To get faster you need to do more than just ride. Wahoo Sports Scientists Jinger Gottschall and Jeff Hoobler take on the subject of strength training for endurance athletes. Spoiler alert: you don't have to get swole to not be slow.
Elite endurance athletes know the importance of strength training. To take your performance to the next level you need to do more than just ride. In this episode, Wahoo Sports Scientists Jinger Gottschall and Jeff Hoobler take on the subject of bodyweight strength training. They'll introduce your brain to the posterior chain, highlight the importance of core work, and give you expert tips on how to improve your functional strength without hitting the gym.
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Jinger Gottschall 0:00
Hey, welcome back to another episode of the knowledge podcast by Wahoo. I'm Dr. Ginger Gottschall, Director of applied research.
Jeff Hoobler 0:08
And I'm Jeff Hoobler, strength and movement Specialist. Today, we're going to have a chat about how and when to incorporate strength training into your cycling routine.
Jinger Gottschall 0:17
So I would actually like to pull back the curtain a little bit, Jeff, and hear how this whole bodyweight strength training in SYSTM even started, how did it come about?
Jeff Hoobler 0:29
That's a great question. We want to know, the bottom line is, after looking at hundreds of cyclists doing bike fits, and movement assessments became very apparent that we have a lot of imbalances exposed and weaknesses throughout the body. So cyclists, they just need to move better, or cyclists or cyclists. One particular session I was doing back in the apex offices, David, within our Sir David McAllen. And he was just kind of observing, you know, we went through a fitness assessment, and then some corrective movements for the athlete, some posterior chain weaknesses and whatnot. And he turned him in. He said I want that in the app. And there you go,
Jinger Gottschall 1:16
boom.
Jeff Hoobler 1:17
He has spoken. So it's in the app.
Jinger Gottschall 1:20
With that, then what would you say if you had to pinpoint the top two areas that cyclists need to focus on? What would you promote in terms of incorporation into strength training,
Jeff Hoobler 1:32
For sure, posterior chain and core stability, you know, with posterior chain, we're talking about the muscles basically on the backside of your body, primarily hamstrings, glutes, spinal erectors rhomboids. Trapezius lats. And then with pelvic stability, we're looking at, you know, a strong core, but also add abductors, inner thigh and outside of the hip.
Jinger Gottschall 1:55
Okay, what Jeff just brought up are some muscles that you may not know exist. So we're going to now transfer ourselves into a mini anatomy lesson.
Jeff Hoobler 2:08
Bringing on can't wait for this. Okay?
Jinger Gottschall 2:10
Hamstrings, everybody says the word. But does everybody know what they actually are? These are actually for muscles. 1234. They have crazy long names like semi tendinosis, semimembranosus, biceps for Morris, they make up that group, the back of the thigh. That's part of the posterior chain. If we move up towards your shoulders, we get into that spinal group, the erector spine that Jeff mentioned, they support and stabilize the spine all the way from your low back up into your neck, if we continue in the back, and we're going to chat about things like the rhomboids that are between your shoulder blades, the traps that are lying above them that help us do those shoulder shrugs, and then this huge sheet of muscles from the upper to the mid back called the Latissimus Dorsi or lats. Those are big words they are but now you can all feel super cool when you're talking about your posterior chain in your next group ride.
Jeff Hoobler 3:07
Yeah, I think it's also important to bring up that we get support from the top and the bottom of our body as well as the side. So you know that the three-dimensional aspect is really important and how we support so to speak the low back from above, as well as below
Jinger Gottschall 3:24
as cyclists, a lot is just focused and talk about the legs. And what Jeff has just said is you cannot forget about the shoulder to hip segment just today we are focusing on bodyweight strength training. Can you give us a little bit more about what you mean by that and the different components or types of exercises involved in that?
Jeff Hoobler 3:47
Yeah, absolutely. So bodyweight strength, we're just assuming that you don't have the equipment or you have very little equipment available to you might have gravity, of course, you might have a wall and a mat and you know, you can do a lot at home, just doing bodyweight strength. So we're using gravity or redirected gravity to overload the muscles. And we can do this in a number of ways with different types of contractions. We have eccentric contractions, which are essentially lengthening the muscle concentric contractions, which are shortening the muscle, and then isometric or static type of contraction. And the real key is that we want to create an overload using a variety of these stimuli.
Jinger Gottschall 4:31
You will see all of these types of contractions and components because the isometric that Jeff mentioned is actually no change in length. So it's not technically a contraction, but you will see the lengthening the shortening, and the isometric in every single strength workout. So we are going to overload you in different ways. If I had to describe when you would see centric I think one of the easiest Jeff would be to talk about a hip hinge. Let's start there. Hearing standing position. And a hip hinge is simply what the word says. We are going to tip forward from the hips bringing the chest towards the ground. And at that point, it is an East centric or lengthening contraction for the posterior chain that we chatted about before. You may specifically notice especially if you're a cyclist, a stretching feeling in your hamstrings in the posterior thigh.
Jeff Hoobler 5:24
Exactly in all four of those hamstrings.
Jinger Gottschall 5:28
Yes, reminder hamstrings for separate muscles,
Jeff Hoobler 5:32
right. And then using the same example with that hip hinge, we can talk about the concentrate, or that so coming right back up,
Jinger Gottschall 5:41
right, and those same muscles that are shortening, what if I gave you a trivia question of what would be your favorite isometric exercise to talk about?
Jeff Hoobler 5:50
I think the favorite is a little dicey, but one of the most common. Applying wherever holding or holding static,
Jinger Gottschall 6:00
don't be fooled folks, Jeff loves himself a plank, we have a forearm plank, a wrist plank, both varieties, and you are simply just keeping your hips slightly below the shoulders and giving your three-dimensional core front side and back.
