Hop, skip and jump to a fitter and faster bike performance with Plyometric training.

Improving cycling performance can be a difficult task because there are many aspects of cycling that need to be improved. For instance, hill climbing, sprint performance, transitioning from cycling to running for triathletes and average power output are all important to cycling performance. In most cases the answer can be really simple, if you want to improve your ability to climb than spend more time hill climbing, or improve your core strength. However, there are other options that can yield faster results. One option is plyometric training which can be though off as jump training, which trains your muscles to release force as quickly as the string from a bow and arrow. Jumping movements are quick and jumping actually trains the nervous system, and because of its affect on the nervous system you won’t get bulky like a body builder. It will also strengthen your muscles, tendons and ligaments. Training the nervous system Most of us think that when we train it’s just the muscle we train, but the nervous system is as important as your muscles because your nervous system decides how many muscle fibres you recruit when you cycle, or how quickly you produce force. For example, during the cycling stroke you may currently be using 60% of your muscle mass in your legs. If you improve the nervous systems ability to recruit a greater amount of muscle fibres to around 70% of your muscle mass, you will produce 10% extra force even if you don’t improve your bodies aerobic (working with oxygen) capacity. The way the nervous system improves during plyometric training is that it will increase how quickly your muscles will produce force. You can think of your nervous system in the same way you think of a computers processor and random access memory. The processor is what decides how quickly your computer will run the different programmes on the computer. This means that if your processor is slow than your programmes like word and excel will also run slow. Well the nervous system can also decide how quickly your body will use your muscles to produce force. A great example of this is in Olympic lifting when athletes get under the bar at blistering speeds. Obviously we can’t upgrade our nervous system like we can with a processor but with training we can improve the speed of our nervous system to produce force. The origin of plyometric training Plyometric exercises were first used by athletes involved in jumping, sprinting and throwing sports, by countries from the Eastern bloc. All these sports are anaerobic (short duration) but its popularity has increased to other sports like football, volleyball, weight lifting and many more. Plyometric training is used for power development. Power can be described as strength and speed combined. Plyometric training can be used to improve cycling performance because force development and the average force is which determines how quickly you move the bike. There are other factors like power to weight ratio, and lung capacity that have to be factored as well, but the importance of plyometric training cannot be ignored. It has also been found that using this type of training also helps the body overcome the physiological hang over caused in Triathlon when you transition from cycling to running so there are many benefits to plyometric training. Now it is well known that cycling is a sport that requires great lung capacity and conditioning. You won’t need to worry about building large muscles from this type of training because it is trains the nervous system. It must be remembered that even though we want to improve our heart and lungs ability to get oxygen to the working muscles, you still need to produce large forces to move the bike forward at speed. So whether you need to improve your sprinting ability or if you want to be a better hill climber plyometric training can help you in many ways. As previously mentioned plyometric training develops the speed of the nervous system, which in turn utilises the strength of the muscle and the tendons and ligaments. Plyometric training trains the muscles and connective tissues to produce force faster by increasing the rate of force development (speed the muscles produce force). Once you train the rate of force development through plyometric training your muscles and connective tissues will be able to produce force faster, and therefore allows the muscle to explode for quick movement and to produce more force. The easiest way to understand how the rate of force development works is to think about what happens if you hit a forehand tennis shot. How plyometrics impacts performance When you hit a tennis ball you swing your arm back which causes a stretch in the chest shoulder and bicep muscle. Try this right now. You will feel the stretch if you this quickly. Once you have created this stretch you use it immediately to hit the ball as hard as you can. Now if you create this stretch and wait 5 seconds than hit the ball you lose the momentum caused by the quick back swing and you will hit the ball with less power. This is because once a muscle is stretched it now has potential energy similar to what is stored in an elastic band when it’s stretched. Once you release an elastic band after it has been stretched it has recoil causing it to snap back quickly. Your muscles have the same recoil but if it is not used immediately you will lose the potential energy. These stretches occur all the time in movements like jumping, kicking a ball and running and they can be trained to be even more powerful. Once you train elastic energy through plyometric training your muscles will be able to produce force faster and will have more time to relax causing a more economical cycling stroke. The rate in which you stretch the muscle will improve with training because the muscles will relax more and they will be stronger. Before you know it you will start dropping training partners who use to be your equal behind travelling up hills, your cycling will feel easier, more economical and you will feel more relaxed when you cycle. This in turn will lead to better blood flow around the body, which will provide more oxygen and energy to the body leading to a longer time to exhaustion, so that you will feel stronger and last longer. Strength training One thing I want to add is that although plyometric training is effective in its own right, I would recommend that you also do strength training before you start plyometric training to get the best results. This is because power is a combination of strength and speed, so if you train strength first, you can convert your strength to power so that you produce your new strength quicker. You can perform your strength work early on in the season by using big gears during your hill training, and once you have developed this strength you can than transfer it to power with plyometric training. Another option to develop strength is also to perform weights. By cross training with weights you reduce the chances of injury and improve your core strength specifically for cycling. Weight training will also help you perform more advanced plyometric training. For those of you who have read other articles on plyometric training you may have read that It is recommended that before doing plyometric training that you should be able to lift at least 1.5 times your own body weight. So if you weigh 60kg you should be squatting 90kg. This is because the force that goes through your body when you perform plyometric training is far greater than normal weight training or most types of activities. However, don’t be alarmed by this. If you were to wait till you could lift one and half times your body weight you may never get to use the programme that I recommend. During plyometric training repetitive stresses are placed on the structures of the body (muscles, ligaments), and providing these forces are low enough for the tendons to handle, and that the muscles are strong enough to resist the force the body will be fine. It is likely that you have already done plyometric training in your life. One example of plyometric training is sprinting or running. These exercises are plyometric in nature and they are commonly performed without much risk, so you have probably done plyometric work at some time in your life already. As long as you use lower intensity exercises like the ones given in this article you will not only be safe, but you will see a difference in your performance.

Posted on Monday, 19 December 2011 02:51PM by PT_London Website Link: http://www.slimmerfitterstronger.com Tags: How do i become faster at cycling, Strength training for cyclists, Plyometric training, Cycling training

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