Yes, you read that right!
When you understand todays 3 parts of how the Aerobic Energy System are built, you can & MUST use STRENGTH TRAINING, along with in-sport training, to MASSIVELY increase your Wattage; and for a fraction of the amount of time it takes you in your sport.
Yet NOBODY talks about this, perhaps because of the thought that in order to have a “bigger engine” that we have to put in long, longer, and really longer hours on the pavement, in the pool, and on the road. But this isn’t totally true, and in fact leaves us only challenging 2 of the 3 categories in which we need to address in order to increase our aerobic capacity. Don’t get me wrong, you DO need long rides, runs, and swims, but when and HOW you execute them, as well as your ability to Recover & Adapt to them, play key roles.
In todays episode we discuss the 3 categories of Aerobic System Development that must be addressed in order to not only boost your Aerobic Capacity, but also your Aerobic Power- an incredibly frequently neglected part of the energy system, which leaves so much potential on the table for endurance athletes.
We also discuss how using Tempo as a part of your Strength Training program can allow you to MASSIVELY increase your watts per KG out on the bike, and on the road.
Yes, Strength Training for Cyclists & Strength Training for Triathletes need to be done differently, and this is one of the many ways in which we need to change the thinking!
Don’t forget to Like & Share this episode, and to Subscribe for more content and information, from the World-Leading Strength Coach for Cyclists & Triathletes!
Strength Training for Triathlon Success Course (Training Peaks University)
https://trainingpeaks-university.thinkific.com/courses/strength-training-for-triathlon-success
4 Pillars of Athletic Development (Exercise Science: How Your Fitness Progresses Over Time)
https://youtu.be/fsXmOjIg7EU
Sample of Tempo Lifts:
3-1-3-1 Tempo Goblet
https://youtu.be/n1RHPe5Jvzg
6 Week Iron Core for Cyclocross & Gravel Program (2019)
https://www.humanvortextraining.com/shop/6-week-iron-core-for-cross-amp-gravel-2019
Transcript
Speaker 1:
Human Vortex Training and Menachem Brodie present The Strong Savvy Cyclist and Triathlete Podcast, where we talk strength training, physiology, psychology, tech, and much more to help you get fitter, faster, and stronger in and out of your sport, giving you expert insights, talking with other leading experts. And now, your host, world-leading strength coach for cyclists and triathletes, Menachem Brodie.
Menachem Brodie:
Hi, everyone, and welcome to this episode of The Strong Savvy Cyclist and Triathlete Podcast. This week is going to be a little bit of a shorter podcast, as I’m going to plant a couple seeds and the next couple of weeks follow up with them. It’s the beginning of September here. We have a lot of riders now making the transition to cyclocross and gravel. But a lot of us are still continuing to ride on the road or maybe the mountain. And that’s fine, being out on the trails or out on the road.
What we’re going to talk about today is going to be primarily aerobic system development. And one of the many, many reasons why HVT athletes have continued to surpass other riders who have been training, in many cases, many years more and see fantastic results in a much shorter time. Today’s episode, we’re going to focus on the aerobic system adaptations and why, while many of you think of cardio and just riding at a cardio or endurance pace, the reality is that in order for us to actually improve our aerobic energy systems, we need to improve the ability of the muscles to pretty much use the ATP where it’s produced in the first place, and that’s going to allow your muscles to develop and really allow you to have a much better utilization of the aerobic energy that you’re producing.
But before we get into this, one of the things I want to mention is if you haven’t already signed up for the HVT newsletter, now’s the time to do it. We’re getting into the fall. There’s a lot of new and really exciting things happening here at HVT, so make sure you’re signing up for the Human Vortex Training newsletter. This is going to be released on September 10, which is a Tuesday, which coincides with my latest piece for PezCycling News, which has a short little regimen that you can do to help you get into cross and gravel and get away from those aches and pains that you may already be suffering as you change bikes and terrain.
