Transition from a climber to a sprinter?

A light bike doesn't replace good fitness.

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11.4
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by 11.4

I frequently work with road riders switching to the track, and they often need to pick up a lot of speed, especially finishing speed. Your numbers may not be entirely accurate, but if you're a good climber you can at least improve your sprint significantly.

For starters, you can afford to add a little weight, which I don't recommend on principle but it allows you room to add some muscle. Switch to a higher protein diet (milk with a whey supplement like Optimum Nutrition Gold Whey is a good component of such a diet for this purpose) and focus on leg lifts. Squats offer more of a general benefit, but I'd just focus on deadlifts, because that's probably focusing on your greatest weakness. You don't need a rack to deadlift, just a bar and some plates, which you can get very cheaply on Craigslist. Read Mark RIppetoe's Starting Strength to get the fundamentals. And YouTube will inundate you in deadlift technique.

Next, build your leg speed, which isn't really a highlight of climbing. For that, I'd suggest some box jumps -- plyometric jumps onto a box or ledge or anything you can find that's the right height. You don't need any crazy height -- start at 12 inches and work up to 24, focusing on making sure that you aren't just lifting your knees up and then doing a squat on top of the box. Go to YouTube for some good examples.

To coordinate all that power, I like sleds. These are steel slides that you push along the floor. Here's a YouTube of a top sprinter using one (it's near the end of the video):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUE0rqRqZmM

Find a gym with one and do the sled as a full-out sprint, as if you were doing a fifty yard dash. It'll completely gut you if you have enough weight on the sled, so don't expect to do a lot, but it'll toughen you up and speed you up quickly.

Given where you live, I wouldn't tell you to stop climbing or take more rest days as you're into racing season already. But you can do a lot better pretty quickly. You'll get a fast boost simply because this training will increase your muscle utilization, once you become familiar with using it (a typical climber uses perhaps 25-30% of his muscle fibers in a climb; this training increases your fiber usage by perhaps 15-20%, more if you keep doing this).

And don't worry about this fast-twitch/slow-twitch stuff. There's a lot of research that shows there's really no such thing as two different fibers, just fibers adapted for one purpose or another.

helldiver
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by helldiver

I'm frustrated by meagre max watts my P2MAX is recording :cry: Should i swap it for stages ? :mrgreen:

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boysa
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by boysa

Here we go...
"Deserve's got nothing to do with it." William Munny

chris47
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by chris47

Okay, I use a bepro favero power meter and the 1200 watts that i get is pretty consistent. Thanks for all of the tips. I however dont think that i will pick up weight training in this current season, as i have practically never done it before. I will start spending more time in the gym this coming off season though.
Thanks again for all the advice :)

mattr
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Location: The Grim North.

by mattr

Do you have access to a track?
Riding fixed is a good compliment to the other work to increase leg speed. 54" fixed through the winter will see significant gains. If you can be disciplined enough to do it on a geared bike, you will get a lot of the gains.

FWIW i managed to give our local lads (few Elites, few front end of the field masters) a kicking in one of our local winter fun races a few years ago. 5 laps in 39x15 (ish) then sprint, winner shifts down a gear. 5 more laps. And so on.
I was unbeaten until the 4th sprint, using a 39x18, everyone else was still on the 15. Simply down to being able to hit near enough 200 rpm. Once we got the video up of the sprints up, it was obvious. You could see everyone elses feet moving on the footage. I was also massively unfit, quite significantly overweight, and asthmatic........

bungis
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by bungis

chris47 wrote:Okay, I use a bepro favero power meter and the 1200 watts that i get is pretty consistent. Thanks for all of the tips. I however dont think that i will pick up weight training in this current season, as i have practically never done it before. I will start spending more time in the gym this coming off season though.
Thanks again for all the advice :)


Exactly 1200 watts every time? That screams measurement error.

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boysa
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by boysa

Actually, 1200 watts one time screams measurement error.
"Deserve's got nothing to do with it." William Munny

chris47
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by chris47

well, of course it does not only read 1200 watts when i sprint. i am referring to the max number that i hit, which is usually in the ballpark of 1200.

DanW
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by DanW

The point is that "maximum" values are more often than not a spike in the PM. What is your 5, 10, 30s power?

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