I was asked this question by a fellow cyclist the other day and after some thought i responded NO. Too which he was amazed

Let me explain…

Fixed gear bikes have very little in common with road bikes, yes they have 2 wheels, bars saddle etc, but when it comes to propelling them forward and developing pedal stroke the fixie is no help to the roadie.

1. You might think that as the pedals move around nice and fast in perfect circles this would translate into better circles when you get on the road bike. wrong, it actually makes your legs lazy. the fixie drags your feet around. On the road bike you are forced to pull up through the back of the stroke and pull over the top before you push down at the front. The fixie does all the hard work for you

2. The muscles you need to rip through the high cadence on the road bike are different ones that are used in the same cadence on the fixie. so you might feel like your building this amazing ability to ride in cadence brackets up around the 150 mark. but try that same technique on the road bike and you will find out why you have wasted valuable hours

the skills needed for a road bike and a fixie are different and very specific, especially when it comes to the high cadence work. Yes riders who are good on the track can bring those skills to road cycling and do well, we have seen many a rider do this in history, but for the average you and me looking to gain that little bit more, we shouldn’t waste our time

Unless your goal is to be better on the track or better at looking cool down at the expensive coffee shop with your crumpler bag, mac book pro, soy latte while wearing tight jeans and some t shirt with random words on it, don’t waste your valuable training hours on a fixie.

its simple science that the stronger your legs are, the more power they will be able to create. The more power you can create the faster you will be able to sprint.

A pro cyclist will generate about 23 watts per kg for a 5 second sprint. So if he weighs 70kg’s then that will be 1610 watts. Anyone who has a power meter and trains specifically with it will know that 1600 watts is ALOT of power. Most club or domestic riders will be making about 1200 watts in a sprint (for the same 70kg rider)

So how do we go about building our leg strength so that we can create more power?

Some cyclists choose a gym plan that uses specific weight training in order to build up their legs, but if you dont want to spend the extra money on a gym contract we can do a few training plans using our bike.

• Low Cadence crunching: A popular method to build power is to do intervals at low cadence & high resistance. This is often best achieved out at your local crit track. You select your biggest gear and grind away. I suggest doing 5 minutes on and then 10 minutes rest and 4 sets. The high resistance builds the muscle fibers to create stronger ones.
• Climbing: Climbing creates a similar cycling environment as the cadence crunching. you inevitably have to pedal at low cadence in order to make it up a hill. With this method i suggest you find a decent grade that averages about 8% and you need to be able to do 5 minutes of climbing. Tackle it sitting down, resist the urge to stand, this “rests” your legs. Again we would look at doing 4 sets of teh hill with a 10 minute rest
• Power Starts: This helps build explosive off the mark power. These are done by slowing your pace down and then changing up a few gears. your cadence should be at about the 55-60 mark. now you need to jump out the saddle and pedal as hard as you can for as long as you can. don’t chnage gears stay in the same gear. These can be done more frequently, so look at doing 10 of these with 3 minutes rest between each one
• One Leg: Often these are best done on the indoor trainer. You should select a gear that is 2 gears harder than comfortable cruising. Un-clip a leg and continue to maintain speed and cadence. do each leg for 1 minute. then back to 2 legs and rest for 3 minutes. repeat 5 times.

hopefully these 4 training tips will build up your legs and help you win those sprints. If you own a power meter you will quickly see if your getting any better

I have sort of delved into this in the topic “getting the most out of your power meter” but i will go into a bit more detail here

Those of us training with a power meter and using the WKO+ software would be well aware of the default graph that shows you your 5 second, 1 minute, 5 minute and 20 minute peak power.

As you improve you like to see these numbers grow and when you click the power profile button its good to see the bars slowly improving and your level moving up. Nothing worse than being in that “untrained” zone

This topic aims to help you achieve your best possible numbers in each of these categories

5 Second

5 second power is all out sprint strength. Technique and power will help get you the numbers you want. Obviously you will be doing these out the saddle in the drops. If you have massive legs you will excel here. If you have a track background you will also do well. Its all about fast twitch muscle fibers doing their stuff. You will want to sprint for at least 20 seconds. I tend to sprint until i cant anymore. This can range from about 15 to 40 seconds depending on my form and fitness and how many miles i already have in my legs. WKO+ will work out your best 5 seconds from the entire ride, so don’t worry about trying to make special laps on your CPU.

1 Minute

For ages i used to try and do these seated. then one day i did the minute out the saddle and saw a huge leap in my numbers. So out the saddle seems to be the best way to do it. It will take a few attempts to get your best, start out easy and work up to an almost full sprint when you get to the 45 second mark. you need to have nothing left by the time 60 seconds hits. if you still have energy when you hit 1 minute then keep going. you can look at the data later and see how much earlier you can do your final push. if you find you are completely stuffed before the 1 minute mark then you need to start off slower. your 1 minute power should be about half of what your 10 second power is, roughly. so that helps give you an idea of where to start

5 Minute

These are best done seated. You looking for about 60% of your 1 minute power, roughly. Again start off slow and work up to it. It might take a few attempts to get it right. Again you need to make sure that you have nothing left when you get to the 5 minute mark. If you have legs left then you never went hard enough. if you dropped off before the end then you started off too hard. I find the 5 minute power run quite difficult to do. It burns and you think you have a great run, but it turns out to be quite poor. If you are going to do a few tries in one session i suggest you rest for at least 10 minutes between attempts

Hope this topic helps you improve your power numbers

Generally all skeletal muscle fibers can be grouped into 2 types. Slow twitch, Fast twitch.

