Transcript excerpt from an interview with triathlete/coach Chris McCormack describing his preferred bike training: hill-based, over-gear strength efforts (3–4 repeats of ~12–20 minutes) performed in aero position at low cadence (~65–70 RPM) to develop muscular torque for the back-end of long triathlon bike legs and to improve subsequent running. He contrasts this with high-cadence spinning and cites athlete examples who gravitate to bigger gears during long races.
All right, how about the bike session? What's a favorite bike session?
I'm all for riding up hills. I think with triathlon where it's a strength specific sport and you've got to look at bike riding in triathlon on how it affects the next discipline, the run. And so very, very strength specific work I like to do on the bike. There's a lot of stuff you're going out with your friends doing and putting up some volume. But my most favorite set is always strength efforts up a hill. You know, it's a 12 minute climb I have in Sydney. I've got another one here in Los Angeles that I use grade in about 5% and I 5 to 7%. And I do over gear, work that over gear on it. Most athletes do some style of strength set on the bike very similar to this. I think as triathletes we do have a tendency to do too many. I keep it pretty simple. Three or four of them, 2012 minutes, it's 48 minutes. If you do four of them, it's 36 minutes. If you do three of them, you're looking at a cadence of around 70, 65-70 RPM. I always do it on the time trial bike, always do it in the aero position. And you're really trying to focus on muscular torque. When I say that, you're not really revving the engine. It's all about muscular torque, building strength. And that's why the gradient's important. You don't want it to be too steep, but you really want to feel that, you know, that quad work, that glute work, your hamstrings work in the back end of the pedal stroke, you know, pedaling nice circles. And you know, for triathlon in particular, especially for Those guys doing 70.3s and Ironmans, you know, we can get away with a nice pedalling technique for the first hour, high cadence. But all of us gravitate towards bigger gears as the races move on. Ironman in particular. And science shows that after two hours we definitely start looking for the bigger gears. We rely more on torque than cadence to put out the same power. Anyone who's using power will realize that. So a strength set is really important for that back end of a bike ride. And if you've got the strength and you lay that out in a good strength session strength bike set, it'll really correlate to the back end of your bike ride, which is where you lose most of your time in a triathlon. And in particular will set you up for a Great run. And that's the key. Most people are like, oh, I don't run well off the bike, I need to run more. We all know that running well off the bike comes from being strong enough on the bike to give you the run legs that will enable you to run well.
Interesting. You see a ton of coaches these days having athletes practice spinning up hills, going 90, 95, 100 rpm up the hills. I've even recommended sessions like that to athletes. So this is a more unique approach of literally almost like mashing up the hills as a strength building session for long climbs.
Yeah, well, I just think, you know, you look at anybody and I think, you know the old Tour de France videos with Lance Armstrong running that high cadence, everyone suddenly started spinning around for years and looking for using their engine, using their heart and lungs to, to put out power. And that works. And for short periods of time, you know, and Ironman and long triathlon events, over time we all gravitate towards you. Look at Sebastian Kienle. You even speak to Chris Lieto, who I spent a lot of time with in Kona this year on training camp, who's probably the best cyclist in triathlon. He's moving towards bigger gears. At the end of the bike ride. He found that you're just revving out too much to hold that high cadence. And you've got to have the muscular strength to put out that torque. And torque is key in triathlon and we used to get a bad name for years that triathletes mash big gears. But ultimately we gravitate towards that because we need to have that strength to set us up for the bike ride. And you know Brett Sutton, who's trained, you know, he trained Chrissie Wellington, he's, he's trained, you know, the Olympic champion. He is a big gear philosopher and, and there's method to his madness. You know, we used to laugh at him, but to some degree, with, you know, my own studies and my own looks at things, I, I see method to his madness. It's not as stupid as, as I used to think.
Yeah, it makes sense as you explain it. It's just something you don't see recommended that much.