Now, if you really want to take your abilities to the next level and set the table for next year, you need to sign up for my six-week Iron Core for Cross and Gravel. It’s a six-week program. It starts on September 15, so that’s five days from now that you have. Sunday of next week, it’s going to begin. We only open this once a year, so there is not going to be another chance to get in on this. Six weeks. You’re going to get 20- to 30-minute workouts two to three days a week delivered to you through the HV Training app with video representations. And this year, we’re going to run the option of having me review every other week three exercises. You choose which three videos that you upload. It’s an upgrade, so you can pay a little bit more and have me go through the videos and give you personalized feedback as to how you can get more out of your workouts.
But it’s six weeks. Works extremely well, and a limited time, so make sure you go over to HumanVortexTraining.com/Coaching, and then it should be the first option there on the left. And if you’re not really interested right now, you might be interested by the end of today’s podcast because we’re going to go over, again, the aerobic system adaptations that you have to have.
Let’s start at the beginning, and I don’t mean the beginning beginning. We’re not going to get into the bioscience too much or the chemicals and the Krebs cycle and all that stuff. But we’re going to start at the components of the aerobic energy production in the body. Now, the thing is, is that, essentially, there are three pieces to this that a lot of us, either we’re not aware of or we don’t think about it. We’re thinking, okay, well we have the heart, and that’s going to beat, and that’s going to push oxygenated blood out to the working muscles and help transport the deoxygenated blood back to our lungs to be able to be reoxygenated. And then second, we have to have the muscles be able to draw the oxygen out of the blood and actually use that in order to work the Krebs cycle and get everything going. Right?
The thing is, is that the last part of this is going to be that we have the large supply of pretty much fat and sugars available to us that are substrates essentially, that we’re going to allow us to be able to work. Right? We’ve got the heart, we’ve got the muscles, and then we have the substrates, so those supply, utilization, and then substrates. That’s it. Now, those are the three parts, but the three parts aren’t all addressed by 90% or more of the cyclists and triathletes out there. Why? Well, because they’re focusing on oxygen supply for the most part and a little bit of substrate availability.
Now, oxygen supply is composed of three parts. You have the cardiac output, which is how much blood, the Q factor, how much blood is pushed out with each beat of the heart. The second is going to be the peripheral vascular network, which is the capillarization of the muscles, so as you’re using that working muscle, there’s more of the capillaries, which is where the actual oxygen exchange happens in the muscles. And the last is the respiratory system, which is your ability to bring in air and utilize it. And this is why VO2 max has been a staple for gauging performance and possibilities. But the thing is, is that while we address that, and that’s the first thing that comes to mind, I need to improve my heart, my lungs, and the ability of the working muscles to take in that oxygen, so we all think about that. That’s pretty basic. If you’ve been riding for six months or even no months, you kind of recognize that pretty, pretty quickly.
But the other is going to be substrate availability, and this is something that should happen as you go through, that the substrate storage capacity … This is where you become better as a rider, a triathlete, or a runner is you’re able to store more or tap into more of the stores that you have, the substrates, the sugars, the fats, the energy that’s available there. Now, this also has to come with it hormonal regulation, and this is one of the four blocks of athletic adaptation and progression that you have to have. We have neuromuscular, cardio-respiratory, metabolic, and hormonal, and many of us forget that last one.
And this is where recovery is so important, and many of us are awful about recovery. We don’t get the recovery that we need in between our sessions. Now, the last one, though, is going to be substrate storage capacity, so we have that capacity. Rather, we spoke about that already. The last one, I’m sorry, I’m going off the top of my head here, is the efficiency of the aerobic energy production. This is where a lot of athletes think they go out, they ride for long periods of time, and every week, you’re increasing your ride at endurance quote-unquote by another half hour or 20 minutes, and you’re becoming more efficient at the energy production by the aerobic engine.
Well, number one, the problem is, is that most of us go out and either we’re riding too hard or riding too easy in endurance, and I’ve had this with plenty of group rides, especially when I started coaching the Pitt cycling team back in 2006. There were way, way, way too many rides that were supposed to be at endurance that were at endurance, not of the general member of the group or the vast majority, but of those who were the faster riders because most of us wanted to see how many miles we can get done in three hours. And so we would just hop on to the faster riders and let them do most of the work, and that was what we did.
