Strength work will make you faster on the bike but it also delivers a host
of other benefits. It can slow down or even reverse the loss of muscle mass
associated with aging and help with weight control - not only this but being
more robust it means you're less likely to injure yourself doing everyday tasks
such as lifting the kids out of the car or spending time doing the gardening and
when you're not nursing an injury you can spend more time out on the road on your
bike
How often should we be doing strength training?
You'll be looking for at
least two times a week in order to make good progressions which could be up to
three times a week as you become more familiar with it. That would be through
periods of when you're trying to do strength work when you're maybe on the
bike more or doing a lot upping your bike volume you could bring that down to once
a week just to maintain.
Ok this exercise is the goblet squat so a really good exercise for learning
the squat pattern and also strengthens the muscles around the hip and the knee and
the ankle as well as working some of the postural muscles.
So to do it if you just
pick up the kettlebell. So you going to pick up the kettlebell and hold it close
to your chest
Then if you just do a few reps you're going to squat down as if you're trying
to sit down onto a chair holding the kettlebell nice and close keeping your
chest up and at the bottom making sure you're gripping the floor with your feet
and just driving your knees out
How should we be warming up for this routine and why is that so important?
So the warm-up is important because it prepares you physically and mentally to
do your activity or strength session. In terms of what you can do just any kind
of like aerobic activity like running rowing cycling or anything to just warm
the temperature of the muscles and just get your muscles ready to do the activity.
This exercise is the lateral squats, working on the same areas as
the goblet squat but at this time it will challenge your left and right side
and also work on a bit of range of motion.
So what you're going to do is
pick up the kettlebell this time holding it low instead of up on your chest and
then all you're going to do is you're just going to step out to the side
keeping one leg straight and again imagining you're sitting down on to a
chair and then drive back up to the middle and then come back out and then
drive back up. One more and then from there we're just going to repeat on
the other side
so again keeping one leg straight squatting down on the other leg and
keeping your body nice and upright
How should we be structuring the session?
Ok for this session you
could do it as a circuit or just do each exercise by itself but what you'd be
looking to do to begin with is probably do kind of a low reps or maybe five or
six just to get used to the exercise and get used to the movement and then you
can start progressing the reps up for maybe fifteen to twenty just to
challenge yourself. Once you're up into those higher reps you probably want to
start then looking to maybe add more weight but bring the reps down and then
just keep progressing that cycle of moving up through the higher reps adding
weight coming back down.
This exercise is a stiff leg deadlift or an RDL Romanian deadlift so it's a good
exercise to work the posterior chain or glutes and hamstrings and also start to
learn a hip hinge pattern.
And so what you're going to do is pick up the
kettlebell, stand up nice and tall you want to keep your shoulders back and
then all you're going to try and do is just push your hips backwards so you
start to feel the pressure onto your heels and then stand back up
and you're all you're trying to do is hit hinge at the hip with very little
movement of the knee
And what about cooldown?
So with these activities as you start adding more
weight you probably want to make sure you cool down and potentially do
some foam rolling or stretching or even repeating what you did in your warmup
just doing a light aerobic activity.
So this exercise we're going to do next is a front plank so good for working the
anterior chain or the abdominals but also working a little bit of upper body.
You can do it two ways. An easier way and then progress it a little bit the
first way is that you just support yourself on your elbows and then just
balance on your knees.
Now making sure you're keeping yourself in a nice
straight line from your head all the way through to your knee and keeping your
head in the neutral position. If that feels okay you can then progress it
up onto your feet so you just going to raise your knees off the floor and now
you're balancing on your toes and your elbows and again keeping a nice straight
line through the body holding a strong position.
I know a lot of people worry about this one as bike riders. If you're doing
strength routines will it make us all bulk up?
Depending on how you do it and
your nutrition it won't so you can definitely get stronger without getting
bigger, it's just making sure that you're watching how much your volume and
watching the nutrition
This exercise is the side plank so similar to the front plank trying to
work around the abdominals and different sections of that but also hitting the
upper body.
What we're going to do got two exercises you can start again easier
like the front plank on your knees so this time you're just going to support
yourself on one elbow and just work down this side.
Again similar to front plank keeping your body nice and aligned and then a progression for
that is then you could go onto your feet where you put your top leg in front and
again just hold that strong position.
It's important to make sure you keep
your hips away from the floor and hold a nice straight forward position. With this
exercise and the front plank you'd be looking to maybe start with 20 to 30
seconds and then as you get better looking to progress towards a minute or
two minutes.
How do I progress this routine on?
So the exercise in itself, you can
play around with the reps or the weight just so you can keep stimulating the
body to move forward. If not you can move on to more advanced exercises which will
stress the system a little bit more.