Also, I have never said that ‘Cycling’ would cover all hypertrophy needs for a sprinter.
I would never recommended cycling for a sprinter.
By ‘cycling’, I was refering to bycicles. Not ‘cycling’ as in ‘changing the training from time to time’. But I think you allready knew what cycling I meant.
Certainly, I would not recomend bycicles for track sprinters. I have done a lot of both. Cycling does not improove sprinting speed. Well, it doesn’t improove the speed of people who allready engage in any type of running or plyometrics. Adding bycicles will not contribute further.
Bycicling is a blood pumping anmd very concentric muscle activity. There is not a great deal of eccentric activity. The ccentric activity is just so low in intensity that it doesn’t count. Rather, the concentric work in bycicle sprints is very high. (And so bycicles are a tremendous way of developing fitness. ‘Tour de’ France cyclists have the best V0 2 max of any athlete in the world. Olympic 200m sprint persuit cyclists and 1km time trialists have fantastic physiques and tremendous leg muscularity. Credit where credit is due.)
It’s just that cycling does not improove running speed.
If the Tri-athlon was changed to bi-athlon, with the cycling omited, the now bi-athletes would ALL improove their running and swim times. The less affairs you manage, the more your physioloagy and nervous system adapts to the affair.
Cycling does not have the same muscle lengths experianced in any type of running, let alone sprinting.
Cycling is ‘the grind’, blood pumping, concentric muscle burning activity, mainly quads & glutes.
Sprinting is the static spring model. Utilizing angular momentum for greater sprinting speeds, and having the strength to exploit the potential kinetic energy.
The tendons have to be elastic, and do a lot of the work.
Running require natural cat like reflexes to keep your body stable. These reflexes are natural and governed by the nervous system. Not how many sit ups some body can do, not balancing on a swiss ball, and not holding on to handle bars (as in bycicles.)
One of the important factors in creating angular momentum in running is: — the posture of the spine.
Pelvic rotation is governed partly by spinal posture. The spinal posture in cycling is the opposite of posture in sprinting.
Michael Jordan and other basketball players sometimes used cycling/ bycicles in their young collage days.
Cycling (bycicles) may improove (very slightly) the speed of your first step.
But as early as your second stride, cycling becomes less beneficial. Once you are in to your third or fourth running stride, bycicles have about 0 % influance on your speed.
There are 41 to 51 strides in a 100m sprint. Why do something that only slightly helps the first stride?
When injured, and running is out of the question, swimming, bycicles/cycling, callasthenics become great ways of maintaining cardio fitness, with low impact to joints and tendons and very little eccentric stress.
As a side note; one study done, concluded that barbell back squats done for 6 weeks improoved bycicling sprint speed, but did not improove running speed. (But there are many studies, plus my own training experiances which are vast, that lead to the same jigsaw pieces.)
If it is pissing down with rain outdoors, and u are not injured, but still won’t run, then skipping with your imaginary skipping rope, is a better substitute than cycling.