Standing drills - tips, techniques, recommendations, etc

Training
21

Hi everyone. Decided to put my question in here instead of creating another thread.

First year using TrainerRoad here. XC rider and currently on the XCO Mid Vol plan on base 1. Cadence naturally falls around 80-85 on the road bike and rollers but on the trails I’m usually stomping below 70.
First time training with structure as well, and generally a weak rider with a long way to go.

I’m currently using Virtual Power with a Feedback Sports Overdrive rollers ( basically SportCrafters ZRO110 ), so they have resistance and plenty of range to deal with my little legs, but they don’t have a floating frame or anything of the sort to aid sudden movement.

I can stand and pedal with decent balance, but I noticed that I kind of purposely move the bike side to side while putting a lot of weight on the handlebars to avoid putting too much weight on the pedals and surging forward.
Some workouts have standing drills and I try to do them but it’s hard to keep the power on target and I keep wondering if it’s pointless doing them with the technique I described.

Should I just focus on holding target power and leave the standing to the occasional MTB ride? I plan to try and do some of the shorter Base 2 and Build workouts outside to avoid forgetting how the mtb bike feels. No power meter on that one either so I will do them by RPE.

But I do feel slighty worried since the terrain I usually race on requires a lot of standing and even though I’ll surely get a lot stronger with structured training and perhaps don’t need to worry about getting weak at standing, the thought still bothers me a little.

Cheers and thanks in advance.

22

I would generally say that drills are purely optional, and can be skipped if you have excessive difficulty with them, or don’t have a need for them.

Standing on MTB is a common need, but it’s not like there is a ton of transfer from the trainer to outdoors in that case. I stand a bunch on the trainer, and use it more for a break in the workout for comfort and to alter loading on my muscles.

So, if it is odd and out of place on your trainer, I’d say you can skip it or choose to do it just when you want or need to do so.

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23

MTB benefits from a lot of on bike skill development. You can get a lot out of structure on just 2-3 days a week, personally I’d target at least one skill day/week outside if possible.

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