What’s special about training programme for road cycling?

The specificity of training for cyclist depends on what training programme it is compared with so in the answer I would like to focus on a short characteristic.

The training programme for road cycling is a programme focused on the development of efficiency and endurance (if we take into consideration psychical resistance). The endurance trained is to a larger extent threshold endurance (aerobic threshold) as this kind of work constitutes most of the time of the race. I mean this training has to improve this threshold aiming at the greatest strength at maintaining relatively low level of lactates in blood. Additionally, (but to a smaller extent) training programme has to focus on mixed and aerobic efficiency to increase lactate tolerance as from practical point of view there is no possibility of maintaining threshold tempo (rough climbs, escapes and stress cumulation of catecholamines which make it difficult to feel your own tempo). In road cycling like in most of endurance oriented sports t is very common but in comparison to running sports (at long distances) such periods have to be longer.

From the point of view of general motoric base the focus has to be on strengthening back muscles which in road cycling are very intensively exploited (mostly deep muscles of the back).

Supplementation focused on decreasing the valine, leucine, and isoleucine’s splitting off that is preventing catabolism and increase of buffer abilities of blood and the content of glycogen and phosphocreatine (to a smaller extent)

Exceptions (from experience – rather negative)

In road cycling the training loads are usually too strong and the cyclists training on not fully regenerated muscles – which also applies to other sports (utilising gauging protein kinase as well as lactates as the only indicators of training load does not always reveals regeneration, of CNS especially, at the moment one of our athletes who specialises in long distances we decreased in Direct Start Preparation by 50% and at the distance of 1500 m he improved his life record by 32 seconds). In the training cycle there is not enough focus on motoric base developed by other sports which make the organism more sensitive to focused stimuli later on (cycling training). In case of supplementation there is not enough diversity which is the same like in body building training.

Orma