Basic Barbell Training for Endurance Athletes

[Mark Rippetoe]

Well, okay.

[Will Morris]

Mathematical equations do not apply to cycling.

[Bleve]

For endurance cyclists, they are a bit of a special case. They have to fuel the engine, and that's the killer. A bigger set of muscles may well be able to produce a greater amount of power and indeed, create a better watts/kilo threshold and/or peak BUT ... the vast majority of road races are very long, as long as three weeks, and the challenge is to keep them fueled up. Professional road cycling selects for riders around 65-75kg with VO2max'es around 75+ with some really lightweight climbers around 60kg or sometimes even less (but these guys can't cope with the long flat stages of tours all that well, cf Iban Mayo etc, week 1 of the Tour kills these lightweights and they can't do the flat time trials very well). The bigger guys can sometimes survive grand tours, but generally are better on flat, one day races (the spring classics etc) while they just don't do multi-day, hilly races all that well. That's how it works in the field for roadies anyway. Making them bigger doesn't generally work. Track, now that's different .. Horses for courses ...
Mathematical equations most certainly do apply to cycling, as long as they're complete. The picture is a bit bigger than the original assumptions made here.

[Greg C]

So watts per kilo does not go up if you gain 10 lbs. of muscle and your squat goes up 125 lbs?

For an athlete that's already well-adapted aerobically, I think not.

Personal experience (rowing 20 years, lifting 2) says otherwise. Pre-lifting, my best 500m sprint was a measly 1:35. Post, 1:23. Tell me its my technique that improved. Please.

[Steve Hill]

For an athlete that's already well-adapted aerobically, I think not.

It's going to depend on the athlete.

Aerobic capacity engenders several things: The ability of the body to uptake oxygen, the ability of the body to transport oxygen, and the ability of the body to do work with the oxygen. All of these are trainable. The error in your logic is that you are assuming that for a bodyweight "X" athlete that the ability to uptake and transport oxygen are maxed out by genetic limitations at the same instant that, for a given bodyweight, that athlete's muscles are able to use it. This may or may not be the case.

[Yaums]

For an athlete that's already well-adapted aerobically, I think not.

Mathematical equations do not apply to cycling.

Well, let's get back to the basics: An athlete adds 10 lbs to his BW, and 125lbs to his squats. Does Watts/kg go up or not?
Take a look at this page, and let us assume:
1. Said athlete does not grow up in height, and goes deep enough in his squat before and after mass gain (hey, it's Rip's athlete, so he's DTFP, right?). So the bar moves the same distance.
2. The squat does not take longer to complete.

I'll spare you the f*cking details, but it appears that halbritt is right, there is a formal condition for relative power to go up in these circumstances, meaning it's not mandatory.

Now, this condition is: the relative power goes up if the athlete's squatted less than 125/10 his bodyweight before gaining the 10lbs. Yeah, that makes a 12.5 BW squat.

So for a 165lbs athlete, unless he already squats literally almost a fucking ton, his relative power goes up!!!

Y.

[tweakxc03]

Question:

I ran D1 college cross country back in the day. I don't run anymore. I am certain that strength training absolutely does help with endurance performance. However, it has been my experience (as with many others), that body weight does begin to become a factor at the top levels of the sport. Mid-distance runners (800-1600 meters) tend to be much taller and larger (although still skinny) in general than longer distance runners (5k and up). Do you think that this is just because of ineffective or nonexistent strength training, or is it because of genetic attributes of smaller/shorter vs. bigger/taller athletes? While there is a genetic max for VO2max, lactate threshold and the like, it can take runners years (even in their prime) to hit that max.

Do you think that adding 20lbs of lean body weight via strength training to Hicham El Guerrouj (3:43 mile, world record) would make him run a sub 3:40? This is assuming he could put on that amount of weight given the catabolic nature of running and the crazy miles he puts in.

[halbritt]

It's going to depend on the athlete.

Aerobic capacity engenders several things: The ability of the body to uptake oxygen, the ability of the body to transport oxygen, and the ability of the body to do work with the oxygen. All of these are trainable. The error in your logic is that you are assuming that for a bodyweight "X" athlete that the ability to uptake and transport oxygen are maxed out by genetic limitations at the same instant that, for a given bodyweight, that athlete's muscles are able to use it. This may or may not be the case.

I agree, but there's no error in my logic. I was pointing out an extreme case that I'm familiar with where an increase in body mass wouldn't yield an increase in performance. It's definitely an edge case, and there are very few athletes for whom the ability to uptake and transport oxygen are maxed out. Even still, this doesn't disprove the notion put forth by Rip that strength training is a useful endeavor in preparing athletes that are *not* already elite in their particular sport.

Still, I think it's a worthwhile discussion to have to understand the demands of various sports, endurance and otherwise and how strength training can increase success in those activities.

[BrianE73]

I know you can find a study to show anything you want.
so FWIW

Maximal strength training improves running economy in distance runners.
Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2008 Jun;40(6):1087-92.

METHOD: Seventeen well-trained (nine male and eight female) runners were randomly assigned into either an intervention or a control group. The intervention group (four males and four females) performed half-squats, four sets of four repetitions maximum, three times per week for 8 wk, as a supplement to their normal endurance training. The control group continued their normal endurance training during the same period.

CONCLUSION: Maximal strength training for 8 wk improved RE and increased time to exhaustion at MAS among well-trained, long-distance runners, without change in maximal oxygen uptake or body weight

This was for "well-trained" athletes who should have been strength training anyway. The benefits are probably much better as you go down the performance scale from real athlete to novice.

[abenn]

For Need2Lift,
A friend of mine rowed for Canada at worlds, has coached national champions, rowed EARC (at Columbia) during his undergrad, and currently coaches provincial athletes while doing his PhD in the same program as me. I don't think it's just luck you did strength training the way you did. I showed him Rip's post on what he would have rowers do and he laughed, saying "Wow, I literally do the exact same thing with my athletes." They are big on presses for the shoulders and tend to avoid benching. To be fair, he said that there is disagreement in the community, but he is pretty adamant about this method.

For Rip,
When I mentioned your plan for what rowers should be doing he was pretty excited about it. He wanted to know if you have ever worked with rowers before? I'm lending him a copy of starting strength to read because of this, so that's good news.