Peter Sagan shows how he boosts his power with gym work

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Peter Sagan has shown off his gym and stretching skills, with his Bora-Hansgrohe coach and directeur sportif Patxi Vila revealing that the world champion often heads to the gym to work on his maximum power, even during the season.

Sagan first showed off his flexibility in a video last year, revealing he can do full splits. He has worked with specialists in Belgium to avoid injury and boost his core strength but the latest 57-second video posted on social media showed him working in the gym, combining weight work with other core and flexibility exercises.

"Sagan, and all our riders usually do gym sessions focused on improving their strength. We're not looking for muscle hypertrophy but an increase is maximum strength of the muscles used in the power stroke," Vila explained to La Gazzetta dello Sport.

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Riders, especially sprinters, often work in the gym to boost their strength but rarely keep up the strength work during the season, preferring to focus on road training. Vila is convinced this is a mistake, with even a Giro d'Italia contender including gym work in his training.

"It's important to work on maximal power because racing and resistance training on the climbs (Sfr) trains the ability to push at a certain power but does not train maximum power. Higher power gives you a more economic pedal action at threshold," Vila said.

"During the season the squat is one of the preferred efforts. We do four sets of four efforts with an 80 or 90 per cent load, carefully controlling the speed is high."

The Paris-Roubaix champion spent time at altitude at Park City, Utah after going winless in the Tour of California in May. He is now back in Europe and will ride the nine-day Tour de Suisse as final preparation for the Tour de France.

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