hill climb racing

[indigoiis]

another good one - lean against a wall and slide down, making sure to keep your hips against the wall, and hold it in a sit for a minute. You can work up to two or three minutes.

But I agree... the best way to hill train is to do hills.

[missymaya]

When it comes to weight training, its always good to stay balanced, i.e. exercise other muscles and don't just focus on a specific group. Muscles work together, so if you're doing quad exercises, it's good to do hamstring and butt exercises as well. Also, hamstring exercises help support the knee, an added benefit.
I agree with raven, best way to train for hills is to do hills and in my case, lots and lots of hills . But, it wouldn't hurt to do some isolated exercises for support.

[Bklynmom]

These exercises are so helpful - thank from me too.

As the weather gets colder, I am and whimps like me ride less, does it make sense to focus on weights more in the off season? Is there a down side to doing weight work mostly in the winter?

[Starfish]

Recently, I have been using the rowing machine at the gym as part of my cardio rotations. I am realizing that the "deep squat" position I get into at the very beginning of the stroke really hits my butt muscles. Doing even 15 minutes on that machine is helping my muscular endurance in that area. I suppose it is like doing a gazillion deep leg presses in a row (literally! )

Also, just a side note about something Chris Carmichael wrote in his The Ultimate Ride book on training...

He wrote that when he has people do weight training (which he does, in the winter), he has them go STRAIGHT from the weights to the bike. Apparently some research done with the French national cycling team of one kind or another, shows that going straight from the weights to a bike workout does something to really help make the weight lifting results cycling specific.

I'm doing a poor job of trying to explain...there was more detail in the book.