Slow twitch fibres and strength training

if a key to good aerobic performance is the quality of the slow twitch fibres, what does strength training do to help them metabolise fat and clear lactate?

more fibre recruitment??
bigger mitochondria??
more mitochrondria??
increased fuel storage in the fibre??

I don’t think maximal strength training does anything to help aerobic development. I think it’s mostly for the following:

  • Neuromuscular development
  • More efficient muscle recruitment
  • Increased fatigue resistance
  • Injury prevention

Strength training may also allow for more glycogen to be stored in the muscle, if I recall, but I may be wrong. Check out Empirical Cycling Podcast, Kolie Moore and Kyle Helson have a couple podcasts that go in depth into strength training. Dylan Johnson has a couple videos on YT about strength training. TR also has some articles here.

The answer is, it depends.

What kind of strength training are we talking about?
Endurance (higher reps)
Max strength (lower reps)
Hypertrophy (medium reps)

What types of events do you do and need to train for? Climbing events, road races, TT, crits, etc? For some disciplines, strength will definitely be quite useful.

Overall it makes you less injury prone so you can train harder and more consistently which will make you a better cyclist. In my case i’ve uncovered some muscle imbalances which means some muscles in my posterior chain weren’t being used putting strain on other muscles instead and fatiguing them sooner.
Increased bone density, improvement on the joints, bigger stronger muscles to push through your exercise so maybe even less fat to push around, there are a lot of different ways strength can help.

I’m FINALLY starting to include it seriously in my training but i’ve been looking into it for a few years, i just didn’t have the drive to add it to my regimen.

so if we are recruiting more motor units with strength work (lower reps, higher weight) does this mean slow twitch fibres? since these fibres deal with fat and lactate clearance, they are crucial.
does this mean we could have lazy or less stimulated slow twitch muscle fibres, or its really just the fast twitch fibres which get the benefit.
i’m not too concerned with injury prevention, and if its fatigue resistance, what’s the reason?

If you’re lifting in the single rep range (with correspondingly heavy weight) than your slow twitch fibers are going to be fully recruited. Along with most of the fast twitch fibers if you’re close to what you can lift.

This article was referenced in some of the other strength training threads and lists off a number of benefits and supporting evidence.

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