Well, the problem was, as a coach and as a rider, I wound up being off the back, and I wound up going to, I think it was a Performance Bike or Big Bang Bicycle. Big Bang Bicycle is at the beginning, and just buying like five boxes of gels. Again, if you’ve listened to this podcast, you know I don’t really use them anymore, but this is where I started from, and they’re still appropriate sometimes. But I went and I bought like five boxes, and I got the nickname “The Fridge” because if you blew up on a ride, you can come back to me, and I’d give you a Clif Bar or some of my water or I would give you Nuun Tabs when they came out or a gel to keep you going. And I’d also give you a push for however long you needed to keep you on.
Now, the thing is, is I was doing my athletes a disservice. Instead of letting them develop their aerobic engines and telling the group to break into three … Because the club was so small, we really only had nine or 10 riders, I was making them weaker by letting them blow up by going way above their aerobic capabilities and then pushing them and letting them recover, and then they were going at essentially threshold again. It was this process of warmup, barely, blow up, recovery, blow up, recovery, blow up, go home and recover over the weekend.
And I ran into this problem about two or three years into my coaching of the stronger riders were getting a lot stronger. The programming was working. But the weaker riders were staying about the same. And as a coach, I’m like, wait a minute. I can’t serve just 30% or 20% of my riders. I’m missing a huge chunk. Yeah, it looks great. They’re winning races. But that’s not what I’m coaching for. I’m not coaching for podiums. I’m coaching to help more people get better. And this is where I began to realize that a lot of us are not looking at oxygen utilization. We’re not looking at addressing the number and size of the slow twitch fibers, we’re not looking at the aerobic enzymes, and we’re not looking at the oxidative abilities of the fast twitch fibers.
Now, how do we address all of these three? Well, by training to increase the amount of mitochondria that are in … The power plants of the muscles, essentially, and increasing the number of aerobic enzymes that are available to help us use the Krebs cycle and be able to become stronger. Now, the thing is, is that there’s a number of ways we can get there. Essentially what this is doing is kind of like a tune-up for your engine, so to speak. Like you go and take your car tuned up every couple of, every year or every couple of years. There’s also gasoline treatments that you can use that help break up the buildup in the engine that help keep it running nice and smooth and powerful. That’s essentially what we’re doing. But the thing is, is that we can pretty much build this up as we go through our training if we’re smart about it.
Number one, was I started breaking up the group and said, look, at this point, we’re running for the first X number of miles or minutes or until we get to this point, the group has to stay together. So fast guys, we all know you’re fast. You’ve got to hold back. We’ve got to go at the endurance pace of the slowest rider in the group. And that’s what we did. And sometimes it was painfully slow because we’re talking about brand-new riders. Then we got to the point, usually, it was out by Fox Chapel, if you know Pittsburgh, then we would start, the fast guys are going to go off or the fast girls and fast guys. And then we would have another group that would hold at a low endurance for them. And it was a medium endurance for the rest of the riders, the beginner riders. And then, at a certain point, we’d break up, and we’d re-group.
Well, guess what? Everybody got better at that point. That was one of our best years was the second or third year, third year that I was coaching. We started to see everybody catting up, everybody moving up, and it wasn’t that catting up was the goal, but it was an end of the process that we were going through and making it more developed for the individuals. The thing is, is that when we went about improving the oxygen utilization, so the ability of these muscles to work … And not everybody came to the strength training sessions. Only a couple of people actually came. But we went through and we used a couple of different exercises and a couple of different approaches to help these individuals be able to essentially have a bigger tank and that they were able to kind of use the fuel better.
Now, the thing is, is that this is increasing your aerobic power. If we look at oxygen capacity or aerobic capacity, if you will, that comes primarily from those long steady rides where you’re going out. You’re also improving the cardiac output, the vascular network, the capillarization, the respiratory system getting a little bit better, and you’re also working on the hormonal regulation if you’re getting recovering, you’re riding at the right intensity for you. But once we kind of get into adding the strength training and the higher intensity duration efforts, that’s when we really get a big boost in horsepower. And there’s so many things that we’re going through here that are going to allow you to be able to get better.
