Strength Training for Cycling

Position adaptation and on the bike core stability exercises

I included this exercise in to my program when I was preparing for the World Time Trial Championships and felt it really improved my upper body stability, something that a lot of cyclists (particularly female) struggle with. How many times have you seen some bobbing up and down or side to side when making an effort? All that energy wasted sideways rather than the direction you want to go! 

In the late 90’s Chris Boardman and Peter Keen started to experiment with position specific training and very quickly came to the conclusion that it had huge merit, particularly for Chis since he was spending less time riding in the acute time trial pose he had always adopted after he turned professional.

What they explored was bike specific, core stability work, so that all the engines power went into producing forward motion and was not being absorbed or diverted to holding everything still.

The exercises to achieve this resembled weight training on a bike more than interval training and it is important to make this distinction. The object of the exercise (at this stage) is purely to strengthen the small muscles that ‘stabilize’ the body, not to have any noteworthy effect on the ‘main engine.’ It is unlikely that you will feel significantly out of breath or stressed doing this work out, so you should resist the urge to lengthen the intervals. Quality counts here, not quantity.

This exercise can be done on a flat, quiet road (maybe a short circuit) or some ergometers. It does require significant concentration so if in a group, everyone should effectively ignore each other until the exercise is complete.

Start with a brisk warm up, maybe10-20mins at a high cadence, then drop your speed and choose a gear that gives you approximately 50-60rpm (this is likely to be around 53x14) In position, produce the maximum power possible for 5-6 seconds no more! Before dropping to the little ring and recovering for 24 seconds, then repeat for a total of ten minutes (20 efforts) before having a 5-10 minute, high cadence break. Follow this with a further block of 10 minutes.

It is important to remember that the primary objective is to hold a smooth, controlled position, try to produce maximum power but not at the expense of style, that will come later.

You will find that three sessions of this a week for as little as two weeks will yield surprisingly large improvement.

Later in your program, at the appropriate time, it is possible to build on these sessions, move into more interval type training and introduce pace-judgment skills to ride significantly over threshold for periods of 2-3 minutes and more. However, it is important to learn how to walk before running!

Taken from Positioning and Position Adaptation Techniques Paper 3
By Chris Boardman