Beachwood bike trainer session

NJ Jess

Active Member
Well, I attended my first trainer session at Beachwood Bikes! It was a great sweat for an hour. Robin had some great tempo music and nice base mile technique drills. It's so much easier training with other riders. Thanks Ed, for all the power tap info. Kerry,...yes, we can ride 2500 miles in a year. Let's go for it! For anyone interested,..go to the Beachwood bikes web site to see the ever changing schedule.
 

pixychick

JORBA: Ringwood
JORBA.ORG
Go girls!! Good to see you two training away. I know it just got cold, but spring is not that far away. By mid February we should noticably see longer daylight. Yipee!

2500 miles a year? no problem! Just don't try to do them all on the trainer. If you do, we may have to send in a team to rescue you before you go insane.:D :D :D

Ellen
 

heythorp

New Member
Can you elaborate on those drill techniques?

Well it is important to hold the drill l at a 90 degree angle to what ever you are drilling into. This is important so the bit does not break off. It will also help so the screw goes straight in.

Some drills have level bubbles on the back side. This should help a lot. You may want to look into getting one if you dont have one already

hoped that helped.
 

Shaggz

A strong 7
jess - ignore this nonsense, i am trying to get my base miles in and was interested in the technique drills you were doing. i have been working on the single legged spinning
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
One legged spinning would be more working on your form than base.

Base miles are just long, slow, slogging miles in the saddle. That whole thread about the saddle fit, well it won't get any better doing base miles.

YAY FEMALE FORUM! I'm really sorry to be sullying your forum with non-female content. Really I am.
 

pixychick

JORBA: Ringwood
JORBA.ORG
Yeh sure you are:hmmm: You two are a piece of work!. My only fear is that when I meet you on the trail, you may not be this fun.

BTW, it;s not leveling you need to worry about with the drill. It's understanding the rockwell hardness of the materials involved.
 

Shaggz

A strong 7
that would be the mohs hardness scale, curly.

BTW (taken form a web page, not wuthored by me)

"Technique Drills

A study was done on riders in the Tour de France several years ago, and its conclusions were surprising. While the riders actually lost power and muscle mass during the three weeks, they were faster at the end of the race as they became more efficient on the bike.

A couple of good and popular drills are listed below.

Spin-ups. Most people have a cadence sweet spot and when they try to spin a little more quickly; their mechanics often fall apart as the pedals turn faster. One simple drill to improve your pedal stroke is to find a gentle downhill and start pedalling at the top at your comfortable cadence. As the bike speeds up, try to shift as little as possible and instead keep up with the speed of the bike by spinning faster. You’ll find that you start to bounce on the saddle as you pedal faster than you are used to. Do this once a week in the early riding season with four-six repeats per workout and you should begin to see a smoother spin and you’ll be able to postpone the bounce until much higher rpms.

One-legged pedalling. Most people have dead spots in their pedal stroke where one leg is a passenger being carried by the other. One way to start to learn how to use both legs through as much of the stroke as possible is to spend some time pedalling with one leg at a time. This is easiest to do on an indoor trainer, but you can also do it on a flat smooth road. You’ll quickly feel the dead parts of your stroke and learn to apply power all the way around. Again, there is no need to do this more than once a week, but you’ll certainly see results quickly."
 
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NJ Jess

Active Member
Technique and drill stuff

Can you elaborate on those drill techniques?

Hey Shaggz, The trainer class was great. The drills were, from what I can remember; one-leg drills, climbing a hard gear for 2 minutes followed by a light gear with lots of leg speed. Cycling your average cadence then raising it a harder gear every 20 seconds for a total of 2 minutes. Climbing a hill in a hard gear-standing then sitting in the saddle without dropping your cadence.

She continued to remind us of a "full-circle" spin, slightly arch your back, relax your head, shoulder, and back. Weight is in the legs. Keep your upper half still and relaxed, legs pump the pedals and do the work.

okay, it's off to bed. Oh, I believe Marty's Reliable had a trainer workout posted on their website,...or maybe it was CycleCraft,..so many bike shops.
 

heythorp

New Member
funny that you mentioned pedals.

I road frogs on my road bike for ove 3000 miles, but after a while i decided to get some road pedals. I have over 4000 miles now with road pedals. But now that winter is here I put frogs back on my SS langster so i can use those great winter shoes we all bought.

