Weight Loss vs. Strength & Power

It's known as power-to-weight ratio and it's unique to each individual. Basically how much sustained power can a cyclist generate for each pound of body weight. Unless you have a way of actually measuring your power in watts, it's difficult to figure this out accurately. One theory behind this is the less you weigh, the more you can increase this ratio in power. Of course at some point too much weight loss can have negative effects on power. Since I don't have a power meter on the bike, I'm just going to follow the guidelines to figure out what works best for me.

I read an interesting article in the January 2011 issue of "Triathlete" magazine regarding this very issue.  There was a study done over 10 weeks with 4 groups of cyclist to find out the effects of losing weight and trying to increase strength. Here's how the groups were broken up.

#1 - Power building while maintaining weight
#2 - Normal training with weight loss through diet
#3 - Power building & weight loss through diet
#4 - Normal training & maintaining weight

Power building consisted of sprint interval sessions twice a week.

The results were interesting.
Group #1 increased their power-to-weight ratio by an average of 10% (power training)
Group #2 increased their power-to-weight ratio by an average of 9.3% (diet only)
Group #4 no change in their power-to-weight ratio (normal training & diet)

It was surprising to see that in Group #3 they did not gain any additional benefits from power building & dieting at the same time. Although weight was loss, power ratio remained the same. In my interpretation, power actually decreased, if weight also decreased and the ratio remained unchanged.  It seems that the diet prevented any increase in power due to lack of protein and prevented muscle recovery from the increased stress from the interval workouts.

So you should either concentrate on weight loss or building power, not both at the same time. This study comes at an appropriate time during the off season. It's during this time that one should concentrate on weight loss. Once you start ramping up training for a specific race, weight should be maintained and the diet should focus on proper recovery of muscles through proper nutrition.

So that's the plan. Although I've got a couple races at the start of the year, my first triathlon isn't until the end of April. This gives me at least 3 months to focus on weight and 4 weeks to work on increasing power. I will be adding additional workouts during the weight loss period, but that's to help with the burning on calories, knowing full well that I don't expect any gain in power.