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Sports sciences > Strength and conditioning case study: a masters track cyclist
Strength and conditioning case study: a masters track cyclist
Issue: Volume 27 Number 1
The athlete
The masters track cyclist is a 39-year-old male. He is single but works a demanding job and has been cycle-racing for five years. Two years ago he had competed in many road races and found that he had a good finishing sprint. A year ago he tried riding the velodrome to compete in the team pursuit for his club. In the last year his riding had been inconsistent and he had been totally off the bike for six months just prior to undertaking the structured program described below. His goal was to compete in the NSW State Masters Track championships 11 weeks away in some kind of reasonable form and to experience track racing. The two events he targeted were the 500-metre time trial and the 3000-metre pursuit. Both events are conducted on the velodrome, are races against the clock and are started by accelerating a hard gear from a held standing start. He also wanted to be in the team sprint and the teams pursuit for the club, both of which require strength to achieve a good acceleration from a held start.
The events
The 500-metre time trial takes 34 to 38 seconds to complete. The start is extremely important as the cyclist has to accelerate the bike from 0 kilometres per hour to 50 plus kilometres per hour as quickly as possible, usually in about 125 metres. The cyclist then has to hold the speed right through to the finish line. The 500-metre time trial uses all three energy systems: the aerobic system, the anaerobic lactic system and the anaerobic alactic system so the training program would have to reflect that. The time trial has a considerable strength component as the cyclist has to start the bike in a hard gear. (A hard or big gear means that with one revolution of the pedals the bike travels further than if it had a smaller or easier gear.)
The 3000-metre pursuit takes three minutes and 40 seconds through to four minutes and ten seconds to complete. Consequently it is a mainly aerobic event but the athlete must have the ability to tolerate a build-up of lactic acid. The strength component is not as important for the pursuit as the speed of the acceleration from the held start is not so critical.
The training program
Given the timeframe for achieving optimal fitness and the cyclist’s time available for training, it was not feasible to incorporate traditional weights-based resistance training into the program. Instead, the resistance training aspect was achieved through careful manipulation of the gearing on the bike for the ‘standing start’ training sessions, increasing or decreasing the resistance depending on the focus of the session or where in the training cycle the session occurred.
I divided the 11 weeks into two cycles: one of five weeks and the second of six weeks.
The first cycle consisted of two weeks of high volume and easy intensity with one 40-minute fast race each week. This was to get him back in the saddle, so to speak. I risked the high volume because of his training history and the lack of time before the event. He was an athlete that knew his body well so I trusted him to provide me with any negative reactions he was having with the program. The final three weeks of the first cycle were two weeks of increasing intensity with low volume and one recovery week. Each week consisted of one rest day, two recovery sessions, a track race and two interval sessions. One interval session concentrated on standing starts that took about 12 seconds each. At this time we were working on technique so the level of resistance was reduced through use of an easier gear than the one he would use in the race. The other session concentrated on working on his anaerobic lactic system by doing maximal efforts that lasted 20 to 30 seconds. He was recovering for five minutes in between so that he was fully rested to start the next one. This way his capacity to do anaerobic work was being increased. To maintain his aerobic system he also did 2 x 4km efforts at 92 per cent max heart rate. The recovery week consisted of a timed 500 metre and 2000 metre, the rest were recovery rides with two days of racing at the velodrome on the weekend.
The second cycle was six weeks, which consisted of four weeks of high intensity and low volume and two weeks of taper/recovery. The pursuit was scheduled at the end of week 10 and the time trial on the Friday of week 11. Our cyclist was feeling the pressure of work so the sessions were cut from six to five and one of his easier rides was elongated to two to three hours at E1 (65–75 per cent max heart rate). His racing consisted of club time trials, one track meet and track club racing. His interval sessions continued as before with the anaerobic intervals now going between 40 seconds and one minute. The four-kilometre intervals were dropped. The standing starts for two weeks were done in a harder gear than race gear. This was to build strength in the standing start. Then for two weeks he did them in his race gear that was to build on his strength, power and technique. At the beginning of each of the two recovery weeks, the cyclist had a hit out over the distance of the race that was to occur at the end of that week.
The results
What were the results of this training? In the practice for the team sprint he improved his one lap standing start time (250 metre) by 1.2 seconds in a couple of weeks.
The cyclist performed well at both the time trial and the pursuit at the championships. In the pursuit he recorded four minutes and two seconds. The first 500 metres of this 3000 metre event was ridden a second faster than targeted which caused greater fatigue in the latter stages of the race. It shows, however, the success of his resistance training that is his start training.
In the 500 metres he recorded 38.5 seconds placing him eighth out of 11 starters. The time was half-a-second slower than the time he had recorded six weeks previously. This was most likely due to a bad start, which was caused by the cyclist placing too much weight on the front wheel causing his back wheel to lift off the ground and lose traction. This did not happen in the pursuit as the acceleration forces were not as great.
Conclusion
This cyclist, like most masters cyclists, has the capacity to do the same amount of work as younger athletes. The real problem is their other commitments. For this reason it is important to consider alternate methods of incorporating strength/resistance training into training programs for masters athletes. The strength gains achieved by this cyclist clearly illustrate the effectiveness and time efficiency of incorporating resistance training into a cyclist’s on-the-bike training and combining it with improvements in aerobic capacity.
