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Improve Your Snap
Good riders can accelerate quickly. We're not talking about race-winning sprints but rather the ability to close small gaps fast.
Ever find yourself off the back after the group rounds a turn or leaves a stop sign? A 15-foot (5-m) gap opens and it takes an inordinate amount of time and effort to close it.
Snap is what we call the ability to quickly shoot across small gaps to return to the shelter of the pack. Doing it well -- before little gaps become gulfs -- is crucial when riding with a group.
Snap is important on solo rides too. It's what you need to zip past threatening dogs or get through an intersection when the light suddenly turns yellow.
It's easy to improve your snap using a simple drill. Try this during any ride after you've warmed up:
---Shift to a relatively big gear (say, 53x15-teeth) and accelerate hard for 10 seconds. Don't stand, just stay in the saddle. The effort should feel about 90% of maximum. Use good form, pushing the pedals evenly and firmly. Keep your upper body steady. Resist rocking from side to side in an attempt to generate more power because this mainly wastes energy.
---Shift back to an easier gear and resume your normal cruising speed. After about 5 minutes do another hard acceleration, this time out of the saddle. Repeat every 5 minutes, alternating between sitting and standing for a total of 5-8 reps.
Do this little workout once or twice each week for a month. After that, you'll be snapping up gaps with ease.
Tip! These brief accelerations also are great for waking up your legs in the middle of long rides. They'll actually help you feel fresher.
Kirby's tip: Do this every effing day when you're commuting. Seriously, I accelerate to make lights, to beat cars across a few lanes of traffic (when I start before them, of course) and after most stop lights. I'm pretty sure this helps me out when I'm on an actual road ride. If you're a bike commuter, give it a shot and see if it helps your overall fitness! Note to me... keep it up for 10 seconds. I'm guessing I'm doing more like 5.---Shift to a relatively big gear (say, 53x15-teeth) and accelerate hard for 10 seconds. Don't stand, just stay in the saddle. The effort should feel about 90% of maximum. Use good form, pushing the pedals evenly and firmly. Keep your upper body steady. Resist rocking from side to side in an attempt to generate more power because this mainly wastes energy.
---Shift back to an easier gear and resume your normal cruising speed. After about 5 minutes do another hard acceleration, this time out of the saddle. Repeat every 5 minutes, alternating between sitting and standing for a total of 5-8 reps.
Do this little workout once or twice each week for a month. After that, you'll be snapping up gaps with ease.
Tip! These brief accelerations also are great for waking up your legs in the middle of long rides. They'll actually help you feel fresher.
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When we discuss heart rate training, as in last week's newsletter, we often warn against using the ubiquitous formula that says to find maximum HR by subtracting your age in years from 220.
Why? Because if it's right for you, it's just dumb luck.
Let's say you're 45. Using this formula, your max HR would be 175. But it could actually be anywhere from 164 to 186 (or even outside this broad range) because the formula has a standard deviation of 11.
So if you calculate training zones using the max HR produced by this formula, you'll very likely be training at intensities too low or too high.
Which begs the question: How'd this flawed formula come to be?
The interesting answer comes from Gabe Mirkin, M.D., a doc we respect because he's a lifelong athlete who at 74 still rides 200 miles (322 km) a week. At his website, http://www.drmirkin.com, he specializes in making sense of new medical research that impacts health and athletic performance.
Dr. Mirkin says that "although this 220-minus-age formula is the golden standard used today, it is not based on science." Here's why:
"In 1970, a good friend, Sam Fox, was the director of the U.S. Public Health Service program to prevent heart disease. He is one of the most respected heart specialists in the world.
"He and a young researcher were flying to a meeting. They put together several studies comparing maximum heart rate and age.
"Sam Fox took out a pencil and plotted a graph of age verses maximum heart rate and said it looks like maximum heart rate is equal to 220 minus a person's age.
"A pencil mark has been the accepted formula for nearly 40 years. It has been taught in physical education and heart function courses . . . but the whole concept of maximum heart rate and this formula is ridiculous."
Dr. Mirkin continues, explaining that for cyclists, "Your legs drive your heart. Your heart does not drive your legs. Maximum heart rate depends on the strength of your legs, not the strength of your heart.
"When you contract your leg muscles, they squeeze against the blood vessels near them to pump blood from your leg veins toward your heart. When your leg muscles relax, your leg veins fill with blood. So your leg muscles pump increased amounts of blood toward your heart.
"This increased blood fills the heart and causes your heart to beat faster and with more force. This is called the Bainbridge Reflex that doctors are taught in their first year of medical school. The stronger your legs are, the more blood they can pump, which causes your heart to beat faster."
In Dr. Mirkin's view, you can forget heart rate for training purposes. His approach is much like the one we've been recommending for years at RBR.
Do the following, he says, if you're in good health and have no heart problems:
"Three times a week, never on consecutive days, either race or push the pace so that you are at your anaerobic threshold and then use bursts to exceed it to become short of breath. On the other four days, take it easy and do not put pressure on your muscles."
His "anaerobic threshold" is what RBR calls "lactate threshold." It's easy to find (although a bit painful). It's the point where a slight amount of additional effort turns steady deep breathing into shallow panting.
Whatever heart rate this occurs at is the heart rate that really matters when you are seeking serious improvement. No formula needed.
Kirby's comment: I've heard that the 200-Age for Max HR isn't totally accurate, but I didn't know that it came from a back-of-the-napkin kind of calculation. Crazy! The way that it was taught in gym class, you'd think that your heart would EXPLODE if you went over that Max HR. I think the concept that I highlighted in yellow holds some good ideas. Go hard, hard to the point of pain on a regular basis. But give yourself time to recover. Of course, what about a bike ride or run or gym workout that involved a limited (like say, ONE really tough hill or that very last set) amount of anaerobic threshold + excess? Could you do that again the next day? I'm guessing that it's the sustained efforts that require a day off, where short bursts are okay repeated. Of course, the fitness benefits are probably higher with the longer durations at those lactate/anaerobic/pain+ thresholds.
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