I have read a couple articles about how some time crunched athletes will go out and basically mash big gears for their bike ride to build strength. Has anyone had any experience with doing this and positive results?
According to what i’ve read by Dr Skiba, it isn’t an effective way to train. Now big gear sprints with 80+ rpm maybe a different story.
I relish gear mashers!
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19675486
http://home.trainingpeaks.com/blog/article/quadrant-analysis
http://www.aboc.com.au/tips-and-hints/why-we-dont-use-strength-endurance-anymore
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I have read a couple articles about how some time crunched athletes will go out and basically mash big gears for their bike ride to build strength. Has anyone had any experience with doing this and positive results?
I think expert opinion is that you should train at whatever cadence feels right for the power and terrain and that strength is not important but power output is.
However in 2006 I trained almost exclusively on fixed and I live in a hilly area so I spent more time muscling up gradients at low rpm than I did on the flat or downhill. I did not change my training volume or intensity from previous years but I had my best season ever the following year. It may not have been the hard low rpm efforts though, it could be that the fixed gear did not allow any freewheeling or easy riding. In my area fixed means you are almost in the right hear so invariably working harder because you are in the wrong gear.
I m not short on time for training. But I do do gear mashing once a week, as I live in northern Germany where we have no hills, or no incline to speak of anywhere. Example ride was on Tuesday, simply 60min easy warmup with wind behind, and then 30km of riding into brutal headwind and hitting big gears. Perfect for replacement hill training! Legs felt it the next day in a 100km Endurance Ride. 