Top Strength Training Mistakes by Cyclists
Most of us have heard about the profound benefits weight lifting for cyclists. However, strength training for cyclists is only beneficial if done the right way.
Many over-zealous cyclists start up in the gym guns-blazing in search of MAX GAINS as soon as possible, only to stop a few months later because they aren’t feeling good on the bike. In this article, let’s look at how you can effectively use strength training to become a stronger and faster endurance athlete.
Avoid these common strength training mistakes.
See Also: Masters Cycling Training Program
Mistake #1: Lifting Too Hard
We want strength training to help our cycling, not to make us look like a bodybuilder or win a strongman competition. As a six-foot-tall, 150-pound cyclist myself, I can tell you that walking into a gym with a bunch of true weightlifters can be a bit intimidating—and my spaghetti arms make me feel self-conscious. Focus on yourself.
Most people in the gym lift weights as their main sport, that’s pretty much all they do. You’re in the gym because you want to be a healthy human and ride bikes fast.
You’ll see plenty of athletes doing deadlifts, with veins bulging out of their necks and screaming at the top of their lungs, trying to get the barbell off the ground. This can create the perception that if you want to get strong, you gotta kill yourself. This couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Weight training for cyclists is different. You must always remember that the strength training is intended to augment your cycling. Lifting maximally is extremely taxing on your body, and if done regularly, overtraining will occur sooner rather than later.
Holding back can be really hard for us cyclists. We are used to smashing ourselves for hours on-end on the bike and it feels as though we must also kill ourselves in the gym to see gains. However, lifting is a completely different sport and oftentimes, less is more.
Most of your lifting sessions should rank from 6-8/10 perceived exertion. You should challenge yourself when lifting, but always leave something in reserve. Not only is it very taxing to lift maximally, but it’s also very unsafe—especially for cyclists.
We are far better off lifting a little conservatively year-round than lifting too hard for a couple months, but then ditching the weights for the bike because we are too sore to do our intervals when spring rolls around.
See Also: Complete Polarized Training Guide For Cycling
Mistake #2: Too Much Too Soon
Especially if you are a newbie lifter, you must exercise extreme caution in your initial weeks of lifting. Cycling is a non-weight bearing sport, and cyclists often have weak connective tissues and bones along with other muscular imbalances. You must start off conservatively to give those connective tissues time to adapt and also to work on proper technique before lifting any serious weight.
During these initial weeks, you will be lifting fairly light weights, like a 20kg barbell, with high-reps (~12-20 reps). Think of this as “base-miles” for lifting. We are building a strong foundation and accumulating reps to be able to handle higher loads later on. It can be really hard to hold back in this initial phase, but it really pays off in the long run.
Mistake #3: No Warm-up
I am guilty of this.
Oftentimes I want to get in-and-out of the gym as quickly as possible so I can get out on the bike. Not a good idea. I don’t ride at 130% of FTP out my front door so I probably should do a warm-up before doing squats.
A simple 5–10-minute warm-up will get the blood flowing and help you get the most out of your gym session. If you’re only spending ~2 hours per week in the gym, you want every rep to count.
With your warm-up, seek to activate all the muscles that you will be using before hitting the heavy stuff. This glute activation routine will get you fired up before lifting.
Mistake #4: Using Machines
For primary lower body lifts, don’t use machines. Machines do not require any stabilization, isolate muscle groups, and require way less muscle activation. Since everything is on one plane, you can just mindlessly do reps without putting in much effort. If you want to get the most out of your time in the gym, avoid that part of the room.
Free weight exercises that target large muscle groups will work your core, back, glutes, hips, quads, hamstrings, calves—you name it! What we want are multi-joint exercises that require movement of two or more joints. Think about a deadlift (multi-joint) vs. hamstring curls on a machine (single-joint). Both work your hamstrings, but deadlifts work just about every other muscle group too.
Mistake #5: Not Working Upper Body
Another common cycling strength training mistake is not working upper body. Many cyclists fear that working their upper body will cause unwanted upper body muscle mass. If you’re training seriously for cycling, it is darn-near impossible to gain a significant amount of muscle mass in your upper body. I’ve been doing upper body regularly for over 5 years and still have “Barbie arms,” as my sister once told me.
Incorporating some upper body work is essential to your strength training. It’s easy to see why for mountain-biking and cyclocross, but it is beneficial even for road cycling.
Apart from cycling, it’s important to have some good upper body strength for your health too. I often wonder how many broken collarbones could be prevented if cyclists spent more time building strong bones in the gym.
It will only take an extra 10-15 minutes of gym-time to add a couple of upper body exercises that will make an impact on your cycling and overall health. We want two movements: push and pull.
Push: A push exercise helps you to maintain an upright posture on the bike, stabilize your core, improves bike handling, and helps prevent shoulder injury. Think about how you “push” on the handlebars while riding the hoods.
Example exercises: Bench Press, Military Press
Note: Pushing exercises is one scenario where I would recommend using machine weights in some case. Some cyclists have such weak upper bodies that benching is actually unsafe. Work up to it by starting with machines first.
Pull: A pulling exercise will help with grip strength, bike handling, and riding when out of the saddle. Every time I smash a mega pothole, I’m always glad I’ve been doing bent-over rows to help me hang on. I’ve also noticed a big difference in my ability to ride out of the saddle efficiently compared to my pre-gym days!
Example exercises: Bent-over dumbbell row, LAT pulldown, row machine
See Also: Core Exercises For Cyclists
Mistake #6: Training Too Hard on The Bike
The best time to start up in the gym is in the offseason when bike training stress should be lower. During this time frame, strength training should serve as your primary intensity.
