PURE PERFORMANCE | BIKE
B U I L D YO U R
STR ENGTH
IN THE HILLS
BY MICHELLE HEMLEY
B
uilding your cycling strength for
training and racing in the hills is one
of the most beneficial things you can
do to improve your cycling.
It doesn’t matter if your goal race is flat or
hilly, a time trial or a road race, or you simply
want to tackle mountain passes and hill
climbs to explore new scenery with friends;
building adequate strength endurance
and cycling efficiency to hit the inclines will
increase both your performance
and enjoyment.
So what needs to happen for you to
become a mountain goat and climb the hills
with ease?
1) Develop Strength Endurance, Cycling
Efficiency & Aerobic Capacity
Riding well in the hills isn’t just about
‘getting strong’ but developing these three
key elements of your cycling fitness:
Strength Endurance
It's all about being able to push the
pedals against resistance for an extended
period of time. This is something that can
bedeveloped using seated hill climbs with a
higher resistance/wattage and low cadence.
Cycling Efficiency
If you take a look at Tour de France winner
Chris Froome, he doesn’t ‘grind’ slowly up
the mountains, he pedals at a high cadence
with amazing efficiency up the slopes of
the Alps. Why? By relying more on a faster
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P H OTO G R A P H Y BY K I M ST U B BS
cadence, he taps into his massive aerobic
capacity (see below) rather than over-taxing
his working muscles and joints. This allows
him to be able to ride mountains with less
fatigue for longer periods of time, day after
day. This is something you can develop with
efforts aimed at faster cadences and lower
resistance/wattage.
Aerobic Capacity
The ability of the heart and lungs to keep
going when you are completing submaximal exercise. This can be developed
through your longer easy-moderate rides.
Including a variety of sessions each week
as part of your training program, targeting
all of the above components will allow you
to develop into a more complete hill rider.
A sample week of cycling training
focussed on developing hill climbing could
look similar to this:
• Tuesday: Seated strength endurance (SE)
hill repeats 5-20 minutes in length focussed
on a high resistance/low cadence.
Session Target = Strength Endurance
• Thursday: Fast spin efforts on the wind
trainer to improve efficiency.
Session Target = Cycling Efficiency
• Weekend Long Ride: 2-3 hours easy to
moderate effort over an undulating course.
Session Target = Aerobic Capacity
2) Map Out a Long-Term Plan
First and foremost, improving in the hills,
like anything involved with triathlon,
is cumulative and it takes time and
consistency to develop. Your rate of
improvement can be greatly heightened
by following a plan 12-16 weeks in length
to allow your body adequate time to adapt
and respond to the training.
It’s important to remember to start slowly
and take the time to build and progress
your sessions week by week. Don’t start with
a 10km climb at a low RPM, as starting out
with too much too soon doesn’t allow your
body to adapt to the training properly and
you could risk overuse injury.
A sample progression over 12 weeks for
your SE style hill repeats (main set only,
include warm up and cool down) may look
similar to this:
• Week 1-2: 4-5 times (5-minute seated SE
hill repeats)
• Weeks 3-4: 4 times (8-minute seated SE
hill repeats)
• Week 5-6: 3 times (12-minute seated SE
hill repeats)
• Weeks 7-8: 3 times (12-minute seated SE
hill repeats)
• Week 9-10: 3-4 times (15-minute seated
SE hill repeats)
• Week 11: 2-3 times (20-minute seated SE
hill repeats)
• Week 12: 40-60-minute seated SE hill
climb