Remember the aforementioned superwoman Denise Mueller? She recently set the paced cycling speed world record, hitting 147.7mph (237.7km/h) at the Bonneville Salt Flats last September.
To put down that kind of power, she couldn’t afford to leave any muscle fibre untrained — so she utilised a strength program called Maximum Overload. Her 40-minute program includes heavy deadlifts, leg presses and explosive walking lunges, culminating in a 15-minute weighted walking lunge workout. All of these exercises target and overload cycling mover muscles to create sustainable power on the bike.
You can save even more time by putting weights and intervals together in one super 60-minute “P.A.P.” workout. That stands for Post-Activation Potentiation, a creation of famed researcher Tudor Bompa. Bompa found that a heavy weight workout actually got you safely warmed up for an interval session by stimulating the central nervous system and preparing the connective tissues — allowing you to push even harder and get a bigger overload, which ultimately replaces even more base miles.
Sample MAXIMUM OVERLOAD Weight-training “5-20-15” workout
Total = 40 minutes
5-Minute Unweighted Dynamic Warmup Do an up-and-back of each of these: · Walking lunge with twist · Sidestep Lunge with arms up · Hip Thrust Glute Bridge
· High-knee Skips
20-Minute Core Strength and Upper Body workout Do three sets of each. Find the weight that lets you do 6 rep-max to failure. · StaticPlank – 1 min. · Ab wheel rollout or Body Saw – 1 min. · Bent-over dumbbell row – 6 rep-max · Pull-ups – max · Push-ups -max · Deadlifts — either with dumbbells or a hex-bar – 6-rep max
· Single Leg press – 6 rep-max (warm-up with double-leg press)
15-Minute Lower Body Power workout Explosive weighted walking lunge (with a dumbbell in each hand)
(Using 12-step-max dumbbell weights, do mini-sets of 6 steps and rest 15 seconds. Repeat that sequence for 2 minutes and rest three minutes. That is one set. Do three sets.)
Roy M. Wallack is the co-author of Maxiumum-Overload for Cyclists.
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