with Derek Teel
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Strength training isn't a luxury add-on to cycling—it's a practical tool that fixes pain, improves efficiency, and keeps you mentally fresh. Derek Teel breaks down exactly why cyclists should lift, when to fit it into a packed schedule, and how to actually integrate it without burning out. Whether you're a time-strapped amateur or someone just wanting to feel better on the bike, this is the straightforward guidance you've been looking for.
"You have to be comfortable prioritizing maintenance which I find that a lot of people have a hard time doing—Derek Teel"
"If you don't just dial it back and keep going [in-season] you're just going to lose those gains like probably by the time you get to your race you'll probably have lost that strength gains"
"The truth is you have to look at different parts of a program to validate it and to justify it so that it can make sense in their head"
“even if you were to cut 60 minutes out total of your riding per week and you dedicated that to two 30 minute strength training sessions spread throughout the week I would be shocked if you did not feel significantly better opposed to just doing a little bit more of the same”
“if you have quads that are compensating for your hamstrings because your hamstrings are just completely dormant they're not firing they're not doing any supporting work now it's obvious that quads are the primary knee extender so they're going to be doing the majority of the work in the pedal stroke but if you don't have your hamstrings supporting them a little bit and working a little bit you're not going to be getting as much out of your legs as you should be”
“you have to be comfortable prioritizing maintenance which I find that a lot of people have a hard time doing it's like they want that sexy big boost in whatever they're going for and then they just totally fall off the wayside for a few months and they don't know how to just dial it back a little bit and stay consistent”
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Apply for Coaching →But the biggest issue that I hear time and time again is how do I integrate strength training into my cycling routine why should cycle strength training well there's the obvious answer which is do we now have data to verify these assumptions that yes strength training does in fact increase my FTP to be honest you have to be comfortable prioritizing maintenance which I find that a lot of people have a hard time doing but you just put so much damage on your system that you're going to have to recover from that you could feel for multiple days from those three rep you would never ever get credit for a TSS score from something like that like not even had a problem with as well cuz I earn 2,700 calories today but there's no metabolic load of that session on my body did you say you'll burn 1,700 calories in a gym session you're doing something I don't even know about the truth is you have to look at different parts of a program to validate it and to justify it so that it can make sense in their head hi everybody and welcome back to the channel if you're new here my name is Anthony I'm a former lawyer turn cyclist turn podcast host who is based in Ireland my goal with this channel is to introduce you the viewer to the people and three ideas to help you optimize your health your happiness and your longevity I have an exceptional guest joining us today Mr Derek teal he's the founder of dial heal today we're diving deep into the topic that gets a lot of questions but not enough Clarity strength training for cyclists we've got three big questions we're hoping to get answered today why should you as a cyclist consider strength training when should you fit strength training into your already packed cycling schedule and most importantly how can you integrate strength training seamlessly without it feeling like an extra burden now before we get started I do have a small favor to ask still around 90% of people watching this channel haven't subscribed if you can take a second to subscribe but really really helps the channel more than you know and the bigger the channel gets the bigger the guests will get I promise you that with all that being said this is the road man cycling podcast and now my dear friends it's Derek tale Derek welcome to the roadman cycling podcast thanks for having me I am totally honored to be here there my goal with this conversation is to answer three main questions for cyclist as pertains to strength training it's why strength training when should I Strength train and how should I Strength train so we a big task to but the biggest issue that I hear time and time again is how do I integrate strength training into my cycling routine so I'm excited personally to hear the answer to that but before we get into the H let's talk about the why why should cyc stren shine well there's the obvious answer which is to increase your Force production I think that's the clearest thing that people start strength training and set out to do they're like I want to increase my FTP I want to have more power on the bike I want to be be more explosive and it's pretty undeniable at this point that strength training benefits just about everything on the bike with the exception of your V2 Max really uh even longer efforts have been shown to be improved by strength training and so that is kind of the obvious one is just that allout Force production but there are so many reasons I feel like that just barely scratches the surface because when you think about what a good ride is sure you had good power maybe you hit some numbers but are were you comfortable on the bik did you feel like you got the most out of your actual body what does this look like long term and I mean were you riding in pain or without pain and these are all things that string training can solve and I don't know if you want me to go down my quick list but I'd be happy to get a little bit more into each one of those points yeah definitely I think for me I came up in an ERA with cycling where training was kind of shrouded in a lot of mysticism still good Riders kept what was working to them protected like secrets that they passed on to a small subset of friends or training partners and this was how knowledge was passed down through years but do we now have data and maybe this feeds into your sort of points on why we should strength train do we now have data to verify these assumptions that yes strength training does in fact increase my FTP there are studies and we could even link some in the description for your audience but it's interesting because a lot of times the protocol they use isn't a realistic protocol to use year round and I think that is one of the big chasms between people who call cycling their number one sport or even professional athletes who want to integrate strength training versus maybe the person who is more casual and only rides once or twice a week because you actually want to EB andf flow your schedule throughout the year so what you would do at the offseason to focus on boosting your FTP when maybe your base riding uh is or you're riding on the bike is a little bit less intense then you want to actually be able to lower your intensity of strength training more towards a maintenance phase as you increase your volume on the bike increase the intensity on the bike there needs to be like an EB and flow and that's one thing I've noticed that the science doesn't really support yet is that there is yearr round benefit to strength training you just have to let the Evan flow and and to be honest you have to be comfortable prioritizing maintenance which I find that a lot of people have a hard time doing it's like they want that sexy big boost in whatever they're going for and then they just totally fall off the backat for a few months and they don't know how to just dial it back a little bit and stay consistent yeah I suppose at this point there a nice segue to parse this conversation and say who we're talking about and who we're not talking about when I'm asking these questions I'm not talking about you know one of my previous guests Jay
