HOW "MAXIMUM OVERLOAD" TRICKS YOU INTO DOING THE RIGHT THING

WEIGHTS'LL  SPEED YOU UP  -- AND SLOW DOWN MUSCLE/BONE/POSTURE BREAKDOWN.

Well, I haven't blogged here in while. It's been a busy year. Did some traveling -- To British Columbia with my good friend Ed Korb for the tough, beautiful Singletrack6 6-day mountain-bike stage race in the Canadian Rockies; rode a tandem bike with my son Joey from Washington DC to Pittsburgh via the C&O Canal and Great Allegheny Passage for 330 blissful, car-free miles (then 150 more on the roads to the Rock N Roll Museum in Cleveland) in August; hit Nepal and China for mountain biking and spectacular World Heritage Site sightseeing with my good buddy Rich "The Reverend" White in November;  went to Cuba for the 5-day Gaes Titan Tropic mountain bike stage race, in December; hit Vegas and Park City a bunch of times for various trade shows; and just got back from 10 days in Switzerland driving a car all over the country on assignment from Westways magazine. Pictures?  Tons of 'em. I'll get around to posting albums of those when I get some time.

But the most exciting thing right now  is a new book, which I had mentioned in several posts here last year: MAXIMUM OVERLOAD FOR CYCLISTS, co-authored with Jacques deVore, the guru who invented the program.

Maximum Overload is the first weight-training plan for cyclists. It is designed to do something that you simply can't do on the bike alone: RAISE YOUR MAXIMUM SUSTAINABLE POWER (MSP).

MSP means you won't slow down in the second half of  a century ride, a road race or your weekend mountain-bike ride anymore.  You're fatigue-proofed. While everyone else is pooping out, you keep on truckin'.  And you'll actually do it on less riding. That's because a 45-minute Maximum Overload session in the gym can replace a 2-to-4 hour ride on the road. So now you have time to go to your kid's soccer game!

Cool, right? Now, getting back to the headline of this post, why did I say that "Maximum Overload " will TRICK YOU?

Listen, I have been a big advocate of weights for a long, long time in my articles and previous books, such as BIKE FOR LIFE.  However, I did it from a quality-of-life point of view. WEIGHT TRAINING CAN STOP AND REVERSE  the horrible BONE THINNING that occurs when you ride a bike and do no gravity-based weight-bearing activity; I had a huge story on this in Bicycling in 2004 and have written extensively about it since. Weight training is also necessary to stop and reverse the SARCOPENIA (MUSCLE LOSS)  that occurs with aging and aerobic activities, of which cycling is again among the worst. Weights can fix a cycling-corroded SLUMPING POSTURE; they can change your CHUBBY BODY COMPOSITION to less fat/more muscle. WEIGHTS ARE THE ULTIMATE ANTI-AGING TOOL for everyone — and an essential for cyclists  If you know about all the amazing benefits of weight lifting, you simply have to do it. For me, having written about the importance of strength training, lifting weights has gradually become as necessary in my life as flossing.

And because I am under the illusion that, as a well-meaning journalist determined to help people,  readers actually read what I say and react as I do,  I simply assumed that cyclists would all be happily doing pull-ups and push-ups in their hallways at home and going to gym twice a week to hoist dumbbells.

But over time, I realized something:

Nobody's been listening. It's hard to get a cyclist off the bike. Cyclists don't pay attention much if you tell them to do non-cycling stuff that's good for them -- unless it'll make them faster.

Speed, unfortunately, is all a cyclist cares about — and to get it, they just think they ought to ride more. And then, someday in the future, that cyclist will find himself with wasted muscles and bones and crappy posture— and will discover that he can't ride any more. And just like that, his speed drops to a two-foot shuffle. Or a 1-mph wheelchair roll.

That's one reason why I love MAXIMUM OVERLOAD and wanted to write a book about it:  With the lure of speed,  it takes you into a place that you would never ever go on your own:  the gym.  And in doing so, it effectively TRICKS YOU INTO DOING A BUNCH OF GOOD THINGS FOR YOURSELF that you probably wouldn't have done otherwise.

To promote MAXIMUM OVERLOAD, Rodale asked me to write a series of articles. These stories will describe  the benefits of weight-training and the Maximum Overload program for cyclists beyond its calling card, Maximum Sustainable Power. Each article will focus on one of the aforementioned benefits of weight raining:
·Better bones
·Better muscles
·Better posture
·Better body composition
·A sexier, more powerful butt that increases endurance and reduces knee injuries
· Better all-around, feel-good quality-of-life.

Here's the first article, on better muscles, that I wrote for www.Bicycling.com:

HOW MAXIMUM OVERLOAD HELPS YOU BUILD AGE-PROOF MUSCLES IN THE GYM

BY ROY M. WALLACK ​This new weight routine can make you stronger and faster on the bike— and keep your muscles from deteriorating when you get older

READ IT

:       http://www.bicycling.com/training/build-age-proof-cycling-muscles-in-gym