Good start to the winter ?

The combination of yesterdays session and tonights left me feeling quite good (new 5 sec max)and very hopefull for next years results with the only big issue being time. My commute to the station has changed a little from the sprint sessions to one of a little more moderation but higher gears for the hills. The moderation is a partial attempt to prevent myself from catching a cold (chilled lungs in a sweaty train is not good) and to get in some strength training instead. The direction to the station is more downhill than up and that provides 2 climbs to navigate, although the first is outside the door and not too good to start off on. Comming home is a lot better as I put it into top and then wind up the hill on return, which provides something like a 20 second all out blast on the legs at 60-70rpm.

The other strategy, which I have been thinking about is the development of fast twitch vs slow twitch and the "genetic" bias which seems to exist and the theories about the difficulties in trying to get fast twich fibers to develop. My thought is around a different in training style for strength which does not involve slow strenght actions.

Leg presses are good for strength but they would only develop slow twitch fibers because the time for the leg extension, when compared to a pedal revolution is much, much slower. The other option is to train on the bike, but, instead of changing up a few gears and slowing to 60rpm why not effectively do an all out 10-20 second effort at 100-120rpm ? After all, if your training for sprinting then why not effectively sprint train ? That said the efforts should stop well before your HR gets up too far as all your after doing is getting fast high power cadence in.

This is the combination that I'm going to apply this winter for my strength build combining some high spin high power with the slow hill commutes and see how this works out.