When i get off the bike after 2 hours i have a damn hot spot on my right foot ( i know not tingleing but just a thought here) It never happened to be before and it doesnt happen on the mt. bike (still use frogs on the mt. bike, love the pedal)


anyways the long winded point was that i wonder , although very unlikely that one hour sessions on the trainer, a pedal choice would do that.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Yeh sure you are:hmmm: You two are a piece of work!. My only fear is that when I meet you on the trail, you may not be this fun.

Oh surely I won't be. I'm a jerk in real life. Hide your valuables.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Technique Drills

A study was done on riders in the Tour de France several years ago, and its conclusions were surprising. While the riders actually lost power and muscle mass during the three weeks, they were faster at the end of the race as they became more efficient on the bike.

A couple of good and popular drills are listed below.

Spin-ups. Most people have a cadence sweet spot and when they try to spin a little more quickly; their mechanics often fall apart as the pedals turn faster. One simple drill to improve your pedal stroke is to find a gentle downhill and start pedalling at the top at your comfortable cadence. As the bike speeds up, try to shift as little as possible and instead keep up with the speed of the bike by spinning faster. You’ll find that you start to bounce on the saddle as you pedal faster than you are used to. Do this once a week in the early riding season with four-six repeats per workout and you should begin to see a smoother spin and you’ll be able to postpone the bounce until much higher rpms.

One-legged pedalling. Most people have dead spots in their pedal stroke where one leg is a passenger being carried by the other. One way to start to learn how to use both legs through as much of the stroke as possible is to spend some time pedalling with one leg at a time. This is easiest to do on an indoor trainer, but you can also do it on a flat smooth road. You’ll quickly feel the dead parts of your stroke and learn to apply power all the way around. Again, there is no need to do this more than once a week, but you’ll certainly see results quickly.

You've taken 2 independent pieces of information and put them in the same post. It's like following the TDF factoid with recipes for pancakes. I see nothing in the TDF factoid that warrants one-legged spinning nor spin-ups.

Sorry so critical of that post but I see no study, no correlation, nothing to back it up.
 

Shaggz

A strong 7
You've taken 2 independent pieces of information and put them in the same post. It's like following the TDF factoid with recipes for pancakes. I see nothing in the TDF factoid that warrants one-legged spinning nor spin-ups.

Sorry so critical of that post but I see no study, no correlation, nothing to back it up.

No need to be sorry - I was getting nothing but non-sense answers from everyone but the person I posed the question to :p (thanks, Jess). It came off a page that I found on the web - not my research, not my words. I am a n00b with this whole training thng and am reaching out to others more experienced and knowledgeable for info and guidance :confused:.
 
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Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
No need to be sorry - I was getting nothing but sh!thead answers from everyone but the person I posed the question to. It came off a page that I found on the web - not my research, not my words. I am a n00b with this whole training thng and am reaching out to others more experienced and knowledgeable for info and guidance.

Hey I answered seriously! Plus you already know my opinion on one-legged spinning. So here's a quite from Ric Stern:

I don't believe that there's any evidence that one-legged training is beneficial (unless you only have one leg) and pedaling 'smoothly' isn't borne out by research. Coyle et al., 1991, found that when comparing two groups of well trained cyclists the elite group of cyclists produced more power by stomping down on the cranks and pulling up less, whereas the national level group of cyclists pulled up more and generated less power on the down stroke.

In practice, if you want to improve your climbing ability, then the major component of this is to increase your fitness (i.e., VO2max, lactate threshold, and TT power). This will allow you to sustain more power.

I know a lot of people do it. But there's no evidence it works. Like I've said with a lot of things, if it makes you feel better then do it. But if you're unsure then turn to science and studies, which support only riding your bike as much as you can.
 

Shaggz

A strong 7
for *me* the one legged spinning was helpful because my pedal stroke was so irregular and sloppy. I have never ridden a road bike and quite frankly, the only sustained spinning i have done for as long as i have been biking (if that's what you call it), was this fall riding from Brad's house to MD. That in combination with using the trainer, has helped tremendously. I probably will be cutting it out of the program now that I am more comfortable with my pedal stroke.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
for *me* the one legged spinning was helpful because...

That's all you need, no "because" required IMO. If it works for you it works for you. I have the same opinion of stretching. If it makes you feel good, then it makes you feel good. Nothign wrong with that.
 
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