 So first things first I just want to thank all those channel supporters that have jumped on my Patreon account. I launched that a few weeks ago now to think I've already got eight people that have jumped on board. Greatly appreciated. I'll put your names up on the screen and later today I'll be drawing the first giveaway for that group of people. Much appreciated. Secondly, many of you will know that I had a cycling coach come up and stay with me in the Sunshine Coast about a month ago now and I'm currently putting together an online course, Cycling Fundamentals. We're calling it becoming a smarter road cyclist and as a lead-in to that course to wet the appetite I'm creating a bit of content on this channel. A couple of weeks ago now I published a video which is highly successful number one mistake cyclists make with training and today I'm going to share with you a simple way to get stronger on the bike. So I'm at the bottom of a hill climb and today I'm going to be doing hill repeats. So let's just say you've done your base training and I'll link to that video below for those who missed out on it and you want to start getting stronger on the bike. Now you can do that with bunch riding but you'll only get to a certain point and I'll explain why shortly. These types of sessions where you bring lactic acid into the muscle and then taking it out and then bringing it back in are going to make you a stronger cyclist. Now there's a couple of little tricks that I do while I do my hill repeats. This is the way I do them. This is help me become a stronger cyclist that I'm going to share with you and I also got a bonus tip at the end of the video but out of the nine repeats I'm going to do today I'm going to show you two on the GoPro that show you sort of separate things that I'm going to be doing. So let's get into it. So I'm just approaching one of my hill repeats here. This is repeat four of nine to be exact and on the screen you can see from the left time of day I've put that there more so so you can see the time of effort and also time of recovery. Ideally I would suggest doing this at an earlier time of morning to miss out on any potential traffic but I was a little bit behind this morning thanks to the drone footage and I do have a dedicated bike lane here. We have cadence speed power gradient and also the hill repeat course. Now according to Strava this climb is 520 meters in length at an average gradient of nine percent and about two minutes in length. Now I wouldn't recommend this type of hill for somebody who's just starting out with these style of hill repeats I'm about to explain to you. Around a one minute climb is a great starting point with an average gradient of say between six to eight percent but for me I've been doing these for years and I have conditioning and as a result I like something that's a little bit nasty which is what this hill provides. I'd like to share a couple of big things I'm doing here number one I'm letting the hill come to me I'm not attacking it I'm going to absorb every single part of this beast sitting in the saddle the entire time engaging my leg muscles including my core keeping my body super tight head up and looking forward at all times. Number two and this is a big one my cadence is low I'm in a heavy gear between 45 and 60 cadence why is that well in this session my focus is on the muscular system or really it's the musculoskeletal system which are two separate systems that work very closely together and are super important systems that will enable us all to get a lot stronger on the bike hence the title of this video but most cyclists and I used to be one of them tend to neglect working on the system with a typical cadence of around nine to a hundred attacking hills riding fast in bunch rides meaning the predominant focus is always or typically the cardiovascular system with cycling specific muscular strength being neglected. Now this particular hill plays some games with me here as you may have just seen it partially flattens out and then it lifts again which sort of forces me to lean back into my cardio system and then I'm back into my muscular system so it's a grinding hill it hurts a lot but I absolutely love it because I know it will make me a stronger cyclist while my focus here is more on holding good form and low cadence I'm hitting roughly my top nvo2 max or anaerobic training zones which is zones five and six while I'm cruising down the hill now in my recovery time I wanted to briefly mention the last training video that I made the number one mistake cyclists make with their training and you'll know in that video I emphasize to maintain a consistent pedal stroke to try and mitigate free pedaling in order to build a solid base however this session is a lot different that constant pressure on the crank you have with base training is a lot different here so let me quickly share some commentary from Luke at Metz performance consulting on this topic what we want to do is accumulate lactic acid have a partial recovery and then get it back in there again okay by doing that you're going to force your body to actually become better at tolerating clearing that lactic acid so instead of going from two five to five six we go from two five to three five then to four and then we jump up so as you heard what I'm doing here in addition to building muscular strength on the bike I'm also teaching my muscles how to tolerate lactic acid better so really this two and a half to three minute recovery period I'm taking it easy letting the lactic acid back out of my legs before I bring it back in now if you love bunch rides and I certainly do there's no doubt you're bringing lactic acid into your muscles during those sessions but I guarantee the efforts you are doing in the bunch are unstructured and if you're not bringing lactic acid in and out of the muscle in a way that will optimize your system's understanding of how to tolerate lactic then you're missing out on an opportunity to properly train yourself and here I am at my U-turn corner about to roll up and start my next repeat so the second repeat I'm showing you here I want to share with you what I do every third repeat out of the nine that I'm doing and this is actually repeat three that I'm doing out of the nine here I would not recommend this for people just starting out for people just starting out you might go do five repeats in your first session at a cadence a little bit higher of maybe between 70 to 80 in a perhaps a lower zone your threshold zone just start getting used to how this feels then as you improve your strength and form lift the number of repeats start slowing down the cadence increase your reps and then you can look into what I'm about to show you so just jumping forward here at the top of this hill with about 50 meters to spare I'm going to rip it out of the saddle now you can do these seated as well but what I'm doing here is going deep into my neuromuscular system which is directly responsible for the recruitment of muscle fibers and the more muscle fibers that can be recruited to perform certain tasks the more powerful that muscle group will be and while these will fatigue you and you will particularly feel it towards the end of the day I guarantee you if you start implementing these into your session you will get a lift not only in your sprint but across all facets of your cycling so as I roll down the hill again let's just ponder for a minute when was the last time you rode 18 minutes in your top end zones in a heavy gear with three 10 second all-out sprints I would probably guess most people would have never have done this before so if you haven't go start training this style of ride once a week if you don't have a hill you can do it on the trainer make sure the days before and after this session are easier ones and please come back to me in a month or two and leave a comment below this video and let me know just how much stronger you've become I truly think you'll surprise yourself and as a follow on we're only just touching the surface on efforts here there's so much more we can discuss so let me know below if you're keen to have more of this type of content so there's the hill I've literally just finished off nine repeats which was pretty hard work it went pretty quick when you've got a countdown repeats I find the sessions go fast but with these types of sessions because you've you've worked hard you've deserved a little treat this is my bonus tip I'm going to take you where I take myself after these types of sessions so this is the most exciting part of the session because it's finished I've just done a 20 minute warm down home's five minutes down the road and I'm around the corner from my favorite raw organic pancake place I'm about to treat myself to a Snickers pancake which I do after every hill repeat session you know I gotta survive you know the mother do strive and when I'm hugging the block you know we bound to collide this is the cold out here southern California cold out here though we are cold out here huh so they rush for the best secret uncapped this is taking off for having a motion