Dbark98

The past 4 or 5 weeks I've been getting back into cycling shape which includes riding 3/4 times a week with one of those rides being a hard group ride. I feel like I would benefit from doing some lower body exercise such as squats, leg press, etc. When should I lift? Should I ride mon/wed/fri and lift tues/thur/sat or should I lift on the same days I ride and do nothing on my non-ride days?

Thanks!

Bunyanderman

This

Wingsprint

For whatever it is worth, this past winter I spent around 70% of my workouts on the trainer and the other 30% using weights, and I had great results. When I got back on the bike outdoors in early Spring, I felt like I was a month ahead of where I was the previous Spring.

kini62

All that weight training my legs does is make my legs tired so I don't get as much out of my time on the bike. If overall fitness is your main goal then weight training in addition to riding makes sense.

If your goal is to be faster on your bike then your time is better spent riding then lifting.

Pactin

That seems to me like overtraining. I'm sure it's dependent on the person, but having just one "full" rest day off and then 6 days on would probably hinder your performance or slow down your gains. Here's an example of my schedule:

Mon - Shoulders, biceps, back
Tues - Intervals/ Hard group ride
Wed - Rest/ Stretch
Thurs - Intervals/ Hard group ride
Fri - Chest, tri's, core
Sat - Easy spinning
Sun - Rest/ Stretch

Of course you should take this with a grain of salt, as I'm no coach and your goals are probably different than mine, but maybe it could work for you. My focus is on top speed, little bit of endurance and aesthetics. The two rest days are essential as I feel fatigued when doing more than two straight days of hard workouts.

Antonio_V

Hey, I think it would help a sprinter/short course rider more so than an endurance rider, if any at all. My advice is, be careful with weights. I dropped them and haven't looked back. I combined weights roughly 1 hour 3 times a week whilst riding 15-20km 5 times a week. Three things i found:
1. I felt hungry and gained weight. I found myself eating more, which got worse if i weight trained during the winter months.
2. I got sick easier. Combined with riding, a weights session naturally lowers your immune system, so stock up on the zinc and vitamin C.
3. Fatigue came sooner. At times, my ego in the gym sabotaged my cycling progress. Throwing on more plates led me to putting on more muscle which then left me gasping for air on the bike (more muscle mass requires more O2). I would suggest lifting on the days you aren't riding, light weight!

Cheers

gregf83 

Benefit how? Any serious lower body weight lifting is going to impact the quality of your bike workouts and slow your progress. It's very unlikely you're being held back by leg strength.

StanSeven

Greg's comment and Bunyanderman's quoted reference is pretty much everything there is. Weight training for the entire body is good in overall conditioning and strength. But it don't make you a faster cyclist or give you greater endurance.

f4rrest

Two sets of leg extensions, twice per week keeps knees happy on the bike by balancing the quads.

One-armed exercises with light dumbels and cables indirectly keeps your core toned without over stressing vertebral disks. It's easy to overtrain your back if already doing high mileage.

90 minutes total/wk is plenty if you superset and don't sit around between sets.

When I want to lose 10lb quickly, I stop lifting for 2 weeks.

When mileage gets over 200/wk, I have to cut weights back to 1 session.

RPK79

In the off season I go to the gym. I do some modified squat and dead lift exercises with dumbbells the pt showed me that work my whole body as well as hit the various machines. I don't think it helped my cycling at all, but then I always have a couple month period of time right before my cycling season begins where all I do is sit at a desk 70 hours a week.

Gyrine

Never understood the fuss (mythology really) about (not) mixing weight training in with a regular cycling traing plan. If you are using your muscles for sport why wouldn't you want them strong and conditioned? Besides, both Friel and Carmichael highly recommend weight training for both injury prevention and having the best cycling experience.

Read what the pro coaches say and develop some kind of cycling conditioning plan. It doesn't have to be highly structured and racing focused. There are many recommendations for cyclists who just want to have enough shapes to enjoy riding without struggling and injury, especially in group rides.

Right now, in the midst of the summer riding season, I incorporate weight lifting into the days I've designated as rest or that I'm not riding due to other commitments or weather. I focus on my back as the priority with legs second; upper body randomly and abs in the evening at home.

therhodeo

Not everyone is on the right pharmaceuticals to recover from lifting and riding though.