Vine I'm not talking about that cohort I'm not talking about world T Riders who have the logistical difficulty of trying to figure out how to strength train while you know navigating 100 plus race days a year grand Tours altitude camps I'm talking about somebody with and we can maybe go on and expand on this Avatar a little bit later but I'm talking about somebody who is pretty much a family person working a job with some conflicting demands on their time that they don't have all day to train thanks for separating that because I am working hard right now to make sure that the my protocols and what I say could be well used for some of the top world tour athletes uh but then also how do we make that work for the beginner as well um but with that said the person you just described let's just say uh you know full-time career maybe focused there family let's just say middleaged in general I think that that's the that's that's the biggest uh demographic that I work with on day-to-day so to see what really impacts someone over a year is really interesting because it's so easy to look at all these studies and all this data and information that we have and build out this perfect training plan but at the end of the day what's someone going to do long term and what's realistic because if you ask me the question like should I Strength train you know before my ride or after the ride the question is if I told you are you still gonna actually do it you know what I mean it's like it's so easy to just make a perfect schedule but it's like what is reality for the majority of person and I think that's when some individuality comes into play for sure that's an amazing point because we can create these brilliant beautiful abstract training plans but if we talk about that demographic who has conflicting demands in their time there's different stuff pulling at them whether it's family commitments work commitments social commitments so when we're building out a training plan or I'm talking to somebody even advising them and we're looking at a macro cycle like an annual plan the first thing I'll have them do is like well write down the times where if you're in sales you know end of quarter is going to be busy you know if you're a family man coming up to Christmas or around birthdays are going to be busy let's highlight these areas and like blank them out because you're not going to be able to Peak for an event while simultaneously managing to increase cortisol levels of quarterly sales targets yeah and training when you're that stressed is so difficult especially if you see some high-intensity interval session oh my gosh coming into that when you're already stressed I feel like I roll out from you know my driveway some days for a ride and I'm like I can't even think about having an effort right now because I just need to breathe I need to like regulate my heart rate you know I have three kids under four right now I'm running my own business so there's days I leave and I'm so tense that I just need to just need woaw a little bit I need to take a few minutes before I can even think about putting out an effort and I think that's everything that you mentioned is just so real and it sucks because there's no data to quantify it necessarily like there's a lot of these things where there aren't these measurable things that you can point to and say Hey you know like this is exactly why I didn't have a great session that day but this is why it's so important to to refer to data but to also be introspective and to really try and feel your body and think about you know why you're performing the way that you are because it could be something that has to do with your job and not even related to your I guess your physical uh body necessarily it's it's more mental so with those caveats what's the top three reasons we should be embracing strength training because your time is going to be so valuable spent off the bike because you can do things off the bike to support your riding that you just cannot do on the bike so let's let's give you an example so uh let's talk about if you have any pain or discomfort on the bike obviously you got to go get a bike fit I need to just put out that disclaimer I'm a huge proponent of bike fits I think it's a given I think it's uh one of the best uses of your money if it's between a higher level spec on a new bike versus and no bike Fit versus a lower level spec plus bike fit go lower level get a bikee fit I think that's probably going to be more beneficial now with that being said you could have a perfect fit on your bike and still be super uncomfortable because of your actual body itself if you have muscle compensations like let's just say for example your lower back is getting fired up and it's compensating for what your core should be doing essentially it's trying to stabilize and work on overdrive because your abs are so inactive or you have no um AB engagement at all maybe you don't have gluten engagement these are all the muscles that should be firing to protect your low back but instead your low back is taking the heat of that and you end your ride completely smoked or you can't finish an effort because of that pain now how would you correct that on the bike you really can't do it you have to actually get off of the bike and put yourself in positions like for example to get your low ABS activated you could do a posterior tilt exercise you could do hip hinges to get your glutes activated and you could hold planks and breathe while you have core tension to train your body to do this so that when you go out on the bike those muscles are actually firing like it's it's almost impossible to do because of the poor position of the bike as much as I love cycling it's just you can't argue that it's like this healthy position that you know is going to solve all your problems yeah I'm already feeling attacked here like I'm four hours into a ride and I can just feel my lower back like do a reor spena stabilizing muscles either side of
The spine just lock and tight on me and I know it's like neglect in car so it's you just validating that assumption for me now oh yeah and a lot of times it's your ql as well like when people have single-sided back pain you this deeper muscle your quadratics lumborum and you have there's a stretch you can do to alleviate it but to do it on the bike is so difficult and not only that but you have to when you're strength training part of the reason it's so effective is because you're in a safe controlled space there's a lot of things you can't do on the bike simply because you have to stay stabilize and make sure that you don't crash and it's not te necessarily safe so if you're trying to do all your stretching on the bike which some stretching on the bike can be helpful throughout a ride but it's just not going to be the same as if you're sitting on the floor for example if you were to stretch your ql on your back you could do a seated position wide legs like you would do a hamstring stretch but you would reach with your opposite arm toward the foot and reaching with the opposite arm pushes that stretch into your low back right where you're probably going to feel that pain but again if you're