *presumed response--'yes, because you are terrible at skating'*

how proprioceptive is dh ski racing? i would think very.

but is it less proprioceptive than curling? darts? those are classic eye-hand, is that sorta a subcat of proprioception?

i can see basketball, polevaulting, steeplechase as extraordinarily proprioceptive. any running track sprint as less so.

rowing as maybe the least of athletic events?

anyway, to the extent that cycling does not require great changes in body position, it would be less proprioceptive by my understanding. however certain disciplines would require very high levels of awareness of balance and positioning and coordinated adjustment. i guess cx would be the most proprioceptive as it is the most dynamic. mtb dh/fourcross/xc maybe next, then bike messengering, then pack/sprint road and track events. any tt event is basically rowing.

/drone on

if proprioception is self perception/awareness of one's body's position in space, i think mtbing racing is highly proprioceptive, track and criterium significantly so.

would agree with this.

saying that proprioception is never tested was....inaccurate. i guess what i really meant was that cycling doesn't require the same level of physicality in a proprioceptive response as, say, basketball. so while crits require acute spatial awareness, they don't demand that racers have Federer-style full-body agility to manage things.

and besides, my ~real~ point was that cycling is unique as a sport in that as someone becomes a world-class racer, they might actually get regress w/r/t general athleticism. we can expect top-level athletes in a wide variety of sports to put up respectable numbers in a battery of tests for broadly assessed "fitness." whereas, i'd posit that a competitive grand tour rider would do no better than joe average when it came time to bang out some pushups or w/e.

cycling has very narrow expectations from the human body, to the point that something that might be considered handy, though not necessary, in another discipline (well developed upper body strength for the soccer player) is actually a hindrance in cycling (muscles are heavy! get rid of them!)

sport climbing/bouldering is a decent comparison: it was def in vogue in the 90s to advocate that aspiring sport climbers NOT run/bike because it would over-develop unneeded leg muscles, and dang, legs are the heaviest things around! even today, knuckle-dragging, rotator-cuff tearing boulderers are good at one thing and one thing only: developing upper-body power (usually from the back).

we should just go to the jock sports argument about what is and isnt a real sport, right? ;) no team? less likely to be a real sport. no ball? less likely to be a real sport. potential for spandex? ew, less likely to be a real sport. mitigating factor- risk of serious injuries or fatalities.

oh c'mon, that's not what i'm saying!

my ~real~ point was that cycling is unique as a sport in that as someone becomes a world-class racer, they might actually get regress w/r/t general athleticism.

gonna continue devil's advocacy here: this can be true of any sport other than a few cherry picked ones that you've included like xc skiing?

xpost gbx- i know

shasta has a point wrt specialization in any sport. when i was tryna be a basketball player i spent all my time training to be taller.

i might've done some cherry-picking there, but think about sprinting (not widely reputed as an all around sport): running around a track as fast as you can will actually do more for you, physically, than just make your legs good at moving fast. pumping your arms is a non-trivial form of exercise (martial artists!), and even though you're basically running in a straight line, you're still drawing on accessory muscles for stability/agility/etc.

the support and structure of a bike frame relieve the body's responsibility for certain things, which allows atrophy imo.

how do you quantify neurological bandwidth doctor?

gibby, there are many, many people who share your POV, they are known as "triathletes". :P

there are also 15 crazy people competing in a sport called decathlon who show up every 4 years

how do you quantify neurological bandwidth doctor?

hmmmm

i guess it would be more like neurmuscular bandwidth? but when they do brainscans, what the hell are they imaging? cellular energy levels or something?

"how to really troll"

jk? :P

electrical activity iirc

hey guys if you want to race bikes you train by riding a bike. i don't know wtf you guys are getting into now.

"how to really troll"

― ✌.✰|ʘ‿ʘ|✰.✌ (Steve Shasta)

interesting new roller idea

not really new

http://velonews.competitor.com/2010/03/news/olympic-ski-star-bill-demong-coming-to-a-road-race-near-you_108603

how to really cross train

how do I really train my back for old man skiing

drag around one or two of these. between picking them up, ensuring they get on the lift, carrying their shit, and putting on their clothes, your lower back and general core strength will really improve, and, you will be actual old man. also, no radness. actually, the kids are pretty rad and out of control most of the time.

http://i486.photobucket.com/albums/rr222/Chass3ur/IMG_1558.jpg
that was sunday, perfect weather for kid skiing, 12500 ft. el at a-basin

wow nice pic!

ok, did intervals at the track last night, which featured the exciting promise of 10min/20min/10min efforts at 170bpm (which is right at/below lactate threshold 4 me), with some near-recovery (145bpm) rest periods of 5mins inbetween.

with some evening wind:
10min (25.2mph/312W)
20min (24.2mph/282W)
10min (24.6mph/294W)

really wanted a negative split on that last 10 min effort but alas, my legs were screaming and i knew that pushing it any harder would send me over the lactic edge.

very green to this style of training, but i can feel it in my quads today.

OH! also yesterday's training food log (for cutty, inspired by Hunt3r upthread):

breakfast: leftover beef chili
lunch: all you can eat gourmet pizza ($8.50): 6 slices!!!
intervals: gatorade/recovery shake
dinner: hamburger/fries/beer and 2.5 ice cream sandwiches

this is called "letting one's self go" imo.

Hunt3er, do u live in CO or are you on vacation? Just curious cuz I once spent a year in Dillon as a snowboard/mtn. bike bum & A Basin was basically my back yard. O how I long for those carefree days of yore.. That place rules! Also: "ridin' the pass, brah."

eat food, not too much, mostly grease, steve. :)

pillbox i live in littleton. really like a-basin, its close, cheap, compact and has some good shit. in the old days riding the palli lift or doing east wall or hiking out was not uncommon. that was on alpine gear mostly- ive been on tele gear for about 12 years now, and now i dont go too steep unless theres straight hero snow. and with kids, its groomers.

i havent skied the pass in... a long time.

10in at baker this morning btw

;_; I want to be there, no skiing these past two winters

how many days of skiing are you gonna get in gbx?

we got m,t,w,f---took thursday off cause it was rainy and my body was ready to stage a revolt