You realize that a 700 squat represents a strength specialization, right? Which makes an athlete with a 700 squat something other than a Tour de France cyclist.
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Question about endurance sports
Coach Rip,
I'm wondering what it is that makes it unnecessary for an endurance athlete, like a TdF cyclist to get his squat up to 700.
Increased strength = increased work capacity due to the nature of the now more submaximal pedals. He will need to have good conditioning also, more so than the novice effect conditioning (more permanent cardiac adaptations instead of merely changes to his chemistry that take 2 weeks to attain).
So, my question is what determines the sweetspot. Certain amounts of conditioning adaptations will negatively affect strength, so my guess is that it's that which determines the sweetspot. Another speculation I have is that more muscle = more oxygen demanded. So, is it where those three factors converge, where the sweetspot for optimal performance is found? So yeah, is the best cycling performance of an individual found where said individual has optimal work capacity for X distance due to strength, cardio, and body weight?
TMPHBITEU
You realize that a 700 squat represents a strength specialization, right? Which makes an athlete with a 700 squat something other than a Tour de France cyclist.
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Yes, but I'm wondering why it turns out that way, why the math makes sense. More strength inevitably leads to every submaximal effort being even more submaximal. So strength is good for TdF. Yet "cardio" is needed as well. Is the correct adaptation from training then a sweetspot between the two? More strength = higher work capacity, but it's not that simple, or otherwise every cyclist would reach for an 800lb squat and not ruin it with metcon training. So there has to be a convergence of strength & endurance?
You realize that a 700 squat represents a strength specialization, right? Which makes an athlete with a 700 squat something other than a Tour de France cyclist.
TMPHBITEU
Yeah.
Administrator, Starting Strength Gyms
As a martial arts fan, I love this topic. The way I view it in my mind is that the point of diminishing returns for strength training varies based on the sport - and it has an inverse relationship to the point of diminishing returns in conditioning for that sport.Originally Posted by adamanderson
The drastic gains in strength that can be had by going through some or all of LP highlights the fact that the point of diminishing returns for strength is much higher than most people suspect. I can vouch for this in the small sample size of the martial arts world that I’m exposed to. The majority of people in Muay Thai and BJJ that I know could benefit tremendously from completing NLP and they are unnecessarily worried about getting slow and sluggish from weight training.
In my mind, it’s very similar to the objection that many women have about “getting bulky” from lifting. The point at which that happens is much further off than they might imagine.
I’m coaching a friend of mine at the moment, a former amateur CA state Muay Thai campion. A few weeks of not doing the program as designed and his kicks are already much more powerful. Imagine if we could get him to stop running when he’s not in fight camp and go through a clean LP, making jumps 3x/week.
He was just booked for a fight in a few weeks. He needs to ramp us his conditioning work, shed some fat to make weight (which will happen as a result of the conditioning), cut some water before the fight, and then see what it’s like to be stronger at the same weight, with a similar level of conditioning.
Should my buddy ever become a late intermediate or advanced lifter? Probably not. Should he get his squat above 300 for sets across? Probably.
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To the OP: There is a fantastic series of videos reviewing the literature on strength and endurance on the Starting Strength YouTube channel. They are long and dense and I highly recommend them as an answer to your question.
To Ray: I see more and more great examples of how strength can be a huge piece of success in competitive martial arts. I feel like Yodsanklai is a good one. Not by any means the most beautiful kicks in the game, but strong as Hell for his body weight.
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Ray Gillenwater,
Yeah, what you said seems reasonable.
I boxed competitively until I was 19, at which point I quit after witnessing punchy, broke vets repeatedly slur out their 10 word vocabularies. Been grappling since then, on and off. I'm 25 now.
Inspired by SS, I did a LP at 16 or 17, went from 135 bench, 330 squat, 330 deadlift to 275 bench, 420 squat, 485 deadlift. I didn't follow the template to a tee, I just went with progressive overload on the big lifts, sometimes once, sometimes twice and sometimes three times a week per lift, until I wasn't progressing anymore. Needless to say that I got better at my sport. I didn't gain more than 10 or 15lbs. 5'10, about 190lbs at my strongest (walking-around weight). I trusted that strength is a good thing, as long as I practiced my skills, and it proved to be true.
As the obsessive guy that I am, I have to understand whatever I feel like I have to understand, before I can go to sleep ... which is the reason why I asked what optimal adaptation means for an endurance athlete. As long as I've got the fundamentals covered, I'm good, I can nerd out with the brainstorming on my own after that.
Yes, I've watched most of it. I'm sure that the answer is in there somewhere, but I really want to get the fundamentals down and I haven't found them, the rest I can infer on my own.To the OP: There is a fantastic series of videos reviewing the literature on strength and endurance on the Starting Strength YouTube channel. They are long and dense and I highly recommend them as an answer to your question.
Or, well, Mark pretty much answered already.
... Oh, and I have to suppose that the sweetspot would also include ones bodyweight, so; X strength adaptation, Y "cardio" adaptation, and Z bodyweight -- where X can't be too high or it would make Y too low and Z too high .. where Y can't be too high or it will make X too low .. where Z must be as low as possible?Yeah.
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Cycling at the pro level is about power to weight ratio. The amount of extra body weight needed to acquire a big squat number would be like dragging a boat anchor once the race gets into the high mountains. There are riders who carry more body weight and are stronger, but they generally specialize in one day races and sprinting.
Starting Strength Coach
Keep in mind that “optional” anything is highly dependent on the individual once we get into the territory you’re discussing. We can draw some general conclusions based on principles we know to be correct, but we can’t say with any precision that you’ll be optimal at X body weight with Y lifts for any given non-strength specialization sport. So don’t overthink this too much. We know stronger is always better in a vacuum, we know that at a certain point the work needed to make a marginal strength gain is not worth the time you would have to take away from practicing your sport (these folks typically don’t get to the late intermediate stage), and we know that there are competitive considerations for determining what weight class you compete in. At a certain point you’re making educated guesses on how to balance these factors and seeing how it works out.
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More and more pro cyclists are strength training, even the insanely skinny ones.
I spoke with a local guy who finished top 50 in the TDF a few years about strength training. The main takeaway was that the issue was mostly recovery. He said with the mileage volume/intensity they have to put in and the length of the season, there's very little time for them to focus on strength training before mileage/intensity/racing ramps up enough that compromised recovery makes it impossible to progress on either front. Their off season is stupid short before they're expected to be putting in 500+ miles a week and traveling all over the place for races and sponsor obligations.
Track sprinters are another thing altogether. Strength training is a huge part of their program and USA Cycling has long looked at elite powerlifters as possible track talent. I'm sure plenty of them have great squat numbers.
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