StanSeven

I don't think anyone disagrees with that. However some people think spending lots of time doing leg exercises will make them faster and give them cycling endurance.

Carbonfiberboy 

First a note specifically to the OP: now is the wrong time to mess with weight training if you live in the northern hemisphere. I recommend waiting until after cycling season, say October, to start weight training if that's what you want to do.

I used to agree with Greg, but that's because I was doing it wrong. In the past, studies of various cycling training modes have usually agreed that conventional weight training contributed little or nothing or even negatively to endurance cycling. The only positive note was for sprinting. For many years, I used a winter training program of 3 sets of 30 which was good conditioning but not terribly effective for cycling performance.

Greg's comments are correct for conventional weight training, which came to us from either powerlifting or bodybuilding research and practice. This type of training usually involves a lot of time at the gym doing a lot of work, which does take a lot out of one. And that's what it's supposed to do. Weight room haunts spend maybe 15 minutes on aerobics during a typical session. Any more takes away from their primary goals, which are strength and size.

Recently researchers have been investigating Scandinavian training methods; specifically how do their Nordic skiers get so much faster than most folks? One of the things that has emerged is the popularization of polarized training, as we have seen in this forum. The other thing they've been doing differently is weight training. They emphasize low reps, heavy weight, and little time in the weight room. Check out these three studies with links to their full PDFs:

https://pelotrain.co.za/wp-content/up...kins-Paper.pdf
https://www.hokksund-rehab.no/filarki...ES_CYCLING.pdf
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/...a98e000000.pdf

Stoker and I did conventional weight training in early winter to build muscle mass in aid of our weight loss program. We've been using a modification of the above methods since early January with a great deal of success. We may not be good examples of how most people should go about this, since we are older: 66 and 69. We recover much more slowly, need to be more careful not to get injured, and need more muscle growth stimulus all just because of our age. Ours has been a conservative program.

We worked through two plans for our early winter conventional weight program. We used a mountain climbing fitness routine and Kris Gethin's plan from his Body by Design. If one has not done any weight training recently, I recommend using a conventional program early in the winter to get technique down and strengthen connective tissue. If you're more interested in body recomposition, Gethin's plan is as good as anything. If you're interested in cycling performance, Friel's plan from The Cyclist's Training Bible is a better choice. Once you work through those plans, say 12 weeks, you'd probably be ready for the more Scandinavian thing.

We transitioned to a more intense plan over a period of weeks using 3 sets, 10 to 8 to 6 reps on Tuesday and 6 to 5 to 4 reps on Thursday. That was during what might be termed our pre-competition period from early January to May. In early May, we switched to our competition period workout. We are now doing only two sets, 12 reps and 4 reps, and only one day a week, in our case Tuesday.

So how much weight? In our 3-set pre-comp period we did approximately 80% - 90% - 100%, meaning that we used weights which resulted in failing the last rep of the last set. If we could do more than our target reps on the last set, we increased the weight for all the sets next week. During our comp period, we are using 80% - 90% for our 12 rep set and 100% for our 4 rep set, which is to failure. If we can do 6 reps, we increase the weights for next week.

We never tried doing 3 sets of 4 reps because we don't think 4 reps on the first set is a good practice for us, injury-wise, however it might have been for those elites in the research.

I don't recommend doing weights more than twice/week during pre-comp and once/week during comp. It takes too much out of you. I recommend an hour of cycling before doing weights during winter training and pre-comp, either on the road, trainer, rollers, or spin class. During comp, 30 minutes or more depending on recovery.

During both pre-comp and comp periods, we have been doing the following workouts:
Barbell half-squats: only down to where the knee angle is 90°. Going lower is counterproductive.
Horizontal rows: good for the core and general comfort on long rides.
Back machine: on this one we don't go below 12 reps for any set.
One-leg press on either leg sled or horizontal leg press machine, again only to a 90° knee angle.
Bench press: you can dispense with this if you want.
Triceps cable extensions: to improve arm strength for long rides. You can dispense with this if you want.
Hip flexion: either on a hip flexion machine or using a Roman Chair to lift dumbbells held between your feet.
Calf raises: on a Smith machine, one legged, with toe on a block. If you don't have a Smith machine, hold dumbbells.