trying to stabilize on the bike it's not going to work just by kind of arching out so you have to breathe allow your body to sit into the stretch and then you can start focusing on letting that muscle in particular the release uh so that's why off the bike strength training is so important because you can do things that just cannot be done on the bike that are completely necessary for you to have your best ride and and honestly that's just pain coming from muscle compensations that doesn't even have to do with your overall economy and your overall cycling efficiency because because if you have let's just say you have quads that are compensating for your hamstrings because your hamstrings are just completely dormant they're not firing they're not doing any supporting work now it's it's obvious that quads are the primary knee extender so they're going to be doing the majority of the work in the pedal stroke but if you don't have your hamstrings supporting them a little bit and working a little bit you're not going to be getting the as much out of your legs as you should be in fact that muscle mass which especially Road cyclists are so concerned about putting on too much muscle if you want to use get the most out of the current muscle that you have you can't have compensations in your body so how do you get more hamstring activation well you could do all sorts of stuff like scrape the gum off your shoe at the bottom of a pedal stroke and there are those things or you can train it in a very controlled place like the gym where you put yourselves in positions where it's almost impossible for your hamstrings not to be the primary mover you get them activated you get them stronger and then when you go out on the bike it's autonomous you don't have to think about it you know your brain and your body just does it and it works together so not only do you have less pain but you're more efficient with the actual available muscle that you have I'm back in the gym for the last four weeks since I had Joe frel on the podcast because my next birthday is one of those Milestone birthdays of 40 and not looking forward to it but Joe fre had me freaked out so I'm back in the gym but something I've really enjoyed about being back at the gym is the idea of it being a Counterpoint to cycling and let me expand on that I had a guest on the podcast Colo Brady a while back fascinating guy and he was the first guy to ever row solo across Drake Passage so he painted me this amazing picture of rowing across Drake Passage in the worst storm you've ever seen and he has to get into this like little craw space beneath the deck where he's himself he's puking for 24 hours and it's effectively a condensed coffin with no food violently seasick and the storm eventually subsided and he came out of there not sure whether he was g a liver diet points and he came out and he looked across the C Bay and he said it's the most beautiful C Bay he's ever seen in his life and at that moment he realized that he needed the storm and the the depths of the spirit in that storm to appreciate the true beauty of the CC I feel like obviously a dial down version of that for me going from the bike to the gym I love riding the bike but some days and I'm lucky enough to have a schedule that's quite flexible allows me to ride my bike almost every day but some days I go out on the bike and it feels laborious it feels like drudgery monotony and I'm like oh I'm so blessed to be out on the bike why don't I feel blessed to be out on the bike but the gy has given me that back and it's energized that because now I don't ride the bike every single day so when I do ride the bike I have that feeling of blessed again on the bike as corny as it sounds oh it doesn't sound corny at all I think that your long-term ability to stay consistent is so much greater when you add strength training in for those reasons it keeps things fresh and it allows you to do something physical that still supports what you want on the bike in fact makes it better and it's funny because this is one of those like I could never have science to tell you that you'd be more consistent cycling by strength training but based off my personal experience off the thousands of people I've trained that are in that demographic that we've talked about of people who are pressed for time you have other higher priorities besides your bike as much as you love it adding that strength training keeps things fresh because dude I ride multiple disciplines road gravel Mountain I got a great turbo setup and I love riding my bike is my favorite thing to do it's been my favorite thing since I was 12 years old but still there are days I wake up and I don't really feel like
Riding my bike and I think that's totally okay so and I ride four to five days without fail every single week but those other days are typically when I'm strength training and it is just so refreshing and uh it again you do things you can't do on the bike that support support it so it's such a win-win and for the people who want to integrate strength training but they do have all these time pressing schedule demands and they realize oh man maybe I am pushing the limit of my training time at the moment and I need to back off a little ride volume to get this strength workout in I totally recommend it because even you cutting an hour out on the bike per week and I'm sorry to even digress this conversation a little bit but I want to make this point even if you were to cut 60 minutes out total of your riding per week and you dedicated that to two 30 minute strength training sessions SP spread throughout the week I would be shocked if you did not feel significantly better opposed to just doing a little bit more of the same so to get off to add the mobility to add the strength work it is well worth that time spent and I don't know what you would if you would agree with that or not you could tell me based off your experience but that's I would fully agree with that I think it's a nice segue into when do we strength training like how do we Pro iiz strength training around our bike workouts so in the coaching company behind the podcast we coach at the moment I say roughly 100 plus clients so I'll break down a typical week for most of those clients obviously everyone's going to be in the comments if they're watching this on YouTube like oh this isn't my schedule but you know freestyle it yourselves if it's not your schedule Monday we see a lot of clients taking off Tuesday Wednesday Thursday there's sessions getting performed but are quite time crunch 60 to 90 minutes max maybe before work maybe later in the evening or someone squeezing in at lunch Friday it's either a light day active recovery like a you know 30 minutes on one ride or else off and then the bulk of the duration is done at the weekend this is I'm breaking down a typical base period offseason period maybe if it's in the season there's a a midweek Criterium or a weekend race TR in there but so how do we structure strength training around that sort of work on a micro level and as well zooming out on a macro level does the demand does that change based on if we're in base period build period or heading into a more race intensive period awesome question so that is a typical schedule that I see quite a bit and I see on those more time crunch sessions throughout the week some intensity still in there and typically someone has like if it's they're training Tuesday Wednesday Thursday it's like intensity Tuesday more of a zone two ride uh Wednesday and then some intensity Thursday before recover your day off Friday so I figured yeah give or take okay so the difference in the seasons I I'll tell you uh