{"id":828,"date":"2009-02-20T07:38:35","date_gmt":"2009-02-20T13:38:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.brickhouseracing.com\/?p=828"},"modified":"2009-02-20T07:41:02","modified_gmt":"2009-02-20T13:41:02","slug":"working-for-a-higher-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/?p=828","title":{"rendered":"Working for a Higher Power"},"content":{"rendered":"

…and I’m not talking about the wattage you sustain during your 40k TT.<\/p>\n

This morning I woke up early so that I could get to the weightroom and do some lifting before class. I’m going to begin doing this a couple of times a week in order to maintain my somewhat neglected weight workouts. Since the race season has prettymuch started, my main focus is maintaining the strength I gained during the off-season (mostly before training camp), and to increase my explosive strength. I also do not need to gain more muscle mass (since that’s just more weight I’ve got to haul up the hills).<\/p>\n

So, the workouts I choose need to have a large power component- meaning I need to lift heavy things very fast in order to increase the contraction speed (this is different than what most cyclists think of when they’re talking about power). Remember your biomechanics:
\nPower: how quickly or slowly work is done
\nP=F*V (power = force * velocity)<\/p>\n

Increasing power in this sense will improve cycling skills such as acceleration into an attack or sprint- allowing you to “snap the elastic” between you & your opponents.<\/p>\n

For this, I like to use complex training. This is a specific type of training where you combine a high force movement with a high velocity movement in order to take advantage of post activation potentiation<\/a> (if that’s a bit over your head, just think of when you lift something really heavy then you feel like the next thing you lift is extra light… that’s PAP at work). Today’s workout was a combination of squats and snatches in alternating sets. After a warmup, I did a set of 6 squats (ideally, you do fewer reps & more weight, but, like I said, I’ve been neglecting my weight workouts lately, so I have to start back slowly):
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After doing a set, I racked the weight and immediately performed a set of three light snatches:
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I did the alternating sets 5 times. The basic thought is that you get potentiation in the muscles during the slow, heavy movement that makes you lift faster when you perform the light, high-velocity movement. This results in an enhanced training effect and BOOM- more power!
\nAfterward, I did some heavy sit-ups super-setted with reverse hyperextensions<\/a>. It only took about half an hour to complete the workout, but I think that the exercise choice made it a very effective half-hour in relation to my earlier-stated goals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…and I’m not talking about the wattage you sustain during your 40k TT. This morning I woke up early so that I could get to the weightroom and do some lifting before class. I’m going to begin doing this a couple of times a week in order to maintain my somewhat neglected weight workouts. Since…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8Uq-dm","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/151"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=828"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":830,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828\/revisions\/830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}