So the other day I joined a road bike cycling group. Its an old hobby of mine.
Anyway, so I rock up and meet the group. Add in the group there are a number of mid 40 year old men that do not look like they really exercise much. They looked maybe 5-10kg overweight and had no shape/aesthetic look to them. Another member of the group was a 30 year old female who does not really looks like she exercises either. So we started our 40km ride with some intensity, and by the 25km mark I could no longer keep up with the group and drop off.
Im a 30 year old guy who has spent time in the gym, I look fit and have a much lower body fat percentage than many of those in the group. And yet, I still could not keep up with the group.
My aim is to build up the endurance and power in my legs to keep up with the group. My question is, considering I am riding with a bunch of middle age men that don’t look fit and a female, should I be able to build up my biking fitness to match theres and yet still make some progress in the gym???
I do acknowledge that I will not progress as fast in the gym. The group rides 2-3 times a week, usually 40km.
Well they are not advanced, only 40 k so you will in 3-4 months catch-up(this is my best guess). Wether you choose to not focus totally on strenght is up to you. If you look for mass you can do high volume short rests and keep the bike a little more occasional and probably catch-up in 9 months, depending on weather where you live.
Being lean on a bike helps only uphill.
All the best !
[quote]BHappy wrote:
Well they are not advanced, only 40 k…
[/quote]
Yer that is my point. Its not like Im training for the tour riding 600km a week. So Im assuming I can make some decent progress(although a little slower) in the gym, while riding my bike 80-120km a week in the attempt to improve my cardiovascular system.
All the best!
[quote]louiek wrote:
People who engage in endurance sports usually look like shit. I always assume people who workout a lot and look like shit are endurance focused.[/quote]
Yer they do, although some people will never listen. Im trying to get a work colleague to work out with me at the gym, although because he is a little overweight, he does not want to go to the gym because he thinks he will get “bigger”. I think this is my number 1 pet hate.
You might tell him some boxer stay 15 years in the same weight class like tennis pro train without getting big. There are ways to get the physique we want.
This morning i just started to introduce myself to tabata, it might be a fun way. Only 4 times 20 seconds with 10 seconds rests, squatting with 2 15 pounds dumbells my heart really felt it. A real tabata is 8 times i will progress into it.
The body is specific if you increase your running endurance doesn’t mean you’ll have great bike endurance same with tabata, sprints or any other form of training.
40km bike ride does not have to effect your muscular gains. Your nutrition may need to be better, or at most more calories.
The biggest thing to watch out for is is overuse injury from biking and having weak tendons/muscles from heavy squatting or whatever compound exercise your doing. Leg exercises needs to have better techniques and slightly less frequency of extreme heavy sets. This doesn’t have to effect your strength. With proper high intensity leg exercises you can still increase strength since you can use low reps, and just have the biking as your leg conditioning.
Endurance is not muscle it builds faster and goes away faster. If you want to build it bike all the time, your legs will adjust quickly and you’ll still be able to train. You’ll reach a platea rather quickly that’s kind of your base endurance, then you can cut back as low as once a week with an occasional two or three time frequency.
Type of road bike you have really does make a difference. Sure, you may need to get in better cardio condition but I remember doing a couple group rides in college (I was a D1 cross country/track runner) and had to work really hard on my el-cheapo Road bike to keep up with those regular, slightly overweight guys and there $5000, light as a feather bikes.
[quote]Airtruth wrote:
Endurance is not muscle it builds faster and goes away faster. If you want to build it bike all the time, your legs will adjust quickly and you’ll still be able to train. You’ll reach a platea rather quickly that’s kind of your base endurance, then you can cut back as low as once a week with an occasional two or three time frequency.[/quote]
Interesting. Thanks for the tip.
[quote]jt1527 wrote:
Type of road bike you have really does make a difference…[/quote]
Thats true to a certain degree. A $100 bike will probably struggle to keep up with a $5000 bike. Although I dont believe there is much significant difference in performance when comparing for example a $2000 bike with a $5000 bike.
[quote]StevenF wrote:
I thought you were a pro soccer player? [/quote]
I am. Its off-season at the moment. After a couple weeks off after the season, I like to get into the road biking. I then taper off into the pre-season, and pretty much stop riding once the season commences.
[quote]theBird wrote:
So the other day I joined a road bike cycling group. Its an old hobby of mine.
Anyway, so I rock up and meet the group. Add in the group there are a number of mid 40 year old men that do not look like they really exercise much. They looked maybe 5-10kg overweight and had no shape/aesthetic look to them. Another member of the group was a 30 year old female who does not really looks like she exercises either. So we started our 40km ride with some intensity, and by the 25km mark I could no longer keep up with the group and drop off.
Im a 30 year old guy who has spent time in the gym, I look fit and have a much lower body fat percentage than many of those in the group. And yet, I still could not keep up with the group.
My aim is to build up the endurance and power in my legs to keep up with the group. My question is, considering I am riding with a bunch of middle age men that don’t look fit and a female, should I be able to build up my biking fitness to match theres and yet still make some progress in the gym???
I do acknowledge that I will not progress as fast in the gym. The group rides 2-3 times a week, usually 40km.
Sorry for the essay.
tweet[/quote]
Endurance is about either (a) how quickly muscles can recover from work or (b) the ability to work at a low level for a long time. Both of these require specific protocols and as I understand it, at the cellular level you are forcing your body to either optimize or grown new mitochondria. Tabatas do (a) and steady state cardio does (b). Depends on what you want.
My GF was an avid biker who took up power lifting initially to stay in shape in the off season. When she started biking again after a long break, she found the while her endurance hadn’t altered, biking made her much weaker. She could reliably drop 15 - 20% off her maxes the week after a long (100+ km) ride. Point is that this really shows what other people have been saying about getting strong vs. lots of cardio. She finally decided to do mostly strength training rather than biking since she likes it better now.
Also, as soccer player, do you really want/need to spend the training time getting to bike for a long time? Your body will adapt and you might find that you can’t really get explosive power the way you used to when you play. Correct me if I am wrong, but soccer players mill around then sprint – not similar to steady state cardio at all. If you insist on doing something, I’d consider doing barbell complexes or something similar for endurance. That would surely give you endurance and strength too. Jumping split squat tabatas with a loaded bar ought to make you reassess your life choices. ;D
Those middle aged men have conditioned themselves for what they’re doing. That doesn’t mean their pro cyclists. You can be fit at a sport and not look it. You can also look fit and not be fit for a particular sport. I know guys that regularly run ultras, and they look like they’re ten pounds overweight. But I can’t keep up with them even though I might look more fit.
The gym is cross training. That’s it.
If you want to cycle well, find a solid cycling program and cross train at the gym to help avoid injury. If you want to be big, don’t expect to cycle as well as a thin, lean guy with strong cardio.
So the take away is really: figure out what you’re trying to accomplish.
jj_dude:
Thanks for the explanation. I have often been criticised for riding my bike, although I have found that the benefit gained in conditioning does cross over to game day. I like it as it is low impact and I enjoy the social side of the riding. We do lots of sprinting and jumping in the pre-season, so I would rather leave that for then. I feel if I started sprinting and jumping now(2 months before preseason), I would be only dicing with risk of an early injury.
As the season gets closer, i will be riding my bike less and less, and will probably stop riding altogether for most of the season.
tweaker:
What I am trying t accomplish? Im trying to improve my overall fitness for the up-coming season. That means I want to be stronger, faster and also I need to be able to last the whole 90 minutes.
krazylarry:
that dude is taking things to the extremes. I dont think many would last long training like that.