Weight loss for race performance

[JonInSweden]

Hope you don’t mind me picking your collective brains on this.

So I’m 2 years 11 months back into cycling. I’m 40, I raced as a kid for a few years, and then barely touched a bike from the age of 21-38.

I’ve since done 41,000km in 35 months, and volume is steadily building (I did over 1600km last month, mostly gravel).

My performance is really good. I have an uphill FTP of about 430w (I’m 203cm, 102kg) and about 10% less on the flat, though fractional utilisation is good with 340w being within zone 2 on a good day. I have an excellent VO2 max interval (512w/5 min and 484w/8 min being recent bests) but a fairly poor sprint (1436w being the highest so far, though it’s going up with strength and technique improvements).

My question is, should I make an effort to lose a little upper body mass to improve my race performance? I haven’t really raced properly yet (I’m still in the preparatory phase, if you like) but on a segments race last September, I took 2nd place against a field of much younger guys. I was consistent across the (gravel) climbs and I’m quite efficient at climbing on rough terrain.

I am still carrying a fair amount of unnecessary (for cycling) upper body mass and a small amount of fat. I train weights 2-3 times a week and my working sets on bench are around 80kg, shoulder press 60kg, deadlift 130kg, squats 80kg (this is artificially low due to a now recovered patella tendon but an abundance of caution).

If I dropped 4kg of fat, I’d be at about 7% BF. If I dropped 4kg of muscle from my upper body, I’d get to about 94-95kg.

Apart from the obvious power to weight benefits on hills, are there any other things to consider? Would my resting HR reduce as a result of overall system volume being smaller? Metabolic demand and base metabolic rate would presumably reduce a bit. Would I expect to lose much from my overall power?

I feel that if I were at 95kg with my current FTP that I’d be fairly handy in a race situation. Given that my FTP is still rising (450w might be on the cards before the end of the year), should I worry about weight? Should I just keep focusing on power and durability improvements?

I guess there comes a point where you have to make a choice about what you want to specialise in. No cyclist needs to be able to deadlift 170kg, or bench 100kg. It’s nice for day to day life but counter productive for cycling.

Any thoughts, opinions or personal experiences are greatly appreciated

Jonathan

[Pbase]

I know you’re a big guy, but that’s still a very high FTP, even if you go wt/kg. How are you measuring it?

Some data from Nate a while back.

Raw watts

The Bell curve of cylists - how fast are the average TR users?

More fun data! This time I pulled raw FTP data for men and women. Interesting facts: The top of the bell curve for Men is between 230-240 watts. Men “mess up” the bell curve at 200 and 300 watts; both are “over reported” and don’t fit the bell curve. My guess is that men tend to round up at these numbers due to our egos . I know I’ve been at 290 before and went “Might as well make it an even 300!”. Women seem to suffer the same rounding up issues as men at 200 watts. The top of the b…

Wt/kg

The Bell curve of cylists - how fast are the average TR users?

Moar data!!! It seems like people want to see what’s “TR Average” and compare themselves to that. I’ve broken everything down a lot more. While I was doing this I wonder if we’re breaking new ground here…I don’t think anyone else has this much accurate data on riders. Insights: You get slower as you get older (duh). You can see that there’s a steep decline starting at 3.5-3.75 FTP/kg for men and women when you compare age in 10-year buckets. For both men and women, there’s a large drop off…

[JonInSweden]

A combination of different metrics, though no specific testing.

So, notable individual intervals that have resulted in eFTP results on intervals.icu have been:

512w for 5 minutes (done a few weeks ago)
484w for 8 minutes (done in November and gave me my highest eFTP of 434w)
403w for 45 minutes up a mountain in Norway (90km into the ride, halfway through a 625km week)

I’ve done 352w for 2hrs on mixed terrain gravel and 328w for 3hrs (mixed terrain gravel).

Not relating to FTP, but did 1026w for 30 seconds last month, which I was especially pleased and surprised about due to my poor sprinting.

All data from Assioma Favero MX1, calibrated a couple of times a week or whenever the pedal is moved from bike to bike.

[Pbase]

Color me impressed…and totally unqualified to give you weight or workout feedback!

[Trix8806]

Are you crazy tall? I’m about 176 cm and 71 kg and my strength numbers are around the same as yours.

By the time you lose 4kg of fat you’ll likely lose some muscle naturally anyways, so your expectations are a bit skewed. I think that once you actually lose 4kg, you’ll take a look at yourself and realize you are probably smaller than you think for upper body mass and decide to maintain that weight, assuming it brings you to 7% BF.

Regardless, good work on all the power numbers and progress. Very impressive.

[JonInSweden]

Yeah, 203cm. In my late teens and early twenties, I weight lifted quite a lot, got up to 131kg BW, lifted much bigger weights, but I’ve always naturally reverted to around 102kg whenever I’ve not been intentionally gaining weight.

When I started cycling nearly three years ago, I was 110kg. I quite quickly got down to 103kg, but over the last two years, the body composition has been slowly changing, and my fat is definitely reducing and muscle increasing, but it’s really slow.

Calories average about 6500kcal on normal days, but about 8000kcal on long ride days. It’s really easy to burn 5000-7000kcal on a ride for me.