Jeff Hoobler 6:16
Yeah. And I think it's really important that you mentioned that three-dimensional again, and understanding that we want to move in multiple directions. Now we're talking about a plank, which is essentially static, but we're getting tension throughout the body distributed in different areas or different directions, so to speak.
Jinger Gottschall 6:35
Exactly. And that is, again, another one of your primary goals in developing these is that we make sure in every single full-body workout that we are targeting this three-dimensional shoulder to basically ankle, it's absolutely awesome. And super cool.
Jeff Hoobler 6:52
Yeah, we try to hide that in there a little bit. You know, it's, it comes with the territory and little spice
Jinger Gottschall 6:59
little spice in there. The next part that is important for us to educate the listeners about specific to bodyweight strength training is the actual application, the details, the nitty-gritty of when how long, how much, etc. So let's start with how many days a week, our goal for you would be two days a week. And if you're in an offseason, or you have some additional time, then pushing it to three would be fat.
Jeff Hoobler 7:28
So these workouts are pretty short, you know, 15 to 30 minutes, and you can get everything you need.
Jinger Gottschall 7:33
Yeah, exactly. No need to go anywhere. All you need is a little bit of space to move and your device to actually look at the workout. And when you do it is actually quite flexible. Also, what we care about is that you get it done. So don't worry, if you've to slide that workout in a lunch break right after dinner, it is actually feasible to move it around and do it at different times. The most important thing is to simply get it done. Now Jeff likes to use the word stack it started.
Jeff Hoobler 8:08
You know, it's a habit trick. And soon if you've got things that you already do during the day, and you want to add a new habit, it's really easy to just stack it right before you're doing your normal routine. So for instance, if you're me, I'm going to have coffee in the morning. And if I want to get a few breathing exercises done, I might do those as I'm making my coffee so I didn't have to go anywhere or do anything extra, it's just automatic in the day. You can do that with your workouts you can do your strength workout right in front of a cycling workout. Okay, so
Jinger Gottschall 8:46
what then are a few options if you are going to still be cycling for the majority of your actual planned exercise time, when would be a good time to do this bodyweight strength training.
Jeff Hoobler 8:58
To get the most bang for your buck. It's a really good idea to pair your strength days with neuromuscular days on the bike. So for instance, some cadence works whether it's high cadence or locations, okay, or some short Sprint, when you do this, you're going to maximize those neuromuscular adaptations. You know, you certainly don't want to do some big heavy map workout like nine hammers on a strength day, or you'll probably end up in a very dark place. bottom, bottom. Yeah, the other option is to follow up a strength workout with a recovery spin. Keep it short, keep it easy, just increase circulation and relieve any potential for tissue damage. It's great.
Jinger Gottschall 9:41
Love it. So two, excellent practical application to gestures of when you could actually incorporate these bodyweight strength routines. And I do want to just make sure that we're all clear that even though they're bodyweight, even though we've mentioned that these are short 15 to 30 minutes. They're a is too many of them. And if you get into the system app and you start doing these workouts and you're like, This dude is onto something, these are awesome. That doesn't mean you want to do more than one in a day. That doesn't mean that it would be a great idea to do to full body or a full body and I dynamic back to back days. So it does take a little bit of critical thinking and being creative about when you are going to incorporate them.
Jeff Hoobler 10:25
Well. Funny, you should mention that we have training plans. And we have strength training plans that are standalone plans, and we have plans that are associated with a cycling plan. So you can just drop those into your, your plan and follow along.
Jinger Gottschall 10:41
That's brilliant. All right, we said a lot in this session about bodyweight strength training. We talked about the what in terms of types of contractions components, we talked about the how, but I want to make sure that the audience understands the critical variables that you're speaking about, that are going to be influenced, and that you incorporate into each of these sessions.
Jeff Hoobler 11:08
You know, with bodyweight strength we don't have, we're just assuming you don't have external loads, you don't have a squat rack and you don't have dumbbells. So you can create overloads, simply by changing the stimulus. And with our bodyweight movements, these stimuli or these variables, rather, are essentially time under tension, the speed of contraction, the volume, or how many reps you do, and then the recovery between sets. And by manipulating those variables, we can create many different stimuli to create an overload. That's
Jinger Gottschall 11:40
awesome. Bottom line is, all you need is your own body weight in a bit of space, and you can get this done. What are the body parts that we would really want cyclists to focus on?
Jeff Hoobler 11:54
Yeah, so cyclists tend to want to focus on their legs because that's what they're using when they're riding. But my suggestion is to focus on your core and your upper back and your shoulders and then incorporate a little bit of lateral
Jinger Gottschall 12:09
movement, still talking about that posterior chain as a posterior
Jeff Hoobler 12:12
chain, you know, it's really important to be stable around the spine. That's your center of the movement. It's your bottom bracket, so to speak, and you've got to be solid there.
Jinger Gottschall 12:23
Love that cycling analogy. Another summary point, just find a time that you will make it work. What else,
Jeff Hoobler 12:31
keep it short, start with 15 minutes, you know, we just need to move the needle a little bit each time. We don't need to push it all the way to the end or go into the red. We're just trying to create some adaptations in areas that we don't frequent a lot.
Jinger Gottschall 12:46
Right, so don't overdo it. Have a little fun with it. Challenge yourself in some new ways.
Jeff Hoobler 12:52
Well, that's it for another episode, hope you are able to take away some useful information about strength training, and how to incorporate it in your cycling plan. Thanks for listening to the knowledge podcast by Wahoo