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What i was getting at is that most riders only have strength building in their program during the winter - build and maintenance aren't the same thing
dan-
The reason for that is usually that it's hard to train, race AND fit in gym work for roadies. Trackies have far more time available to do gym work because they're not training for 200k road races. If you're doing a warmup, bashing out some 90s efforts and warming down you've done half a day at most.
hippy
Step aside, step aside, track sprinter about to drop the gym knowledge... pfft :P
Not true at all. Crits are still massive endurance events and it's very difficult to replicate the SPEED of muscle movement required for crit racing in a gym. Plyometrics maybe but cadence in a crit is 110+ so good luck getting that leg speed out of squats. Track sprinting, different ball game - much lower starting cadence and much bigger gears.
Most of them wouldn't do it, if it wasn't for their teams insisting. There's some evidence it can be beneficial and I'd put money on there being tonnes of racers who've had success having never stepped foot in a gym.
Strength work certainly isn't restricted to off-season and isn't restricted to outside so your ice/snow arguments falls down too - just because you like gyms - roadies like eating road grit. A good turbo will allow most road riders to complete high gear low cadence work quite effectively.