Originally Posted by
Alan K
Increasing muscle mass and strength is useful in a burst of effort when needed, but that alone will not help in a day long ride if your muscles are not trained well enough for insurance (endurance).
Granted, someone who has only done strength training is not going to have very good endurance.
But for trained endurance athletes, the endurance performance improvements from strength training are pretty well established. The improvements for older athletes appear to be even greater.