Article on Cyclists & Squatting

[cafeteriabananas]

I remember reading a Rippetoe article awhile back that talks about cycling and squats, and how when you get your squat up, each pedal stroke is less work as a percentage of your overall strength.

Can anyone link me to the article? I can't find it for the life of me. I'm trying to convince a cyclist friend to get his ass under the bar.

Thanks a million!

[Nate]

Perhaps you are thinking of this article by Michael Wolf?

[clantz]

Just tell him if strength isn't important for cyclists riders would never get busted for using steroids.

[Arkansan]

I'd like to read the article myself.

Nice to know there are other bike riders on here.

[Arkansan]

Double post

[Dastardly]

Just tell him if strength isn't important for cyclists riders would never get busted for using steroids.

They dont.

They get busted for stuff like EPO. Only road cycling has money in it (quite a lot!) and for that it is best that you are a lanky twig with the heart & lung capacity of a small nation.

Weight training is not that useful for road cycling, plus very difficult for body to cope with recovery from both simultaneously. But it is very important for track cycling. For cyclist-squatting fodder, look at robert forstemann.

[mkgillman]

Clenbuterol has anabolic effects, though it is more used for weight loss and preserving lean muscle mass. Ask Contador about what penalties come with a positive (whether from tainted meat or some other cause).

As for the OP, I would be careful which specific Rip quotes about cyclists you wind up using as:

I have never had good luck training road cyclists, so I probably don't know what I'm talking about anyway.

-or-

The trouble with cyclists is that their training establishment keeps reinforcing the silly bullshit that all recreational athletes want to believe: at some point, all serious athletes go outside their sport-specific work to improve, and recreational athletes just want to play their sport and wear the clothes.

Rip specifically addresses the importance of full ROM squats for cyclists in PPST:3, pages 39-40. The specific example you are talking about is at the beginning of "Strong Enough" pages 5-7 on my kindle version.

What happens to his pedal force as a percentage of his max squat? It goes from x/135 to x/270: it is reduced by half. Because leg strength is doubled, it now takes half of his previous force production capacity against the pedals to maintain the same 18 mph pace. He is stronger, and so he doesn't have to work as hard to do the same work

[clantz]

They dont.

They get busted for stuff like EPO. Only road cycling has money in it (quite a lot!) and for that it is best that you are a lanky twig with the heart & lung capacity of a small nation.

Weight training is not that useful for road cycling, plus very difficult for body to cope with recovery from both simultaneously. But it is very important for track cycling. For cyclist-squatting fodder, look at robert forstemann.

I was mostly just being silly, but from what I understand steroid use is fairly common in road cycling to help with recovery. Floyd Landis lost his tour title because tests showed high testosterone levels, even though EPO really aided him most in winning that tour. Armstrong also admitted to using testosterone. Anyway, it was just a stupid comment which I shouldn't have made to get things off track.

I haven't done a lot of riding recently but low back fatigue was often an issue on rides in the 100 + km range, for the recreational cyclist a little bit of squatting and deadlifting might help with those kind of problems. It seems logical that a bit of strength training to improve neuromuscular recruitment and power production rather than increasing muscle mass would help the competitive crit rider (think cat 4/5 riders rather than elites) when they need to make a sprint for the line at the end of a race. People usually associate the type of rider who wins the grand tours with road cycling but it takes a different type of rider to win time trials and single day races. None are huge, but a guy like Tom Boonen is quite a bit bigger than the climbing specialists. Lots of different disciplines as King of the Jews pointed out and strength training will likely be more beneficial to a sprinter than a climber.

[G1981C]

when i switched from deadlifting to cycling i used to be stuck in the last gear all the time for a few months until my legs readjusted to pedal with less effort but faster. nobody on the cycling forums believed me when i told them that i always use the last gear on the road bike and i was banned for "trolling" ...

now i use all of my gears and spend most of the time in the middle ... and can't deadlift worth a shit.

in any case, i think most athletes train in the gym because they just don't know any better. doing squats in my opinion can only make you WORSE at cycling because it will make you bulk up. if you look at all the guys who win tour de france they are skinny as hell.

we in our daily lives have no idea what we're doing - but we still copy each other assuming the other guy knows - that's not really logical.

[Kyle Schuant]

doing squats in my opinion can only make you WORSE at cycling because it will make you bulk up. if you look at all the guys who win tour de france they are skinny as hell.

Just taking us to 1987 or so.
Joop Zoetemelk
Gilbert Glaus
Jean-Luc van den Broucke
Maarten Ducrot
Steven Rooks
Peter Winnen
Pedro Delgado
Gert-Jan Theunisse
all cyclists who are known to have used anabolic steroids, the purpose of which is...?

Obviously they felt that strength would not help them at all.