When combining cycling and weight training, volume and intensity in the gym should be inversely proportional to bike training. Intense lifting 2-3 days per week is not compatible with regular high-intensity interval training. During the winter, focus on building your aerobic engine and augmenting your cycling with strength training in the gym.
However, instead of just cruising around in Zone 2 all winter, there are some specific drills you can do to help transfer strength gains to the bike. We are building strong muscles in the gym, but if we don’t teach them to pedal a bike, it won’t do any good!
After working out in the gym, we want workouts that activate as many of those new muscle fibers as possible on the bike to teach them to pedal efficiently. Here are a few examples:
SFR’s (Slow-Frequency-Repetitions): Ride at around 80-90% of FTP and at a cadence of 50-60 rpm. The lower cadence increases muscle activation and builds fatigue resistance. Do 4-6 reps of 4-6 minutes in length with 3 minutes of rest in between.
Sprints: short sprints from 5-10 seconds in length are a great way to enhance muscle activation. Similar to lifting, they are entirely anaerobic—almost like power lifting on the bike and a great way to improve your sprinting and neuromuscular efficiency.
High Cadence Drills: Just like the SFR’s, high cadence training recruits more muscle fibers, but it teaches them to fire rapidly, and it will give you a silky-smooth pedal-stroke. These are very customizable, but I like to do 1 minute on/1 minute off for 5-10 reps at 80-95% of FTP and a cadence of 110-120rpms.
These workouts aren’t super taxing aerobically, but an excellent way to complement your strength training and improve your efficiency on the bike. If doing cycling and strength training on the same day, I recommend doing these workouts on your lift days to get more out of them.
We detail more neuromuscular exercises in our neuromuscular training blog!
Mistake #7: Stopping In-Season
Perhaps the most common cycling strength training mistake is stopping altogether when the season comes. After working hard in the gym all winter, you do yourself a disservice by not continuing with strength training during the season. After a few months, most of the gym gains will evaporate by the time racing rolls around.
That being said, strength training in-season is markedly different from strength training in the off-season. During the off-season we are focusing on getting as strong as possible in the gym. In-season, we want to do as little as possible in the gym to maintain strength. You will reduce strength training from 2-3 days per week in the winter to just one solid session on most weeks during the season with perhaps another lighter session mixed in depending on the week.
If you’re racing every weekend, this can be a challenge because you’re likely spending most of your time either racing or recovering. However, doing a short strength training session mid-week on a day when you have a bike workout will be enough to maintain most of your strength for a couple of months.
If there is a break from racing for a few weeks mid-season, incorporating an extra gym session can help top off your strength before another racing block. This is also a good time to do more core-work at home since we aren’t getting as much core strengthening from lifting.
See Also: Master’s Cycling Training
Sample Cycling Strength Training Program
So, what does this all look like? Here is a short overview of what your strength training program should look like throughout the year:
Primary Movements (Choose one exercise from each movement per workout to get all primary movements)
Hip extension: Squat or squat variation, Lunge
Hinge: Romanian deadlift, Single-leg RDL, Deadlift, Trap bar deadlift
Push: Chest press, military press
Pull: Rows, LAT pulldown
Training Year
Adaptation Phase: 1-3 weeks long, 2-3 days per week.
This phase is all about preparing your body to lift heavier weights and perfecting technique. If you’ve been lifting year-round, you can skip this phase.
Reps: 12-20 reps
Sets: 3-4 per primary movement
Weight: Light
RPE: 5-6/10
Hypertrophy phase: 4-6 weeks long… 2-3 days per week.
This phase is about building functional muscle mass that will help you pedal your bike faster. Muscle cross-sectional area of the thigh has been shown to be a predictor of cycling performance. Building muscle in the right places is a good thing! Spending time in this phase will allow you to improve your strength to a much greater extent in the long run. More strength = more power on the bike. It’s highly unlikely you’ll gain a ton of muscle mass if you’re riding your bike a lot, and the performance benefit will likely offset any weight gain. You’ll want to make sure your cycling nutrition is dialed before hitting the gym.
Reps: 8-10
Sets: 3-5 per primary movement
Weight: Moderate
RPE: 8/10 (you should have about two reps left in you at the end of each set).
Strength Phase: Continue indefinitely until you begin your race-build… 2 days per week.
This is the ultimate goal of the strength training program: lift heavy. If you’ve spent the right amount of time in the previous two phases, you will get a lot more out of this phase. For upper body exercises, stay in the hypertrophy range year-round, super heavy lifting is not necessary for our push/pulls.
Reps: 4-6
Sets: 4-5 per primary movement
Weight: Heavy
RPE: 8-9/10 (you should have one to two reps left in you at the end of each set)
Maintenance Phase: 1 day per week
You will start this phase as soon as you begin your race build and increase intensity on the bike. This phase is highly individual, some people find they can handle a bit more gym work in-season than others. In general, you want to lift heavy weight but with lower volume. This will allow you to maintain strength without overtaxing you. Again, we want to do as little as possible to maintain strength. Strength might drop off slightly during the year, but you will still be far stronger than if you hadn’t lifted at all.
Example: During the strength phase, you squatted 5x5 at 180lbs, two days per week. During the maintenance phase, you will do 3x3 reps at 180lbs, one day per week. You might also do some light kettlebell work one other day per week to aid in maintenance. If you feel as though your bike training is being negatively impacted in any way, you are doing too much!
See Also: Nutrition and Cycling Performance
Conclusion
There are many nuances to finding the right cycling and weight training schedule, but by avoiding these cycling strength training mistakes you are well on your way to cycling strength training success!
Questions? Comments? Coaching? Email the author: Landry@evoq.bike
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