| New DVDs and Books to Help you Train in the Off Season | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Looking for a way to improve your sport in the off-season? Use this time before your season to work on builing strength, and improve your form. Training books and DVDs are a great way to stay focused during the long, dark winter hours. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Zinn's Cycling Primer - $24.95 |
One of my favorite new books is Zinn's Cycling Primer by Lennard Zinn. You may be familiar with some of his previous books including Zinn & the Art of Road Bike Maintenance. His newest release is a treasure, whether you're a road cyclist or a mountain biker. "Maintenance Tips & Skill Building for Cyclists" barely scratches the surface of what you'll find in this book, which includes helpful diagrams and photos throughout. |
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| Lennard starts with the Initial Setup covering the basics of size, height, reach, fit, and offers different approaches from several experts in the field. Part 2: Fine-Tuning Your Body discusses nutrition, assessing your current fitness level, training, overtraining and periodization, improving your cycling economy, and more topics related to your physical condition. The next two sections cover road and mountain bike skills - cornering, climbing, racing and descending technical trails, wheelies and drop-offs. Follow that with a few sections on maintenance that looks at chainrings, tubular tires, tubeless tires, changing a flat tire, disc brakes, brake levers and much, much more. There is a wealth of information in this book and in Zinn's style, you'll find it an easy read and a valuable resource. A great book for any cyclist! ($24.95) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Weight Training for Cyclists $14.95 |
A new book to help cyclists build strength is Weight Training for Cyclists by Eric Schmitz and Ken Doyle. This book, from VeloPress, covers the basics of safe and effective weight training before moving on to specific form points of each individual exercise. It guides you to develop the power needed to make your next season a winning season. One rule is the concept of Progressive Resistance Exercise (PRE) - the 'systematic increase in frequency, volume and intensity of your weight-training program'. |
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Over time, your body will become accustomed to the effort required to perform your strength training workouts and you'll reach a plateau. To get to the next level, you will need to increase the weight and reps, which leads to greater strength and endurance.This book helps you determine at what weight to start your training, and when and how much to increase your workload. It also guides you to a full-body workout since "optimum cycling performance demands full body strength." Weight Training for Cyclists is a great companion to the PC Coach Cycling plan, which schedules strength training workouts for you on the calendar, but does not go into detail about specific exercises or weights to use. The book discusses the various phases of weight training as they relate to your season: Transition, Hypertrophy, Strength, Power, Endurance and Maintenance. The book also includes a sample weight-training program that will help you get started. |
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