And the thing is, is that while endurance is important and we have to have endurance … I need to make sure that this is very clear. I’m not saying at all today that you should go out and not do your long endurance rides, but you need to make sure that your endurance for you. You do need them, but we’re also missing a large part of the neuromuscular and muscular component of increasing the horsepower that you can put out. If you watch Rust Valley Restores on Netflix, number one, it’s a great group of guys. I love the show, from a standpoint of it’s true teamwork. You see them get upset with one another, but it’s not this crazy drama that’s become popular. They’re just good, hardworking people that work as a team that sometimes disagree, but they talk through. If you’re looking for something that’s a good show to kind of watch while you’re on the trainer, or a coach you’re looking to kind of just let your mind wander while you’re writing training plans or in between training plans, I find it very rewarding.
Point is, is it takes a team for us to be able to get this to work together. Right? You have to have these aerobic efforts, but they really need to be aerobic. Instead of going by power numbers because power isn’t an output that’s … How many times a minute you have rotation and the force you’re producing, the angular velocity. Instead of going by that, how about we use your heart rate? And I’ve had coaches and athletes openly berate me and yell at me and say, “You’re destroying athletes by having them train by heart rate instead of power. Get into the 21st century.” And I just kind of let it brush off my shoulder, like, okay, bro, whatever. We’re talking like 2009, 2010, 2011. Why are you training with heart rate? You need to train with power. Don’t even look at heart rate.
I’m like, well, we’ve got to go based off of heart rate and cadence, man, because that’s what we’re training. We’re training an organism, and we’re training the neuromuscular system. And people openly berated me. But I stuck to my guns, and they were some really hard … That was a low-level version of what one coach said to me. And really, the funny thing about it is, is now this individual has come around to realizing HRV, and they’re jumping onto that bandwagon, and now saying, “Oh, I’m doing stuff with heart rate. And I’ve always done stuff by heart rate.” I’m like, “Okay, bro, whatever.”
Point aside, really what we’re looking at here is the heart rate is going to tell us a lot more about the organism, as is your cadence. There was a number of years ago, I had a rider I was working with. Very talented, hardworking, smart, intelligent. Wasn’t a bull in a china shop, actually listened, asked hard questions and was involved. We put on a triple chain ring onto his bike for two reasons between his second and third year racing. And his third year racing was a smash-out, breakthrough year. And a lot of the people on his team gave him a lot of crap because Pittsburgh has really steep hills.
And I noticed looking at his power files, I’m like, “Dude, your power is just really spiky. It’s too stochastic. There’s too much going on, and your cadence is all over the place. If we actually want to have the neuromuscular adaptations and the substrate adaptations that we want in order to get you where you need to be, we’re going to have to put on a triple, man. Like we’ve got to get the abilities of the fast twitch fibers and the number and size of the slow twitch fibers to be a lot better, and that’s going to help us develop essentially your engine more.”
And he was totally for it. He asked a bunch of questions. He said, “What if we just changed the gearing? Because it means I have to go find a triple chain ring.” After a back and forth of about a week and a half, he’s like, “All right, Brodie. I’m going to try it. I trust you.” And he went out, and he was spinning up everything except for the steepest hills in Pittsburgh, and the area at like a 95, 105 cadence.
Why did we do this? Two reasons. This allowed us to actually get true endurance. We built his engine. We increased the cardiac output that he was able to sustain for a long period of time because we were able to stabilize the muscle fibers that he was using. He was able to stay with the slow twitch muscle fibers. We were able to increase his ability to recruit slow twitch muscle fibers and fast twitch because we were going into that. As you’re using more of the fast twitch muscle fibers … I’m sorry, slow twitch … As they fatigue, you can tap into the 2X and the 2X muscle fibers can kind of transfer back and forth depending on the use to more fast twitch or slow twitch.