the intensity difference but then we'll go into the specifics of which day you would do your strength training on so the biggest difference between inseason versus out of season with your strength training is the intensity the volume ideally would get higher during the off season or this would be most people's base training season but it's the intensity like you really don't want to carry fatigue and soreness during the season into a fast group ride that's like your local race ride every Saturday morning and maybe you tack on a volume maybe it's a 4our day with intensity you come home drained if you go into that fatigued it's going to really suck but if it's the base season and you have four hours of zone two you can come into it with a little fatigue and a little soreness and you know it's for the greater good and there's nothing really riding on it it's January everyone's looking at each other and wanting to stop for coffee anyway so enjoy that time to actually increase the intensity and potentially the volume of your strength training sessions during the offseason so when you get into the season the biggest difference is not the training frequency like I want everyone training two days per week minimum but you dial back the intensity even if it's to the base phase activation where ultimately you leave a session feeling better than when you started that's how a lot of the sessions should feel throughout the season if you're just working working on maintenance you shouldn't really be beat down too much and so does that give you a clear idea of the the difference between base and in season yeah I like that it explains it well and also I suppose when you get into the season you have the benefit of those historic workouts for the past few months so you're not going to be when you dial back that intensity you're not going to be carrying those Doms into your more intense you know Chain Gang or crits the weekend totally and what I think people forget and this is the part of strength training for cyclist right now that's not being executed well by the majority it's not whether or not you should strength train I think most people do agree that you should but they still will put you on this strength training program that does carry fatigue into your ride so it doesn't really feel reasonable to do when your intensity on the bike comes up in Spring let's just say so they just say okay now you're done strength training off season's over you're done it's all on the bike work and maybe keep stretching maybe use a foam roll every once in a while but it's this huge on or off switch and what you just said is so correct you built these gains of strength through the offseason that you want to carry into the season but you have to dial it back or those gains will go away quickly way faster than you than you got them unfortunately and so you just want to dial that back a little bit and keep the training frequency the same so let's just say for instance your rate of perceived exertion during the off season strength training sessions is like a eight or a nine you could dial it back to
Like five to seven five to six during the season still stay activated and actually maintain your strength throughout the majority of the Season maybe if you have a an open month you can increase the weight really quickly mid-season and really maintain but the thing is if you don't just dial it back and keep going you're just going to lose those gains like probably by the time you get to your aace you'll probably have lost that strength gains like and the a back is you know because during the season you know because you're racing multiple disciplines like you're going to the well quite often like that well of motivation where you're digging deep in races and that willpower is not indefinite resource like you can only go to the well so many times during a week and if you're doing a chain gang on a Tuesday night a crit on a Thursday night and a race again on Saturday or Sunday it's like that willpower to go hard is exhausted so the thoughts of going into the cham on a Friday I'm pushing an eight or nine rate to perceived exertion session it's just not that many appealing but when you can dial that back to a five all of a sudden it feels like that counter point we talking about like a reprieve yeah and I'm happy used Friday as an example because that was a day I was going to suggest for one of your strength training sessions now if we look at that week that you had mentioned and this is really in season or out of season uh but for that example I think leaving Monday as your rest day is probably a great idea because the weekend you had the majority of your volume I think that's great now let's just say you're someone who does a 60 to 90 minute indoor session on Tuesday that could be a great day if possible to also add in a strength training session because now you have a two-day split between your strength training if it's on Tuesday and then Friday you have the rate of perceived exertion lower and let's just say for example that person on the Wednesday is doing a zone two ride they can come into that with a little fatigue anyways and then by the time they get to their Thursday ride maybe they have some more intensity indoor on the turbo they have strength training day Friday and then they can get into their weekend and then recover Monday I think that would probably be an ideal schedule uh because really spacing it out as much as possible is what you want to do and I think most coaches agree it's like SP spreading out the intensity with the exception of certain points throughout the year you have to get that Progressive overload in blocks but to space it out throughout the week as much as possible is the best way to stay consistent just to recover between sessions um but I will say when when's fatigue going to be at us Maxim on a session so like if I do a strength session on Tuesday morning and I my and it's quite a heavy intense strength session say an eight or nine rate perceived exertion is my fatigue from that session is that going to be at its maximum on Tuesday evening on Wednesday or on Thursday because I know some of us experienced this delayed muscle soreness yeah that's a good question Doms if you guys haven't felt Doms you probably haven't had like a crazy lower body split day where you're doing a Bulgarian split squats and trap bar deadlifts and step ups and every variation of a leg workout which I don't recommend doing by the way for a cyclist but uh Doms are crazy because you can do a strength training session and not feel sore until 48 hours after the session and it just hits you so bad that you can barely sit on and off the toilet I mean that is how real Doms can be and there's it's really hard to say when someone's going to feel the most fatigue from strength training because it it really is one of those things that's so individual ual uh based off a recovery because it's like what was your nutrition like pre and post session how was your hydration how was your sleep did you lay down and elevate your legs for 15 minutes after your strength session or did you work on your feet for eight hours directly after you know what I mean so it's very hard to just to say when that would be but it really could be anywhere within you know 72 hours technically uh you could feel the most fatigue from it but I think that's where being consistent enough to understand your body and actually taking a moment to ask yourself how you feel is important because you'll continue to make better decisions based on intensity and almost self-regulate it the more experience you get with strength training because you know for all the people who