j_young_80
07-05-2010, 11:31 AM
Q: Would making my bike heavier for training help my average speed and power? I'm thinking about buying cheap, heavy tires and loading my hydration pack with weights for training rides. -- Tim T.
Coach Fred Matheny Replies: Adding weight for training purposes is an old idea. I recall when the U.S. Road Team used lead-filled water bottles for hill workouts. Around the same time, 25 years ago, there was a heavy product designed to attach under a bike's bottom bracket.
However, there's no good reason to add weight.
You need to generate a certain number of watts to get up a hill no matter what the bike weighs. Take some weight off and you still produce the same number of watts. You just go a little faster.
Improvement comes from training at your optimum intensity, not from weighting down your bike.
Ed and I both ride heavy bikes in winter. They have fenders, racks and large bags for toting tools, extra tubes, rainwear and warm clothes. Add a couple of full bottles and Ed's bike, for example, weighs 34 pounds (15.5 kg).
Switching to light bikes in the spring sure makes us feel faster. And we actually are, because for a given amount of power, we can ride uphill and accelerate faster when we're not pushing as much weight.
The bottom line, though, is that we're still riding at the same intensity when we go hard, regardless of the bike we're on.
As for leg strength, it's tempting to think that riding a heavy bike would develop muscles like weight training. But in order to keep the same climbing cadence and power output with a heavier bike, you need to decrease the gearing.
Conversely, with a light bike you can, in effect, "push more weight" by using a higher gear. So bike weight isn't important except in terms of how fast you go up a hill for a given power output.
One way riding your light bike is helpful -- you'll get accustomed to the way it handles, which is likely to be significantly different from the ponderous road manners of a heavier steed.
Perhaps some of our physicist readers will have a different take on this, but to my knowledge there's no benefit to adding weight.
Coach Fred Matheny Replies: Adding weight for training purposes is an old idea. I recall when the U.S. Road Team used lead-filled water bottles for hill workouts. Around the same time, 25 years ago, there was a heavy product designed to attach under a bike's bottom bracket.
However, there's no good reason to add weight.
You need to generate a certain number of watts to get up a hill no matter what the bike weighs. Take some weight off and you still produce the same number of watts. You just go a little faster.
Improvement comes from training at your optimum intensity, not from weighting down your bike.
Ed and I both ride heavy bikes in winter. They have fenders, racks and large bags for toting tools, extra tubes, rainwear and warm clothes. Add a couple of full bottles and Ed's bike, for example, weighs 34 pounds (15.5 kg).
Switching to light bikes in the spring sure makes us feel faster. And we actually are, because for a given amount of power, we can ride uphill and accelerate faster when we're not pushing as much weight.
The bottom line, though, is that we're still riding at the same intensity when we go hard, regardless of the bike we're on.
As for leg strength, it's tempting to think that riding a heavy bike would develop muscles like weight training. But in order to keep the same climbing cadence and power output with a heavier bike, you need to decrease the gearing.
Conversely, with a light bike you can, in effect, "push more weight" by using a higher gear. So bike weight isn't important except in terms of how fast you go up a hill for a given power output.
One way riding your light bike is helpful -- you'll get accustomed to the way it handles, which is likely to be significantly different from the ponderous road manners of a heavier steed.
Perhaps some of our physicist readers will have a different take on this, but to my knowledge there's no benefit to adding weight.