My Strava profile, for reference:

Jonathan Robinson | Strava Cyclist Profile

[PiperPrincess]

One day I will be big. If I were in your shoes:

I wouldn’t try to loose anymore fat – a hint of ‘chub’ is healthy. If cycling performance was important to me I would MOSTLY stop doing heavy lifting and start doing more ‘athletic movement’ (bouncy, springy, ‘multidimentional’ movement), there is a small chance you are already good at this stuff, but most big people dont seem to be. This way you can loose some muscle mass which makes you lighter and most likely faster on the bike. You can then get the ‘low hanging fruit’ of Fascia slings, which will connect your muscles and get a better ‘system’. You know what is better than big muscles? Big springs! You can check out mtperfromancedk and/or secretofathleticism on instagram for some ideas on this.

[Bbt67]

@JonInSweden

I have an uphill FTP of about 430w (I’m 203cm, 102kg)

Wow. Very Impressive.

However it just goes to show, cda and w/kg are important, we have very similar times, for 20k - 160k, me faster over 100k and my FTP was 270w at the time of my 100k PB (not that I did an effort, was just in a sportive or training ride.)

I’m not sure have any advice although I might revisit this thread.

[AJS914]

@PiperPrincess

If cycling performance was important to me I would MOSTLY stop doing heavy lifting

This! Race your strength. No amount of losing weight is going to make you a light weight climber dude.

Looking at your strava, I see no rest weeks. Start periodizing the training with proper rest and recovery weeks and you’ll be a monster on the bike.

[JonInSweden]

Thanks mate

My times on the road aren’t especially impressive because I don’t often ride asphalt now.

I’m lucky to live in an area where 80% of all roads are well kept gravel, so I mostly stay off asphalt now. It’s just a lot more fun!

[JonInSweden]

Definitely a reasonable point on rest weeks. I just love riding my bike and get irritable if I don’t. That said, a couple of weeks ago I did a long, 192km, 8hr, super low intensity ride (just over 200w), had a day off and then had a superb performance on the bike the day after. I need to build in more low intensity work.

In terms of rest periods, what do you usually go for? I’ve hardly had more than 2-3 days off the bike in three years.

As regards the weight training, I’m torn between lifting reasonably heavy for the strength benefits on-bike, and keeping it much lighter to try to focus on muscular endurance. Either way, the reason the muscle mass grows is due to a slight calorie surplus, but I’ve never in my life dieted, so that would require a mindset shift

[Florian]

Keep the (low) fat and the muscles. It will make you more resilient and injure proof.

[Thomas_Rigden]

102kg at 10% bodyfat with only a 80kg bench/130kg squat but also a 400+ FTP. Something doesn’t stack up here…

[JonInSweden]

Bench is 105kg. Working sets are 80-90kg.

Squatting is weak due to severe patella tendonitis in 2020/2021 that has taken almost four years to settle down. The cause of it was getting carried away with squatting (which I have always loved) and doing 20 rep sets with 100kg several times a week.

I’m very, very tall (203cm). A lot of frame to fill. I’m also more suited to endurance than strength, hence the crappy sprint. And that inspite of a long history of intermittent weight training.

[JonInSweden]

Me with my 2xl Grail, for reference

[MSB]

Makes sense to me. I have similar numbers in kg as a percentage of FTP.

[BikerJens]

This is the second time on this forum that you make me feel small and weak. And then you’re Swedish..

Best regards,
200 cm tall, 83 kg “light” Dane, with an FTP at 319W

[JonInSweden]

Haha! Please accept my apologies!

I’m actually from the UK originally, but I’m half German too

[dsirrom]

Giving you a Strava ‘follow’ so I can keep track of your monster numbers

If you intend to race, then my recommendation is to decide with some certainty and clarity what sort of racing you want to target and why (and when).

This in turn will shape your thinking around what training changes (if any) you need to consider, that would optimise your physiology to thrive and succeed.

Part of this consideration should also be what are your strengths that you can play to, that will help you succeed and also ENJOY your racing. E.g. if you find climbing long steep climbs hard and it’s a relative weakness, then climbing road races may not bring you joy. On the other hand, you may want to test yourself and improve this aspect of your cycling and racing may be the vehicle to achieve that.

All said - I’d advocate for selecting racing that you feel will a) bring you joy and be fun for you b) provide the competitive outlet that gives you at least some chance of success (whatever that means for you).

My external perspective based only on what you’ve recounted in this and a couple of other threads is that you have a big engine and although you say your sprint is a relative weakness, you power over shorter (3 to 10 minutes) is super strong. So medium distance Crit racing or flatter time trials may be something to consider trying out. You may also do well on rolling road races where you can punch yourself away from riders with weaker raw power.

Good luck

[grwoolf]

@JonInSweden

As regards the weight training, I’m torn between lifting reasonably heavy for the strength benefits on-bike, and keeping it much lighter to try to focus on muscular endurance.

I’d consider focusing primarily on heavy sets of 5 reps or less. Lighter sets of more reps are going to drive more hypertrophy (size/weight) while providing much less benefits for strength and endurance.

And if you haven’t already done it, you might consider a dexa scan to get an idea of muscle mass distribution and also confirm body fat.

It’s highly likely you could lose significant mass without dropping power much and raise your w/kg (particularly if it’s upper body mass), but obviously that’s a big personal decision. It sound like most of your mass is healthy lean mass. Some of that might be doing more harm than good for cycling, but could be very good for long term health.