are super data driven uh which I am too I love it on the bike power all the metrics you don't get good TSS scores from train strength training they they almost pretty much don't it's an age old problem like how do you quantify your strength training session into I used to just divide it by half like I'd say if an hour full gas on the road is going to be 100 stress points if I go an err pretty much full gas in the gym I'm going to give it 50 stress points but even that's different because of the way CTL is calculated and fatigue has to drive CTL it's not fatiguing at the same rate like there's not a linear relationship between fatigue and fitness when you're in the gym so it's an AG all question I don't have the answer to it yeah and I think that you could go C trying to quantify it so I think adding it to training stress isn't the best idea like I don't typically recommend that to have someone see it lumped in with their cycling I think if you could give yourself RP scores and almost have it as a separate tally and just refer to one or another I think that is honestly ideal because otherwise it's too confusing because just to give you guys an example if you were a heart rate monitor through your strength training session and you did let's just say uh heavy set of three deadlifts on a trap bar this is going to be one of the heaviest exercises you're probably physically capable of doing uh that
Uses your total body well for a trained cyclist I doubt you're going to get your heart rate out of zone two but you just put so much damage on your system that you're going to have to recover from that you could feel for multiple days from those three reps that you would never ever get credit for a TSS score from something like that like not you had a problem with whoop as well because I started using whoop again now um to order wearables like AA I've tried out but a lot of it is largely driven of your heart ratees so your calorie exactly burn is also calculated off your heart rate on it so you can have a day where you go to the gym and I look at it I be like whoa I only burned 1,700 calories today even though I was in the gym and I feel toasted after the workout versus if I go out and do like a 90minut coffee shop ride it's like hey I've burn 2700 calories today but there's no metabolic load of that session on my body did you say you'll burn 1,700 calories in a gym session no like total across the oh total I was like dude you're doing something I don't even know about if that's the case because it's true you know I'll have a hard one hour strength workout like something I would give a RP of eight that I I'm definitely going to be carrying fatigue for the next couple days or at least the next day and yeah I'm looking at my calorie burn from tracking it's like 350 yeah maybe maybe 400 so but but then again it's that real fatigue and then it does different things to your metabolism too and your muscle uh the amount of muscle repair that needs to happen it's just a different it's just a different Energy System it's a different toll on your body and so to kind of separate it I think is good if you're someone who really wants to track that info U but I think the biggest rule of thumb is to just really dial up and down the intensity throughout the season opposed to just stopping Today's Show is sponsored by the Breakaway a few years ago I saw a huge gap in the market for an app that was like a cycling coach in your pocket I knew AI was ultimately going to be the best coach in the world I spent about two years of my life trying to build this but unfortunately it didn't happen ever since then I've kept a really close eye on the AI space to see if anyone else could succeed where I failed the Breakaway app caught my attention a couple of months back because Christian velt yep the same Christian velt who got fought into Tour of France is one of the co-founders for the Breakaway and it seems that at the Breakaway they've created the ultimate cycling training companion and they're bringing lowcost coaching to the masses you'll know from listening to my podcast that my pet peeve is when cyclists head out the door with no plan no goal and just roll around with no objective please don't be that guy I implore you the Breakaway app it looks at all your historic training data and it builds training plans around your strengths and weaknesses so you always have the perfect training session they also have Integrations which I'm really excited about whoop and an order ring the reason I previously ditched my variables was because the data didn't really inform my training well now it does you can head on over to roadm trial.com and you can get a free 30-day trial for the app the link for this is in the description down below and that also kind of brings me to the point that people really should be strength training two days per week even to maintain throughout the season even though based off a super compensation which is like the recovery curve one day a week should be sufficient for maintenance but in my experience it it just isn't it just is not sufficient for True maintenance and you don't feel as good when you don't get your system activated at least two days per week like the frequency doesn't seem to be high enough for myself personally but also for people that I train um and also you're not going to get the most even if you're coming into a race day um sorry I'm going on a tangent here but I was just working on my athletes calendar I trained one pro athlete as a sponsored athlete of d health and right now like on his calendar he's racing this Saturday so we have a strength session on total body strength session on Tuesday it's a RP of like a five it's all bands uh it's pretty complex and there's a lot of stability but it's just all bands and then on Friday on his on his uh openers day when he'll just go out on the bike do a few openers he's also going to do a pre-ride activation which I mean by my books is strength training it's not Progressive overload but you're still holding a plank you're still uh doing some stability movements and it's like a 10-minute routine but he's going to do that before his openers and he will feel his best on race day opposed to just even strength training on the Tuesday and then not doing any of that until his race on Saturday having that little touch just to wake up and activate your body it's Game Changer so that's for somebody that's two days a week Str shine and we're looking at a Tuesday Friday split but if you take somebody who has maybe a little bit more available free time and or is super motivated like a typical C One racer and they're looking to strength train three days a week what days would you advise them hitting the gym on with the same schedule I I would tell them not to do it I would tell them to stick to two days a week I would say if they can handle more intensity during those two strength training days do it and then save everything else for the bike if they're if they're at that level but if there's somebody who let's just say they're a cat they're cat five they're cat three and also they they let's just say they also have the goal of I want to put a little bit of meat on my arms which is by the way for everyone listening I I just want to say it's totally okay to have goals