And it was also, when you get tired, you’re starting to use more of the motor unit. It’s not a magic where you’re obviously … Like people are going to say in the comments, I’m sure, like, “Hey, that’s not necessarily true because you still have to do heavy weight.” Yes, this is correct. But we are going to recruit some of those fast twitch muscle fibers as you fatigue and the body’s trying to recruit that motor unit to be able to execute the task at hand at said cadence. We’re not going to dive into that. But point is, is that it works. You still have to do the strength training.
Number two is we were able to stabilize his heart rate, so no longer were we having him go out and say, “All right, dude. You’ve got to go between 135 and 150, 560 beats per minute steady. Like we can’t have these big spikes.” Now he’s climbing the hill, spinning. Yeah, he’s going three miles an hour. He’s in his granny, granny gear. Like we’re talking tiny, tiny gear, and his friends are making fun of him. But his heart rate is like, “Yo, I just climbed such and such a hill at like 143 beats per minute. I’ve never done that. Usually it’s like 170.” Think about that. We are now keeping a nice, steady heart rate, which allows us to improve the oxygen supply because we’re increasing how effectively the heart can deliver oxygen. And essentially, we’re stimulating his left ventricle of his heart to grow, to hypertrophy. Oh! There’s that big negative word, hypertrophy! Two episodes in a row, I’m going off on a wing here, man.
But it allows us to overload the fibers in that left ventricle, leading them to increase the size of the last ventricle. And this is important. And this is an adaptation as endurance athletes we have to have. It’s also a reason why at least every other year as an endurance athlete, I don’t care how fit you are, go get a stress test EKG. It is important to get it checked out. There’s a number of heart conditions because of the abnormal size of the left ventricle which can develop. It is really important. And don’t let the doctor just look at you and say, “Oh, you’re healthy. Don’t worry about it.” It is important to have this. In my world, I like to have it every other year at minimum, especially over the age of 30. But really, if you can, every year, if your health insurance is going to cover it.
Now, moving on from there, the thing is, is that any low intensity exercise is going to work. And this is where during transition, I used to recommend to my triathletes and then I started with my cyclists, go hike. You heard that right. Go hiking. And they’re like, “Oh, oh, I don’t want to go hiking. I want to go ride my bike.” It’s the transition time of year, man. Go do something else. Get off your bike and do something else. And this is an area that’s oft overlooked. A lot of people don’t think about it. They’re just like, “Oh, bike, bike, bike.” But we need to use the muscles in different ranges of motion. We need to stress the body in different ways and give yourself a mental and physical de-load from what we have going on. It could be anything. And the hikes should be fairly intense. If you think about that, 135 to 150, 55 beats per minute, for most of you, that’s a pretty brisk hike.
If you live on the Appalachian Trail, you can go do that for a little bit. There’s the Marshall Mangler, which is a fantastic race, technically. I believe it’s in the spring. That’s a nice end before we go onto the bike. That really works. It’s a really tough race. But even to just go in and have it so you have support when you go out and execute is really good. But this is important.
Now, for the last 10 minutes of today, we’re going to get into something that most of you don’t do, and that’s going to be tempo strength training. Tempo strength training to build the aerobic enzymes and the ability of the muscles to be able to recruit the larger slow twitch muscle fibers, to allow you to be able to stay aerobic and provide more aerobic horsepower. Now, the thing is, is here’s that bad H word again, is it stimulates hypertrophy of the slow twitch muscle fibers. Now think about that. Hypertrophy. Oh my gosh. He said it three times in two of the last two podcasts. Brodie’s off his rocker! He’s talking about hypertrophy. Think about the type of hypertrophy we’re getting. We are getting myofibrillar hypertrophy.
Now, some of you out there are saying, “But you can’t really. It’s really hard to kind of dive in. You’re going to get sarcoplasmic hypertrophy.” Yes. But if we do this properly, we’re still going to get what we want out of this approach, which is going to be myofibrillar hypertrophy. The actual contractile properties of the muscle are going to get stronger. Now, the thing is, is that there are different tempos you can use. The one that I love and the reason I love it is on a multitude of levels, which I’ll share with you here, is going to be, number one, you can use it for advanced athletes. You can use it for beginner athletes.
