Another Question - PowerPlate Training

Just been to my new gym for my induction and have booked in for a session for using their power plate trainers.

Has anyone had any experience of using these for your 'cycling' muscles? Or are they more of a gimick for flash gyms?

Never heard of them, just looked it up. You mean one of these:

Looks like a ridiculous piece of junk. Ive started training this winter and have done a lot of research. Really, you can do a full workout at home/outdoors with no special equipment.

Weights are useful if you want to bulk up with powerful muscles for sprinting. If so always use FREE WEIGHTS and NO LIFTING belt. Take your time to condition yourself with core strength excercises (regular push-ups can do wonders) and hone your lifting technique before trying anything heavy.

Free weights will aid in developing all round co-ordination & stability, which are the same things I expect the plate trainer promotes itself as.

But for general fitness & cycling, yoga/pilates style floor excercises combined with press-ups, pull-ups, leg raises etc and plyometric excercises such as jump squats as well as liberal stretching is really all you need.

When riding your bike (ideally fixed) aim to ride as fast as practical all the time, and whenever you see clear smooth road, sprint like a mofo. The fact that you will continue riding as moderate speed after sprinting instead of freewheeling re-creates an ideal interval training scenario.

A guy I work with loves Power Plate, but he has always been a slacker on the fitness front. If my gym had a class, I'd probably sign up and give it a go, for a laugh.

Intreuging but I was always told, if you want to get better at cycling then just get on your bike and cycle...LOTS!

they have these in the gym where i go. i've never used them, and always thought they were a wank... never seen an olympian using one etc etc...

BUT i asked my mate BJ who is a personal trainer and an elite 400m hurdler, and he reckons that it's not a complete load of toss. it does help with core strength and stability. if used correctly it can certainly build core strength quite effectively.

of course, so does a swiss ball for a whole lot less money, electricity and noise. i think the idea is that the machine introduces lots of instability which forces your core stability muscles (and the associated neural pathways) to adapt quite fast.

you can do this with a swiss ball, a couple of varying weight medicine balls and the right exercises (and ideally a mirror so you can monitor your body position).

but if the classes are free, why not give it a go?

Intreuging but I was always told, if you want to get better at cycling then just get on your bike and cycle...LOTS!

that's not actually sufficient, especially for people with poor core strength

also, FWIW core strength (strength through your midriff) will improve your cycling by allowing you to transfer more power through your leg muscles - effectively it provides your legs a more stable platform to push from. it will also help your body position, efficiency and improve stamina.

improving your core strength will not provide a silver bullet that makes you ride faster, but it is an important part of a serious training program.

powerplate is meant to work quite well, though I have no experience of it myself.

I do yoga as my main conditioning exercise. Once a week I also run plyometric core strength sessions at my fencing club using a lot of medecine ball exercises for dynamic core strength.

that's not actually sufficient, especially for people with poor core strength

listen to RPM, he is studying the dark art of cycle coaching.

also ask babydinotrackboy (haven't seen him posting for a while) how much time his squad of track sprinters spends in the gym. it's quite a big part of their training, i believe.

@ scrapper... now we're talking, Im gonna ask my mum to buy me one.

@ RPM... OK i will buy that some cross training may help for core stability thus particularly usefull for sprinting stuff, but generally there is no substitute for milage under the belt when it comes to plugging up hills etc. You can also help improve core strength by cycling.

Core strength is really important for sprinting. Thats why I have been working on it so much of late. My core strength sucked. It meant although I have powerful legs I cant sprint on a bike/legs for shit.

I just wobble about too much. The core strength makes you solid up top so you can get all the power down. Also general commuting cycling only develops slow twitch muscle fibre anyhow so It sucks for sprinting too. Working with weights & plyometric excercises gives you more explosive power. And free weights (dumb bell bench press etc) also work your stability and muscle co-ordination extremely hard, more so than the wobble board I expect.

From previous non cycling related training I found Russian twists and inclined sit ups to be the best core strength improvement but then I guess its really hard to isolate what area of your training is leading to the biggest improvement.