Slow Twitch

The first type of muscle that i am going to explain is slow twitch. Slow twitch can also be referred to as Type I. They have very strong aerobic ability. they contract very slowly and are great for long hard efforts. IE climbing up Ventoux. It has been said that cyclists that show great performance in time trials and up hills have a high percentage of slow twitch muscles fiber

Fast Twitch

Fast twitch, also known as type II, can also be broken down into 2 categories. Type IIa and Type IIb. Fast Twitch muscles fibers use anaerobic metabolism to create power, because of this they are much better at creating short sharp bursts of power but a side effect of this is that they fatigue and fade a lot quicker than type 1 muscles. Both slow twitch and fast twitch create the same amount of force for each contraction but fast twitch can react and continue reacting a lot faster than there slow twitch cousins. Hence the name Fast Twitch. Having a higher % of fast twitch muscles will help cyclists perform better in sprints where short sharp bursts of power are needed.

Fast Twitch Type IIa

Basically these are an intermediate muscle fiber between fast twitch and slow twitch. They can be used in either the aerobic or anaerobic state. so they are basically a combination of type 1 and type 2

Fast Twitch Type IIb

these are the true fast twitch muscles fibers, they work in the anaerobic state. They will produce the most amount of short sharp power. This muscle helps cyclists have that quick punchy sprint, or ease to jump out of the pack on an attack. They fire the fastest of all the muscle types but the down side of that is that they fatigue quickest

Type and Performance

We are all born with a certain % of each type of muscle fiber. This % determines if we are going to be good at some sports and not good at others. So basically it is our genetic make up that determines our success of the bike.

Interesting facts

Olympic Sprinters have 80% fast twitch muscle fiber
Marathon runners have 80% slow twitch muscle fiber

Developing different muscle fibers

This is a grey area, some sports studies have been done to work out if someone who possesses more fast twitch can slowly train their slow twitch fibers so that they become the predominant type. Results are inconclusive. so for now. You are either good in the hills or you have the punch required for winning sprints. Train accordingly

What am I?

If you use WKO software you can use the power profile to determine your predominant muscle type. For this you are going to need a decent amount of data or a very comprehensive and accurate power profile test where you gave it everything in each stage of the test.

using WKO you can click on power profile and it will show you bar charts of your peak power in each category.

All rounder – each of the peaks will meet to create a horizontal line
Sprinter – Downward sloping, The 5second power will be highest and the FT will be the lowest
Time Trialist – Upward sloping, the 5 second power will be lowest and the FT will be highest

So, sprinter will have more fast twitch fibers and the time trialist will have more slow twitch fiber.

if you don’t use WKO but know your peak power for the ranges of 5 second, 1 minute, 5 minute and FT then you can use the tables located here to work out your muscle type

Conclusion

I hope this has made this a little clearer for you all and sheds some light on what can be a confusing topic

In this article I will go through a few training options that will help you gain explosive power to win those sprints. This training will not only help your sprinting but any riding that requires shorts bursts of explosive speed such as punching up short hills or bridging a gap to the group in front.
The best way to sprint train is to sprint, might sound obvious. You need to recreate a race situation as closely as possible and then do a few intervals. There is no point riding around your crit track at 20kmph and then jumping up and sprinting. That’s not how it happens in a race. You will need to click through so many gears and won’t get the legs working like they would in a race.

Sprint Intervals.
After a suitable warm up of about 15 to 20 minutes raise your speed up to 35 to 40 kmph. The closer to 40 you can get the better. Get there comfortably don’t hurt yourself making it to this speed. When you get to 40 embrace the sprint position (hands in the drops wrists as straight as possible, head up, elbows bent, position is very important) and crank the pedals as hard as you can. Ensuring that you spin out each gear before you shift. Your sprint should last more than 10 seconds but no more than 20. If we going to 15 – 20 reps we need to make sure we don’t burn out too early. Between each rep we need about 3 minutes of recovery, this should be ridden in power zone 1 (active recovery) also have your cadence slightly higher than normal. This will help get rod of the lactate that builds up in each rep. Once you have recovered get into the next rep. If you have a power meter we can do the perfect amount of reps without over training, when you see the average power of your current sprint drop by about 15% from your 3rd sprint then it’s time to stop. Carrying on after this will just be a waste of time.

The recovery period between reps is very important. You need to give the body time to build up the huge energy stores required to sprint. If you find the 3 minutes I mentioned above is not enough then give yourself some more time

Doing the intervals alone will help your ability, but if you want more sprint training then work it into your other workouts.
Example: in a race situation you will ride around for about 50km and then have to sprint at the finish. So let’s train like this. After you have done your normal days training work a sprint into the finish. This helps with your legs ability to ride for hours and then have to generate 1000+ watts. You can also sprint up hills. Find a section that is about 150 to 250 metres long and has an average grade between 5 and 9% and then sprint that section out the saddle in the drops. Once you summit, turn around and head back down. Don’t do another rep until you heart rate recovers to about 120BPM and again stop doing reps when your average power drops by 15%. The added resistance of having to go up hill will help your sprinting ability.

Another sprint workout we can do is one that has you in the saddle for 15 pedal reps then out the saddle for 15 reps. and we do 4 of these in each rep. What does this do you ask? Well in the final few kilometres of a road race or last lap of a crit you always have attacks. This up and down in the saddle out the saddle tries to replicate what you would need to do to mark each break. It also helps you get a smooth transition from in the saddle to out the saddle.

If you have WKO+ software and a power meter you will easily be able to see if your sprinting is getting better and just how long you can hold any given power

Well I hope this sprinting training article helps. Next time I will go into sprinting tactics and go through a few tricks you can try and employ that will give you the advantage over your opponents