For beginner athletes, you’re teaching them to slow down in order to speed up, and you’re allowing them to connect to the different muscles in their body, which is really tough. And proprioception. They’re learning where their body is in space and understanding what different sensations mean, which allows me as a coach to do less coaching. I know that sounds kind of funny. But I give very few cues. I’ll sit there and chat, chat it up during the rest periods to help them go through. But during the exercise, I kind of bark commands. It’s short burst, three to five words, one or two things to focus on. That’s it. And I let the athlete progress set to set. I’m not sitting there coaching like … Well, not like I used to, at least, where essentially, I would tell them a story. Well, when you’re lowering down, you want to kind of keep the back up, kind of think about what you’re doing this on the bike and you’re doing that. It’s too much. Coaching in so short bursts.
But the tempo for lifting, and I talk about this quite a bit in my methodology section and how to build a training day, how to build a training week, and how to build a training month, and my Strength Training for Cycling certification that’ll be released this fall. I talk quite a bit about this because we use tempos as a tool. This is where we’re getting away from these bodybuilding and completely outdated approaches that are out there for strength training for cyclists and triathletes. And as you heard last week, I get really heated because people are still assigning things when the science and the art and the knowledge has progressed so far. But we’re not going to get into that today.
We’re going to focus a little bit more on that tempo method. What is the tempo method? It just means that we’re assigning a tempo for an individual to be able to move through different parts of a movement. And the common thing that happens is, when I program this into the program … Because I don’t have separate videos, I like to give coaching cues sometimes with the lifts. That allows me to coach the individual athlete through the distance coaching app. I write in cues, and I’ll write in the tempo. For example, I have one, she’s over in … I think she’s in Washington DC or New York right now. And I wrote four, two, four, two tempo. Four seconds on the way down for a goblet squat, two second pause at the bottom, four seconds to come up, and then a two second pause at the top to reset and get things going.
And she wrote me back. I just did regular goblet squats because I wasn’t sure what the tempo meant. And this is common. And the reason that a lot of people don’t understand tempo is because nobody’s talking about it, except for the best coaches. Some of the coaches out there that I know that are the best coaches, they use it throughout the training year. And I started to do this a little bit more with my more advanced cyclists, for the most part, and triathletes. But essentially, what we’re doing with the tempo method is we’re getting the muscle into hypoxic or lack of oxygen, where you have to use the substrates or the energy that’s stored much better, more efficiently, which allows us to use an energy substrate called lactate, where it’s used to create ATP.
And what are we doing in our sport and threshold efforts, lactate threshold efforts, is we’re trying to improve the ability of the muscles to use the energy substrate lactate to produce aerobic power and endurance. Do you hear how strength training can really help you with your biking? Do you hear that? We’re not talking about just making the muscles stronger and the connective tissue better and getting you in better positions. We’re talking about training the energy systems and the neuromuscular system to be able to produce the power, and we’re increasing your horsepower without adding a single kilo or gram to your body. Think about that. This is crazy, right?
What is it that’s kept so many individuals … Like why are there still outdated training approaches out there? It’s because most of the individuals out there who are giving strength training are just parroting what they’ve seen out there from Muscle & Fiction, Men’s Health, the general population. But that’s been the argument against strength training for so many years. As cyclists, as triathletes, as runners, we’re endurance athletes. We don’t need to train like that. You are correct. We do not need to train like everybody else. We don’t want that type of adaptation, yet, all of the programs that I’ve seen out there, and I really mean all of them, that’s what they’re programming you for is they’re just standard strength training programs that have been, oh, well this correlates well to the pull in the swim, so we’re going to use that. Or the hamstring curl correlates to the upstroke of the bike. No! That’s not how it works.