What is a chest press BTW?

listen to RPM, he is studying the dark art of cycle coaching.

also ask babydinotrackboy (haven't seen him posting for a while) how much time his squad of track sprinters spends in the gym. it's quite a big part of their training, i believe.

"It has been said that a track sprinter is a weight lifter who also rides a bike"

http://www.ridethetrack.com/pdf/train_rodamaker.pdf

Have you seen Jason Kenny's legs? Fucker is 20 yo and he must of spent 10 of them doing leg presses.

You can also help improve core strength by cycling.

Cyclists who do no other training (like me until recently) have notoriously poor upper body strength. Unless you ride BMX pump tracks your upper body and abdominals never get worked. Cycling causes huge muscle imbalances in the body which can lead to back pain etc.

Doing simple press-ups can be excellent for cyclists, works your core (keeping body straight & still) and shoulders/back/triceps. This will all help you stay in aero postion and crank for long periods without getting shoulder/back ache.

I have a bike fitness training book, ill scan some of the pages up sometime.

DFP: that's true about free weights to an extent, but if you combine free weight with instability the benefits in terms of control get magnified (ie dumbell presses on a swiss ball, or moving exercises on a powerplate). of course, you can't lift anywhere near as much, so you should mix it up a bit and still do the "pure power" exercises like bench press or squats/cleans (but core strength is vital to these as well - don't lift too much).

general commuting can help with your leg speed if you use a lower gear and spin like a bastard. there is no substitute for properly focused training though. specificity is very important.

by properly focused i mean "train with a goal in mind". different goals require very different training approaches.

good core strength helps your limbs move more freely

for example when you are spinning down a hill and start to wobble. you can lock your core, this wil help stabilise the wobble and also enable your legs to go faster.

if you do no specific core srengthening it is unlikely you would be able to do this. simply cycling loads will not give you the extra strength to call upon when needed.

badtmy:

I totally agree. I was just trying to emphasise the lack of special equipment needed. I despise the sports/training equipment/supplement industry.

A swiss ball is a good tool, but the power plate is a stupid overpriced gimmick.

uh oh feel like im going down here... but not without a fight :) I was just quoting eddy 'the God' Merckx in my initial comment.

In terms of sprinting core strength no doubt vital for effective power development, but for less explosive parts of cycling even getting out the saddle up a hill helps with basic core stability... pro cyclists (dunno much about track riders) literally spend years of there lives on bikes, unlike say rowing where gym work is given a near equal status to water time, that is just not the case in cycling. Like I said cross training can be usefull but I would say unless you are a sprinter, it pails into insignificance next to just getting the miles done, so assuming you only have a set amount of time to train for your cat 2 race or whatever, what im saying is spend it on your bike in the hills not in the gym.

Surely in group riding having to go mental down a hill is incredibly rare as once your on someones wheel there is no way they are going anywhere, you can pretty much coast and stick with them?

this comment ""train with a goal in mind". different goals require very different training approaches" is the most sensible on this thread

The guy i was speaking to (personal trainer) was mainly interested in running/sprinting and general appearence training. He said if used correctly, it was around 4x more effective then standard weight training.

Ive got an induction into this training on tuesday, so will report back in due course.

Hi,

I came across this post and thought I could give some advice. I think these machines are good for stretching and conditioning core strength alongside a good cardio workout and balanced diet. I found this site which gives some benefits as well as comparing models and offering some good alternatives to the Power Plate machines Power Plates

Hope this helps

I tried the power plate once and nearly lost my fillings ;o)))

For cycle fitness a good class to go to is a good old fashioned circuit training one then weights.

YouTube- Power Plate® Acceleration Training

stumbled across this thread by accident. there might be something in it for somebody.

My understanding is that proper evidence for the benefits of power plate training (when compared to spending the same amount of time doing some sensibly prescribed core work) is feeble or non-existent.
YMMV.

Erm, but demonstrating the benefits of anything other than riding, for (endurance) riding is kinda hard as well........