That are not cycling related like if you say hey cycling is my favorite thing I want to feel good on the bike but also like I want a little bit of a chest and shoulders like I want to feel a little stronger you know I ride three days per week that's the type of person that really should do or consider like a three-day a week strength training schedule but if you're somebody who's racing as competitively as cat one and you have extra free time to train likely they need to spend that time on Mobility or they should just push it back into their on the bike training you know as much as I want to say strength training is always the answer more like there's a point where more is not going to benefit those higher level athletes they just it's true so for for deod cohort that you mentioned that are looking to put a bit more meat on their bones for whatever reason they want to be in the gym three days a week and they're looking to figure out what days is best what are you saying to them yeah I think three days a week is a really good idea I think that this is the person now that can add the intensity to their sessions and maybe they don't feel the need like like for them carrying a little fatigue in a ride might be okay uh which opens up a lot of possibilities now this is also a person too that could just say hey I love riding but not that much like I don't want to ride that frequently and so and I really love my time in the gym so that is a person that I would recommend getting at least two total body strength training days in per week but that third day might be a more focused on upper body day especially for the person that wants to like they and I I'm saying this example because I actually get this a lot of a lot of people saying Hey I want to you know be able to do 10 pull-ups or I want to be able to do 50 push-ups without stopping you know like I used to when I was going through the police academy or something like that H random example but these are all the things I talk to people about so that's when it's like okay cool let's go to the gym I'm still G to have you do some Mobility uh but this is going to be primarily upper body and so for you to sprink that into your schedule now maybe you do your Tuesday total body session and then the next day on Wednesday you follow it up with an upper body focused session you still have some total body mobility and then you have your total body session again on the Friday okay I like that split and is there a good day if you're looking at your weekly schedule and you're looking to do a double day as and just a clarify double day I mean in gym and biking in the same day would you recommend doing the gym and bike on the same same day on a an endurance ride or a more interval Focus ride I love this question because I'm actually I've been changing my mind about this a little bit and it sounds funny because you think oh just point to the science what do you need to change your mind but but there really isn't like much to point to so you have to go off of your own experience you have to go off your coaching experience with your clients and there's there's positive and negatives to both but I'll tell you that I used to lean toward adding your strength training to your easier day on the bike because at the if you have a hard high intensity strength training session combined with a hard interval session you might actually dig yourself so deep in a hole that it's going to take more than a just a zone two ride the next day to even recover out of that and it could actually be damaging like it gets to a point where oh it's going to be too hard but I also had realized just through some experience that most people aren't doing to two hours of Sweet Spot intervals followed by a strength training session that is a eight or nine perceived exertion and for that person they should just back off their strength training intensity that day if they're going to do two hours of let's just say sweet spot intervals so that was the conflict I had was like by adding strength training to an already intense day is that just going to be too much and you dig yourself too deep and I think there's also a mental component that that as well because we're just kind of saying intense rather than Breaking that down CU intense can mean like are you going out doing 10 kilo efforts are you going out and doing four by four minute V2 Max efforts for me they're quite a m manageable effort because they're short and you know it's going to suck but it's only four minutes but if I was to be in the gym in the morning with a very heavy gym session and then you were saying to me it's 2 by 25 or three by 20 threshold that's an hour of hard work an hour of hard work on sore legs does not feel very appetizing at all yeah and that's kind of what I've realized just through some more experience to be honest is that most people aren't doing really high volume rides with a lot of intensity in the middle of the week and so let's just say you do have a V2 effort they're short they're four minutes you're doing five of them and the whole total session is an hour long then it becomes very manageable to say that you'll add a strength training session to that you'll probably feel great and then the next day you can go on a zone two ride and actually get the benefit from it maybe you carry a little fatigue but again at zone two it's okay and then probably by that following day you're recovered so I am leaning more toward that uh but I think there is a place for some people depending on schedule and overall ride intensity that could stack a strength training session on an endurance day but again it just makes less and less sense the more PE people I talk to just because the reality of the duration of an intense session is typically
Shorter especially throughout the week so I would stack it on that day uh did did that answer it clearly enough for you yeah yeah no perfect and I love the structure of this conversation because we've kind of covered the white strength train we've covered to when the stren train now I think how and this is the most daunting part for a lot of us because you know we're so comfortable wearing clothes that are basically as revealing as body paint and sitting in a coffee shop with our friends but somehow we feel foreign and self-conscious as soon as we walk into the gym so this part is going to be very valuable for people start out like what's our starting point like and let me anchor that with the equivalent starting point for when a client comes into me for coaching I want to know two things just like maybe your Garmin GPS wants to know when you get into the car where are you right now that's my Baseline testing and where do you want to go your destination or your goal once we have those two and we know our schedule then we can start to plot that Journey how do you Baseline test how do you figure out where they are now in the strength and conditioning world that's a really good question and actually something I'm still trying to figure out because I don't have any Baseline protocols for a uh test for specific strength training at this point because the goal through my product has always been it to improve your experience on the bike so I always just lean back on where someone is at on the bike technically or we can do actual physical body measurements for people who want to lose body fat you know as a personal trainer all the time I spent in the general fitness industry body composition change was a very big part of it so a lot of the testing looks back at their FTP and their ride performance or it looks at their actual body composition because if you're somebody that comes to me and says I want to put on let's just say 50 pounds on my back squat that's great but what I'm going to do to get you there versus to get you on the bike is and going as fast as you can and having the best experience it it's wildly different yeah and so I've had a hard time trying to come up with these Protocols of being like Oh what are these Baseline metrics people should hit and I'm I'm still honestly trying