2015 New Years fitness resolutions

What are you doing on the stationary bike? When you say spinning I think a set time at a moderate, constant pace.
Intervals are the way to go. Since riding a bike indoors is the most mind numbing thing around…I recommend the sufferfest videos.

I don't think lifting weights is going to help your climbing…in fact I think it will hamper it. Personally I have been spending less time riding in favour of strength training recently and I am getting dropped on climbs as a result.

IMO squats will help w climbing..

core strengthening in general helps with the mtn bike/enduro riding.

Is there a consensus?

That's wholly dependent upon how fine-grained your goals are. If they aren't, there will never be.

I have tried just riding more and that doesn't seem to help my pedalling fitness. I did a cycling program last year and although I was able to ride a bit longer and marginally faster in a few places, I am still ridiculously slow. It seems like very casual riders drop me easily. I can keep pace on a steep short section if I'm rested but get dropped even on flat road sections.

The tough part (or excuse) for me is that I don't dedicate enough time strictly to gaining pedalling fitness. I ride uphill mainly to go down. I also ride dh, moto, trials, ski, trail build, hike with the dog daily, do yoga, and then work long hours of shift work, often running on minimal sleep when working. My reality is that 2 sessions on a stationary bike and 2 weight training sessions per week is the most I can do when I get serious about training.
Should I just accept that this isn't enough to become a faster, fitter climber or is there hope?

I wanted to be body-building fat, powerlifting strong and have great endurance. I kinda got half-way there for all three and burnt myself out beyond recognition.

If you're really concerned about your climbing, give up on other things for a while and climb. Have you topped out on the technical aspect of climbing? Increasing that skill will allow you to do more with less fitness.

IMO squats will help w climbing..

core strengthening in general helps with the mtn bike/enduro riding.

have to agree

I don't think lifting weights is going to help your climbing…in fact I think it will hamper it. Personally I have been spending less time riding in favour of strength training recently and I am getting dropped on climbs as a result.

lifting weights will help, but it depends on what you do, how you integrate it with your riding and how much or how little riding you are doing. more details on your end will help in figuring out what's going on.

lifting weights will help, but it depends on what you do, how you integrate it with your riding and how much or how little riding you are doing. more details on your end will help in figuring out what's going on.

It's no mystery…I am lifting heavy (for me) 3x per week and riding 1-2 times per week instead of riding 3-5 times per week. When I do ride my legs are pretty zapped from the intensity of my strength workouts…and I'm ok with that right now.

I guess what I was trying to say is that if you have limited time to train, and your goal is to improve your climbing/endurance…then maybe spending that time strength training instead of on bike training isn't the best way to do that. Especially if like sparkplug, you are already doing 1.6 BW squats.

I don't do resolutions, but my 2014 informal resolution had nothing to do with biking. I wanted to learn to skate and play hockey. It was a life long dream that I never got the opportunity to do as a kid. So at 48 I decided what the heck. I looks like that will take care of my next 5 resolutions (at least) because I didn't develop into Pavel Datsyuk over the last year. What I did do last year was take a big step away from biking last year because with all the time spent on the ice (2-3 times a week through summer) I didn't really have the desire to do much on the bike. On the other downside, starting a new sport at a later age has it's issues and I suffered a groin strain in the fall that knocked me out for a month and a half. The plus side of that got me into physio and now into a twice a week training program that has strengthened my core and got me dropping a few pounds. So I guess my 2015 resolution is to keep going with the training, get back to biking more and upgrade my "pylon" status on the ice to at least "moving pylon"

You guys can go back to arguing about the same thing now if you like.

Spinning won't help your climbing . Climbing will help your climbing.

Agree with this. Climb hills over and over and over. If you are not improving, its more than likely some inherent limitation. Climbing is about power-to-weight ratio. You are fighting gravity all the way up. Some people may have the engine, but the chassis is too heavy or vise versa.

