Congratulations to Chris Hoy, Jason Staff and Jamie Staff for earning Britain some much needed bragging rights.

The British cycling trio faced world champions France and comfortably won by 0.523 secondss, clocking a time of  43.128secs to win the gold medal. The Australians were defeated by Germany in the race for bronze.

The strength of the Brits in the sprints was evident as they raced their bikes to the limit around the velodrome. Research on strength training for cycling is still not conclusive but there are do’s and don’ts which have obviously worked for the Brits.

Strength training can improve cycling performance through increased leg power, a greater ability to cope with local fatigue and improved upper body stability. Once skill and aerobic fitness levels have improved through normal cycling training, performance can be improved through introducing high intensity training even during the competitive season. This is a very specific way of inducing load onto the legs that forces local adaptations to take place. Just doing ever-larger volumes of cycling may well lead to overtraining.

For elite level cyclists, introducing explosive strength and body weight exercises is likely to improve sprint performance. Traditional strength exercises, however, may be detrimental in that they increase muscle mass and size, adding to the air and gravitational resistances that cyclists need to overcome. The important thing to remember is that new stimuli force the body to adapt and improvements in performance are made. New training methods should not be used in addition to existing training. Instead, try to keep one or two sessions a week aside for variety. These may include strength training, HIT or core work.

I think cycling could become my new favourite spectator sport!

Improve your cycling and train to be the best with this cycling training programme.