to work out on it and I think a lot of it would come down to some calisthenics but again if you're somebody who wants to get better at pull-ups you need to do pull-ups twice a week these are people I talk to who I'm like hey here's your base program but also you're going to add pull-ups this day because you have that specific goal because your goal is to be General Health generally improve your health and well-being and your performance on the bike we look at body composition and then we look at your actual performance on the bike and then what you do in the gym is more of a byproduct of that if that makes sense so the standards to get started uh aren't necessarily set for you to have like an improvement like let's just say like I don't have like a percentage Baseline for Reps for example it's not like a normal powerlifting routine where you get your one rep max and then you say okay these days you do 65% of that and you work off it like a FTP would I I've never found that to be beneficial IAL to be honest and I think that's why it's so frustrating to have good strength training for people because they want it so quantifiable but the truth is you have to look at different parts of a program to validate it and to justify it so that it can make sense in their head like for example someone who is uh their priority is performance on the bike and overall health and wellbeing they need to decide in their head okay I'm going to get started with strength training and it's going to be two days per week because because that is the actual minimum to make any sort of progress based off of super compensation as I mentioned earlier I believe with regressed intensity levels you should do it even for maintenance but two days per week minimum if I want to actually make progress and if you guys want to look up the super compensation curve you'll see exactly what I'm talking about it's basically your Baseline performance you do a training session your performance drops because you're recovering and as you recover beyond your initial level of performance that's when you want to hit your next session and have this like helpful stairstep progression but you can you can look that up and see what I'm talking about so that's what you need to commit to in your head okay I'm going to strength train two days per week now from there you have to commit to strength training total body and this is when you ask yourself what's the best use of my time and how do I have a balanced program and what I learned through my training at equinox which is a gym chain across the world is that the you want to focus on the seven effective movements to have a balanced training schedule and so that's those are like the two things I start most of my programs with unless there is a higher uh frequency of the program so for two days a week I'm like okay at the minimum I need to have a hip dominant Movement Like a squat or a deadlift I need to have a knee dominant Movement Like a lunge or a step up I need to have a core movement ideally with some s sort of rotation and then I need to have a horizontal push a horizontal pull so that'd be like a row or a pushup and then I need to have a vertical push and a vertical pull that'd be like a shoulder press or a pullup I need to have some variety of those and at least once a week and that way I'll know I have a base of a well-rounded schedule now from there you can get more specific based off of equipment so like the next question would be what equipment do you have available and for a lot of people they're not even willing to go to the gym uh for
Those reasons that you mentioned or it's because truthfully cyclists spend so much time on the bike that they don't want the time it takes to go to the gym like even if you don't have issues with how comfortable you are working out in front of people it could be just literally time or I want to step out in my garage or hey you know this is the only way I'm going to get it done I have one kettle bell or I have a bench and a set of adjustable dumbbells then you have to go off of that so what's interesting that you know this is a kind of a trainer to trainer note that you'll probably understand is that a lot of programs I've built recently have been to accommodate for people's equipment access based off of those guidelines not just like Pure Performance like I'm this I'm like this type of Rider and I have access to all the equipment I'm willing to do whatever you want it's like I have bands and dumbbells what do you got best programs to build they're the funnest ones like I've trained guys for host rout events but they live in Qatar and Doha literally the flat flattest place on Earth so it's like how you get someone ready for that they're challenges that are just they get you thinking creatively it it's very true I think some of the most satisfying programs I've made have been The Limited equipment programs because you have to get creative and there's things like if you have a body weight program it's like how do you train your back you know usually training your back requires a lot of pulling motions and external load uh but there's ways to do it and is it always perfect no I think if you the more tools you have at your availability you know the higher chance you'll have of variety and you know getting the optimal program but the truth is what's optimal is the thing that people are gonna do for the most part I mean you could run with that a lot of ways like you know don't just do a thousand burpees because you think that's like good strength training but you know it's like I want people to be consistent and get started and if it means that they have a foam roller and that's it for now then like let's get them rolling um and one thing I'll note about the gym by the way about being comfortable in the gym I've trained in gyms with like okay Santa Monica Equinox for example this is where most of the fitness influencers that you see on Instagram train they are beautiful they have the most insane bodies whether they're mostly plastic and roided up or not they're insane but you know what those people either are actually super encouraging and nice to talk to because they've been in gym culture for very long and they they they applaud people for getting after it they they just want to see people training or they're so obsessed with themselves that they don't even see you I'm just telling you that is the truth no one is like G to look over at you and laugh because you don't know how to do a good squat like people want to help and that's been my experience like throughout all of my gym uh training as a as a personal trainer and I always flicker to like my point of view if I see somebody who's carrying some extra weight and they don't look like they belong on a bike if I see them cycling my attitude is never oh who do they think they are cycling my attitude is oh my God that's amazing they're taking the first step they've got out of their comfort zone like who knows where this journey is going to end up like my journey with cycling is largely defined my ceiling has been set and it's now it's figuring out new challenges but for them embarking on that Journey the seiling hasn't been set and it's such a fun exciting time and for anyone getting into the gym your seiling hasn't been set if you're just getting in it could go anywhere could be the next Mr Olympia yeah that that's very true and I think if you're someone who wants to get in the gym and has that barrier ask Trainers for questions you know there's floor trainers who literally I'm cleaning you know you start at a gym you don't have clientele I know how to train people and I'm just cleaning the gym and I want