I think it depends on how you are doing it cuz those rando racers are pretty damn fit, season before last my training was at least 1 speed session per week which was touring hard as possible for 1hr going UP, a couple of long 10-12hr tours and a bunch of random volume as well, the speed work really makes a difference it was like having another gear on the up track

I find ski touring is complimentary to biking and vis versa

you see, putting a splitboard together takes so long on a windy ridge that I try to not sweat on the uptrack for fear of death by hypothermia.

All joking aside I think what I'm trying to say is that skiing all winter keeps me in great shape for…skiing all winter, just like biking all summer keeps me in great shape for…biking all summer. Trying to get a broader workout so I can stay in better shape throughout the entire year is my goal instead of creating muscle imbalances that are felt with the change of each season

It's no mystery…I am lifting heavy (for me) 3x per week and riding 1-2 times per week instead of riding 3-5 times per week. When I do ride my legs are pretty zapped from the intensity of my strength workouts…and I'm ok with that right now.

I guess what I was trying to say is that if you have limited time to train, and your goal is to improve your climbing/endurance…then maybe spending that time strength training instead of on bike training isn't the best way to do that. Especially if like sparkplug, you are already doing 1.6 BW squats.

well there you go; you've replaced riding with lifting so it's no wonder that your riding has suffered. and yes, you are right that if you have limited time you need to spend as much of it as possible on the activity you want to improve the most. that's why i suggested to sparkplug to start riding for time on the climbs and adding intervals into the climb as well. if you want to be good at something, you need to focus on that something and any other activities you throw into the mix should be complimentary to what your main focus is, or at the very least not take away from it.

the caveat to that is that in the overall plan, it can be beneficial to take a step away from the main activity to focus on bringing up a weaker area for a little while. while the main activity will suffer, in the end the improvements in other areas you make will help your main goals. like you say though, in sparkplug's case a more than sufficient level of leg strength has already been achieved so adding to that is probably not going to help the climbing much more than it already has.

in our aspirations to become fitter/faster/stronger, we reach a point where continued improvement is more a function of desire, hard work and the willingness to suffer through that hard work. if it wasn't hard and didn't hurt then we'd all be out running 3 hour marathons or doing the nimby 50 in 3 hours as well.

just to add to that, we will all reach a point in our training where continued improvement is going to require higher and higher levels of effort and commitment than we may be willing or capable of doing. when you reach that point you simply have to ask yourself if the energy input required is worth the reward you'll get. that's a decision one can only make for themselves.

Spinning won't help your climbing . Climbing will help your climbing.

I don't do the resolution thing either. I just plan to keep doing what I have already been doing since October.

from my experience it does not help very much with actual riding , yrs back when i raced DH spinning was just coming to light here locally in the late 90s. the gym i trained at started classes so i did 2 to 3 classes a week for several months and found it did not help . what i found my legs gassed out rather quickly when i had to get out of the saddle and peddle .

as for climbing aiding climbing i have to agree the more up you put in the easier it gets

Maybe I shouldn't have said spinning. The stationary bike is all about intervals. At this stage of the program, the intervals are just below my lactate threshold heart rate. My overall workout time is between 45 mins and 1 hour. Does this sound reasonable? Later, it works on tempo (whatever that is - I think it basically means a bit higher heart rate interval) and then lastly on power bursts. It's a 24 week program and I'm repeating the first week as I took too long to get back to it.

I have some tough climbing trails close to home so I'll probably take Syncro's advice and get more dedicated to riding them regularly and timing myself.

Thanks for the input.

from my experience it does not help very much with actual riding , yrs back when i raced DH spinning was just coming to light here locally in the late 90s. the gym i trained at started classes so i did 2 to 3 classes a week for several months and found it did not help . what i found my legs gassed out rather quickly when i had to get out of the saddle and peddle.

this is because steady state training will not help with power or sprint type work. this is where Reductimat was bang on with adding strength training to your training routine as it will help your sprint and power capacities which is something that's important for DH riders.

however, spinning classes or a spinning type workout can be effective for improving aerobic and anaerobic performance, it just depends how the workout is setup and of course how hard you work. high intensity intervals if properly executed on a spin bike can make a difference and are effective in terms of time management as you can accomplish a lot in 20 min or less of work.