There are so many more layers. There are so many more layers to this that you have to think about. You need to think about what are we getting out of this. And what we’re getting out of this is we’re really programming you for better positioning. Right? We’re also teaching you how to breathe. And if you took my Strength Training for Triathlon Success course on Training Peaks, there’s a dedicated section to that breathing. Breath. And it’s so important because breathing will help us get into better positions.
And when we’re talking about posture, we’re not talking about shoulder blades back and down, chest high. That’s not how it works. We’re talking about joint position dictating muscle function, and by using proper breathing patterns and getting breath into the right places, you’re teaching some muscles to relax and other muscles to turn on. And this is where we’re going to get you into a better ability with this tempo training. Not only are we getting you better breath work, not only are we getting you the ability to understand proprioception, where your body is and to turn on muscles you haven’t used before, but we’re also teaching the slow twitch muscle fibers how to be fatigue resistant and to be able to use lactate in a low intensity … And I say low intensity. It’s actually like you’re sweating bullets, and it is tough, but a relatively low intensity environment to get better at converting or producing more ATP in that state.
It just blows my mind that so many people are completely unaware and just ignorant to the fact that this is one of the main tenets of how sprint training changes things. And it’s a tough, tough mind warp when you start to think about it, but once you experience it and you experience a little bit of the soreness that tends to go the next day … Because I’ll stop people at sets of six or eight when I see they’re starting to shake or they’re really struggling with the technique. I’m like, “That’s it.” They’re like, “No, no, no! I can do 10. I can do 10. You told me 10.” I’m like, “No, no. You need to stop because we have a lot more that we need to cover, and let’s see how you feel tomorrow.”
The goal of our strength training sessions is to be a five, six, or a seven. You should never crawl out of the gym saying, “Oh, that was a good workout. I’m sore.” You don’t want to be sore. And the tempo generally does. Now, remember, the goal of this is to cause a lack of oxygen in the muscles by working through this tempo. I like three, one, three, one. This particular athlete I used as an example is four, two, four, two. But there’s a reason she has that. But if you want to try this on your own, I would do three seconds for a goblet squat, three seconds on the way down, one second pause, three seconds on the way up, and then one second pause at the top or right back down.
Now, some individuals will tell you there shouldn’t be any pause. It should just be three seconds down, three seconds up. The reason I put the one in there, the one second, is because most people are going too fast. Even that one second, it’s just like a change of direction. But even then, you’re working on a static position, which will allow you to be able to move better and to be able to fire the glutes, the hamstrings, the calves, the erector spinae, the lats, everything to get you up out of that squat.
Now, I’m going to put links into the description for today, but that’s it. That’s all we’re going to do for today. Now, usually it’s a 60-minute. I know that. But today, I want to keep it a little bit shorter because this is a little bit of a mind warp for you. What we’re going to do is we’re going to finish here. If you’re interested in seeing how this works and getting in Iron Core for Cross or Gravel, or just getting a headstart for next year, make sure you go over to HumanVortexTraining.com, click and sign up for the six-week Iron Core for Cross and Gravel program. You’re going to get access for six weeks to the HV Training app with video demonstrations. And if you want, you can, again, upgrade and choose three exercises for me to review. Maybe it will be your tempo goblet squats or another lift that I’m not going to tell you that’s going to be in there for that six-week program. But I will tell you, the results are going to be fantastic.
Until next time, remember, train smarter, not harder. Think outside of the box. Strength training is not just for the muscles. It’s for all of the systems. And until next time, I will see you guys out there, out on the road. And if you enjoyed this, please like and share. Grow our listenership because we’ve got a lot more incredible, incredible episodes coming up. I wish I could share with you the awesome content we have, but for today, that’s it. Train smarter, not harder. Remember, it is all about you.
Speaker 1:
That’s it for this episode of The Strong Savvy Cyclist and Triathlete Podcast with world-leading strength coach for cyclists and triathletes, Menachem Brodie. Don’t miss an episode. Hit that subscribe button, and give us a review. For more exclusive content, visit HumanVortexTraining.com, or get the latest expert videos from Coach Brodie on the HVT YouTube channel at HV Training. Until next time, remember to train smarter, not harder because it is all about you.
