training SS

I have been buying the cycling weekly health and fitness. I find an excellent mag with tips about (mainly dark side) clothing, diet, etc…

I am trying to follow their regular cyclist training program (12 weeks) however I am a SS rider and find it almost impossible to stay in the HR zones scheduled for each ride. For example how on earth do you do an ‘easy’ ride when you are surrounded by hills and only have one gear?

I want to follow some sort of training regime because I find it helps be motivated to ride but how do you do that on a SS?

What do other SS riders do?

Cant use the SS on the road, find it too restricting. Cant get as fast as I’d like on flats and downs, struggle on some ups. I save it for the offroad and take the full sus out in road form instead for training 🙂

thanks coffeking but I am a dedicated SSer…I could get another bike – a geared road bike but I have 4 already!

Training?

If you need to do intervals, ride an undulating route. If you need to take it easy, ride a flat route.

use one of the 4 other bikes?

I thought SS would make me fitter but it doesnt at all

On a flat road you dont end up pushing yourself at all, you jsut cycle along at a slow pace with your legs spinning wildly, hardly improves your fitness.

Then when you come to a hill you have to get off and push cos its too steep to physically to steep to pedal up (they are where I live anyway)

I jsut went back to gears because it means you can actually ride your bike up the hills rather than push

Stick the SS on a turbo trainer for training rides. At least then you can prescribe the pace and resistance

I’m sure the HR based training plans will assume you have some way of modulating your effort (by changing gears). On the SS, you don’t have that facility (other than getting off and walking!), so I’d guess you’re stuffed in that respect. Bit more careful route planning? Geared bike? Turbo?

How about some sort of system of weights that get added or removed to you by a helper as you go along?

Maybe not! 🙂

davidtaylforth – where do you live that the hills are too steep to SS!? If they’re that steep couldn’t you just change your SS ratios?

SS I think makes you ‘stronger’ but not nessarily fitter. Gears gives you the facility to ‘wimp’ out and change down when the going gets tough; with SS you have nowhere to go.

I have tried changing routes and swapping between a road SS and a cyclo cross SS with a lower gear.

I just wondered how those dedicated SS riders manage to do their training?

davidtaylforth – I think you’ve missed the point entirely. As aw says, SS means your legs get stronger as you have to climb (assuming you’re not easily broken and dont just get off) and if you’re riding along the flat spinning you’re using fitness and not strength. Takes the same amount (give or take) of energy to get from one place to another, all you’re doing with gears is changing the manner in which you apply the torque your legs can produce. I suppose it all depends what you mean by “fitter” in the end, SS takes you across a range of high speed spinning to low down grinding – much the sort of training you see the pros do.

On a flat road you dont end up pushing yourself at all, you jsut cycle along at a slow pace with your legs spinning wildly, hardly improves your fitness.

Doing that will improve your ability to spin along at a high cadence. A very useful training technique.

Then when you come to a hill you have to get off and push cos its too steep to physically to steep to pedal up (they are where I live anyway)

Unless you MTFU, of course. There’s only one hill that I’ve been consistently unable to pedal up, and the last few times I’ve ridden it I’ve been on the equivalent of 32:15; I’m sure I could clear it on 32:17 on my other bike. If you don’t get off and push, you should get a little further up the hill each time you ride it – that’s you getting fitter/stronger that is.

I live in the Lake District and some of the hills are pretty steep, a bit too steep for 32:16.

As for the spinning thing, I can either sit and spin easily on my SS and it feels like I’ve barely done anything, but with gears I can change into the highest one and really push on, even on the flats. Im usually knackered by the end of a ride if i do this.

What do you think?

I think on reflection the SS way of life or thinking is against organised or HRM interval training. Generally the more cycling you can do the fitter you get however a training plan does keep to the straight and narrow 🙂

I can alternate between different bike with different ratios and also different terrain to stimulate shorter and longer or easier and harder rides.

As a previous poster said strength is different to fitness and SS makes you ‘stronger’ but not necessarily fitter than geared bikes.

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