to help somebody but also I don't want to just come off too salesy it's hard to approach there's like a very fine line so if you see a floor trainer walking around you say hey I don't know how to use this machine or hey can you look at my deadlift form hey can you you know like I'm curious what weight should I use on the shoulder press they'd probably be happy to help you or even that super experienc looking person in the gym you just say hey you look super experienced can you help me with this that would make their freaking day so kind of a random tangent but I I'm I promise you guys that is the truth of uh the mindset in the gym If you experience something different that is like a very weird uh that's like a fringe minority and uh also if they're under like 18 and they're just working out with the football team you you can leave them alone they're kind of in a different class too so you know and do your protocols change as somebody ages yeah well it's interesting because you know gender uh age it really comes down to someone's training ability and their training experience and like their training age but I always tell people the older they are to take it slower and take it slower when they start and to potentially allow themselves for more recovery time uh you know it's interesting because you don't want to assume that someone's less fit just because they're 60 like I I there's 60 year olds I train who are so much fitter than the 30-year-olds that I train I red with an 84 yearold the weekend that he put away most K two katri guys around the world that's sick that's sick so that's the thing is you have to respect the reality that okay there's going to be longer recovery time uh but also this person could have a lot more training experience they could be a lot smarter they could eat better they could actually get good
Sleep and stretch like there's a lot of things they could be doing that this young gun who could be on the brink of an injury just because he's just you know hammering training and also hammering beers every night like you never you you don't know where someone's at so I think that I typically am more cautious with people as they age uh but once I know that their training ability it's the protocol is pretty much the same I always say to clients that training gives us the possibility to get stronger to get faster and that possibility is realized when we adequately recover when I'm leaving the gym I always see the kind of Gym Bro culture is straight into a protein shake straight away do you have a protocol that you recommend to your clients for when they're finishing up in the gym I always tell them to stretch and I know that's we can lean into the nutrition more so but there's this weird trend of people saying that stretching doesn't work I I don't know why it's it's usually a lot of people who spend time you know five days a week in the gym uh who are doing super deep range of motion on every exercise like this is a total can that we don't need to go into but I would just say I recommend stretching at the end of your session unless you have this dedicated habit of doing it every single night before bed but I always tell people to do it because typically they'll say oh I'll stretch at home and they just always forget about it so if you're truthfully that person that doesn't forget like my nighttime routine is I sit down I put my earphones in I watch Road man cycling podcast I I use a percussion massage gun and it's just super relaxing and then I do a few stretches and that's like my wind down after my kids or at least my my twins have gone to gone to sleep and so I know that if I don't finish the strength training session with a stretch it's because I really don't feel like I need it and I know I'm going to do it later but I also know that I'm going to do it later if there's at some point if you do this heavy contraction contraction contraction give yourself the benefit of doing the opposite and like relieve some of that tension and also Kickstart some of your recovery because you holding a static stretch is shown to activate your parasympathetic nervous system which just helps your body recover a little bit faster so I would just say finish your session with a stretch breathe and then the sooner you can get in nutrition the better I mean I think staying super well hydrated is ideal you know making sure that you have 40 grams of protein within 30 minutes it's not it's not completely essential um because your daily nutrition should be very like spread out so for instance like if you finish a session feeling hungry and depleted you should get food and fast carbs and protein if you finish a session and you're well hydrated and you don't feel hungry to wait an hour an hour and a half to your next meal isn't a big deal and you cramming a bunch of protein in just after your session isn't going to make up for not having protein that morning or later in that evening so this is one of those things it's like long-term consistency like timing is important but it's like the next level of things you should be concerned about um but I will say on that on that note for just recovery and supplementation everyone having a good protein powder I think is a great idea it's very easy to use most people when they track their food realize they're not eating enough protein and so I think that's a great idea for people and it's also like some good variety you know I have a chocolate protein powder that I'll have for dessert some nights I just make mix it up with some uh with some almond milk or some oat milk and it turns into like a pudding and I'll scoop it up with like GR crackers or something amazing uh and so you can do little things like that that you're not you don't just always want to eat more chicken or whatever high protein Source you're going to egg whites um and I also recommend creatine for cyclists which is kind of a you know debated topic but uh I have a video on my YouTube channel actually about why cyclist should take creatine but I think that's a very yeah I think five grams a day unless you're under like 120 lbs I don't know how many kilos that would be that'd be like 55 kilos or something like that if you're less than that maybe three grams uh but five grams a day will probably ward off any of the side effects and there's very few but there if you load it and start taking like 30 grams a day like they used to back in the day uh you know you could get a little gut distress but that's when you really carry a lot more water um but just remember the water goes into your muscle it doesn't go into your subcon fat you know if you look puffy it's not from creatine you should look more muscular but um yeah I recommend creatine Derek this was a super super valuable chat I'm gonna link up your website do health and if you send me a link to that YouTube video on crazy and I'll link that up as well and any other resource we talked about today thank you so much for taking the time to chat thank you so much it's honestly awesome to be here uh you know before you reached out I was watching the jayvine interview so I'm a huge fan of what you do and uh I hope anyone who has more questions with strength training feels free to reach out you guys can go through my website Dow health.com uh get signed up less than 20 bucks a month and uh hopefully everything I just mentioned will be written out nicely for you and you can just put it into practice DK thank you very much if you enjoyed that episode please press here for another conversation that I know you're going to love and don't forget to subscribe to the channel and share it with your clubmates
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