Only take a 1 minute rest between sets, 2 if absolutely necessary but no more. Studies have shown that one can lift heavier with a 3-4 minute rest like powerlifters use. However, lifting heavier with a long rest did not correlate with increased performance on the bike and did correlate with increased injury rate. Bodybuilders use the 1 minute rest. Besides, it's quicker to get out of the gym.

Did it work? It sure as heck made us stronger and altered our body composition for the better. We have been riding with faster people on our group rides. I got on my rollers and did 20' of FastPedal last night, which I haven't done in months. I was spinning the gear and rpms (115 at VT1) that I used to use 10 years ago, even though my resistance unit has a heavier fluid than it did then. That's probably the RFD (rate of force development) discussed in one of the above studies. So I guess is works. Sorry, no power meter.

We're certainly going to start a similar program again this coming October.

Dbark98

Thanks to everyone for the great input!
I failed to mention this but the reason I was thinking of incorporating a weight routine is because I'm lacking strength. Ive found that I can't keep up with accelerations because I just can't match everyone's speed. If become stronger, than I'll be able to push a bigger gear easier thus going faster. Is this wrong?

StanSeven

You are much better off riding more then. First endure you have enough base riding. Next concentrate on getting faster by doing speed (interval) work. Be sure you improve power through specific power intervals and things like hill climbing. Either buy a book on training and use one of their programs or search online for a program. After you get back consider joining a group either fast rides.

pdedes

carbonfiberboy's program is very similar to the one i used to use when racing. if you are looking to match acceleration now, you're behind. forget about weights, use a comprehensive interval program to target all your energy systems.

Grambo

This time of the year you might want to try some plyometric exercises on off days. You can incorporate some light hand weights if you like but done correctly and in very quick succession they can be quite challenging with the main focus on developing fast twitch muscle response. For giggles try doing 30 push ups to full jump (do a push up followed by standing up and jumping straight up into the air as high as you can in one fluid motion) followed by 30 squats to full jump followed by a 1 minute chair pose. No break between the exercises. You can also work in core work, mountain climbers curls and overhead presses. Just string 5 or 6 exercises together doing 15 to 30 reps of each exercise with a focus on doing them as quickly as possible with no rest between the exercises. 3 or 4 sets over all and you have a very challenging quick workout that will supplement your cycling.

makeitso5005

It's interesting that most here assumes an individual that is "getting back into cycling shape" already has an incredible position on the bike, perfect power delivery and no muscle imbalances and only needs to train the cardio system. Many of those types of issues can be assisted with a weight lifting program. Be it back/core/glute strengthening to be able to hold a more aero position for longer, be it box squats to help with standing power or whatever the individual needs to address. Can you do it on the bike? Sure... but not sure how many people have the fortitude to hold a painful aero position for hours just to develop some more back and core strength. Same with pedaling circle, to not cheat for hours and concentrate on firing their glutes or hamstrings and not compensate by using poor form after it starts hurting. If your sole goal is cycling speed and are a sucker for pain have hours upon hours to dedicate toward it... sure, do it all on the bike. But if you're a recreational athlete then there's really no reason not to incorporate some weight lifting into your program. Not only will it help with your day to day activities but help with those on the bike.

Carbonfiberboy 

Yes, IME it's wrong. To accelerate you want to spin a gear at high cadence. You'll be able to develop more power at 100+ cadence during accelerations, but you won't be able to hold that or you'll blow up. So accelerate by spinning fast, then shift as soon as you have a draft. Experienced crit racers will probably have better advice.

A good workout is to ride a steady 100 cadence in slightly rolling terrain, shifting as necessary but holding that precise cadence, working hard but not at all at your limit. Do two 30 minute intervals like that with 5 minutes easy pedaling at lower cadence between.

To develop power in your legs, right now, find a long even hill of at least 10 minutes and do a set of 3 X 10' hill repeats, holding a steady 50-55 cadence, again going hard but not at your limit. Hold your upper body absolutely still and do it all with your legs, pedaling circles. Recovery is the time to coast back to the bottom.

This is a good time of year for this type of training, though a couple months ago would have been better. Do each of these once/week. If your knees won't take this latter one, you have other issues to correct.