Bike Strength Workout on the Trainer

... well, and OFF the trainer too.

Being I'm currently trying to giveaway a sweet, new CycleOps trainer, I figured now would be a good time to talk about this workout. The January 2011 issue of Triathlete Mag mentioned an interesting sounding workout. It was called the "Bike Trainer / Weight Combo" workout, and was supposed to last 60 minutes.

The workout had some technical warm-ups and then consisted of three 10 minute intervals where some of the time was spent off the bike doing body-weight exercises, and the rest of the 10 minutes was spent on the bike spinning hard.

Here's the gist of the workout: (This isn't directly quoting the magazine [which wrote an article about this and the summarized it up on the next page], but it's the idea of what they were saying)

20 MINUTE WARM-UP: 20 minutes of gradual building: 5 minutes EASY, 5 minutes building, and then 10 minutes of drills. They recommended some fast spinning 1-legged drills for 30 second intervals.

FIRST 10 MINUTE INTERVAL: Off the bike, do the following (25-30 reps) with as little rest as possible:

- Walking lunge
- Hamstring curl with heels on a balance ball
- Jumping squat
- Eccentric calf raises (meaning focus on long, slow downward motion: 3 secs down, 1 sec up)

Then finish out the 10 minute interval (meaning if the exercises took 4 minutes, you'll have 6 minutes to go) on the bike with HR in low Zone 2, and a cadence of 85-95.

SECOND 10 MINUTE INTERVAL: Same strength exercises off the bike, then finish out the 10 minutes with HR in high Zone 2 and a lower cadence: 75-80.

THIRD 10 MINUTE INTERVAL: Same strength exercises off the bike, then finish out the 10 minutes with HR in Zone 3 with a cadence of 80-85.

10 MINUTE COOL-DOWN: Easy spinning.

I did something like that, but here's what I did differently:

- I did body-weight squats instead of jump squats for 2 reasons. #1: My injured achilles wouldn't take too kindly to lots of jumping. And #2: My trainer is in the basement, and "jump squats" would have made parts of me end up through the kitchen floor, if you know what I mean. (If you don't know what I mean, I'm saying the ceiling is low.)

- I didn't do the calf raises because of my injury. I didn't substitute anything for those, I just tired to do a few more of the other 3 exercises so I could skip the calf raises.

- And because I was short on time when I tried this, I didn't do a 20 minute warm-up. I did some easy spinning, a little building, and then 6 minutes of 30 second 1-legged drills (for a total of about 12 minutes of WU). That was plenty for me.

I hit my watch, and I was off my bike all ready to start my first 10 minute interval. Here are some photos that Pharmie took of me trying this workout (during the first interval). They are some UNFLATTERING images. Sheesh.

One-legged drills. Note my foot to the left is
unclipped and resting on the trainer.


Building during the WU.


The PERFECT episode of "King of the Hill" was on TV.
It was the one where Bill starts working out too much.


Walking lunges done throughout the basement.
Why do I have FRONT love-handles? WTF?


Kermit looking for some attention during my walking lunges.

By the way, as sweat drips down my back on the trainer, it's itchy. So you can barely make out 2 scratch marks on my upper back in that photo above. It's from me wiping / scratching at sweat. I always look like I have an aggressive lover after trainer workouts.

Balance ball hammy "curls." Kermit was all up in my business.


Kermit's not sure what's going on....


Kermit pooped out before I did and went upstairs to crash with her sister.

So I did some body-weight squats too. I did all those exercises (lunges, BB curls, and squats) back-to-back-to-back as quickly as possible. That took me about 4:30. Then I hopped back on the bike for a hard 5:30 of biking. I didn't want to worry myself with what cadence to be at or how hard to be going, so I just did 3 hard-ish intervals.

THE BEST THING ABOUT THIS WORKOUT is that it did NOT feel like I just spent 50 minutes on my trainer! (Well, I actually didn't spend 50 minutes on my trainer - I only spent like 35 minutes on my trainer once you take out the "exercise" time. But still.... It didn't feel like a boring hour-long trainer workout.)

It did NOT leave me "oh-my-god-I-can't-walk" sore, but it DID work my legs nicely. The second and the third intervals started with some WOBBLY lunges!!

So give this workout a try! Now is a good time for this - in a few weeks, I won't feel like I should be hopping off and on my trainer being it will be getting pretty close to race season. But right now, it's a great break from the "regular" routine. I might do this workout again in about a week or 2.

Oh, and speaking of being on the trainer, make sure to check out Tuesday's blog post where I'm giving away a CycleOps trainer!! You can enter through Monday! Scroll to the bottom of Tuesday's post and leave a comment to be entered!

Happy weekend!