merlinextraligh

^ Weight lifting increases bone density.

https://www.naturalnews.com/010528_bo...y_mineral.html

https://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article.../bonemass.html

https://www.hawaii.edu/hivandaids/Eff...of%20Women.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23552825

Will Goes Boing

I see a lot of misinformation here, and it is obvious that weight lifting is not something that avid cyclists do because of how much workload you're already putting on your body by cycling alone. I have been a gym rat ever since I was in highschool and I'm 30 now. I just recently got serious with cycling and I must say it's hard to juggle both things without overtaxing my body.

What you guys need to realize is that it takes a surplus in calories along with weight lifting to add "bulk/weight". If you're cycling as much as an avid cyclist does on a normal basis there is no way you would take in enough calories to get really big. If "getting huge" was so easy, every guy who goes to the gym would look like Ronnie Coleman.

People don't realize that strength gain is related more to your central nervous system than actual muscle mass. At 155lbs (at 5'10) I'm able to dead lift 405lbs, bench press 225lbs for 3 reps, overhead press 135lbs for 5 reps, squat 285, and bang out 25 strict form dead hang pull ups. My goal when it comes to working out has always been performance oriented. I want to be as strong as possible while weighing as little as possible. At 155lbs it seems to be a good compromise for me. So seeing how I'm fairly light weight with pretty decent strength, I really see the benefits when it comes to sprinting from a stop, bursting up short climbs, and being able to get up to a fairly high speed and sustain it on the flats.

covpride

^^This, nice lifts by the way. I've been powerlifting the last 3 years, sitting around 220lbs right now. Wanting to slowly work my way to around 200. I think I can still keep getting stronger on the way down with more cycling as well. I compete in 1 or 2 powerlifting meets a year so definitely takes work to find a good balance.

merlinextraligh

Being light, and fit, certainly helps with acceleration, but there's precious little data that weight lifting makes you fast on a road bike.

And your first point, shows the problem. If you want to be fast on the bike, you need to push yourself hard on the bike. Weight lifting, particularly for you legs, in season, limits the work you can maintain on the bike.

So I get back to my basic point, lift for general health, fitness, lift for appearance, but beyond a basic program focused on core, and perhaps some off season work on your legs, lifting is not the route to get fast on the bike.

mshred

i work out.

uncrx2003

I would say that <10% of the people I ride with actually do any weight training. There some people that would whoop me up and down the road but probably have never picked up a weight in their life. After working out, my muscle tone and physique is much better. Let's be honest here, how many here on this forum actually races (<5%) so lifting should be recommend for pretty much everyone else. It's really hard to find time for me to lift in between work and riding 150-200 miles/week. I try to fit in about 3 one hour workouts per week. I try to focus on shoulders, arms, chest, back, and core.

RPK79

I go to the gym in the off season, but who has time for that stuff when the weather is nice. I'd rather be out cycling.

Carbonfiberboy 

I think the core point here, as it were, is rather the same as in the recent core workout thread. Tommy D. doesn't fear working core a lot, even during the season, because he knows it won't put weight on him if done correctly, and the principle of getting stronger by overload and recruitment works, while diet and workload keep the weight where it needs to be. Those who haven't been to the gym in a while will notice an almost immediate increase in their ability to move weight. This happens long before any concomitant increase in muscle size or weight. It's simply recruitment. IME better recruitment of muscles without increase in muscle size is beneficial for cycling endurance. It may not show directly as speed, but it makes the ride more comfortable, and as there is no weight gain, I don't see how it can hurt speed. I've been doing some cross-training, lost a little weight, and had 4 Strava PRs on Sunday's ride. Probably just a coincidence.

justkeepedaling

Sprinting is my upper body workout. Works the legs and the cardio at the same time, too

Nachoman

I can easily bang out a hundred miles on the bike and consider myself pretty fit.
So it's weird to go to the gym and see middle age women lifting as much or more weight than I can.

ConGrUenCy

I find lifting(and going to the gym in general) very boring. I cycle 5 days a week, swim thrice a week and try and run 1-2 times a week.

dm83

Getting better isn't always fun, it involves hard work at some point.

Dan333SP

Weight lifting doesn't necessarily make you slow. Ask this guy. He's winning a 1/2/3 race in my area a few months ago with a big gap on a field with a handful of ex pros and generally pencil thin fast racers. He's also apparently won on hilly road races (although this was a mostly flat crit).


For what it's worth, I maintain upper body strength/definition by regularly keeping up on my push-up/ pull-up/ sit up routine. I'm not built anything like that guy (everyone here calls him the Hulk), but I don't have toothpick arms and I've managed to get stronger as a racer.

hhnngg1

Weight lifting doesnt' make you slow, but it's not going to make you fast either, compared to just riding more.

At the amateur level, you can have all sorts of body shapes win, even big portly guys. Step it up to the pro level, and you see the sacrifices in upper body muscle needed to win, and this isn't just for climbing stages - none of the TT guys are hulks either.

If muscle mass did matter for speed for these roadies, you better believe they'd be hulked up. Just look at pro track cyclists - they've got amongst the biggest quads you'll ever see for their short burst efforts.

thehammerdog

Sorry I am very strong so I cannot relate. Huge massive biceps powerful quads and big belly

abstractform20

well, since strength is a general adaptation, and benching makes the chest, shoulders, and triceps stronger, why do you believe it a worthless activity to gauge one's fitness? although i presented its usefulness in combination with other exercises, so you're altering the original context.

being able to bench will improve one's ability to press and vice versa. granted, the press uses more muscle and motor units and is a more useful exercise for the majority of people.

jdon

Listen to Uncle BillyD kids.

ls01

When did you find a sprint?

ls01

You need to finish thinking this through. if, as a recreational cyclist, you have a limited amount of watts. Much lower than any pro. How is adding any upper body mass going to help you ride your bike fast, or climb?
The exact opposite is in fact true, you need to limit the weight of everything that doesnt help you go faster on the bike , or climb faster. Bigger biceps do not help you ride faster. Larger guads do.
You want to keep tone, fine, that wont hurt and might even help if you dont already have sufficient muscle tone. But pumping iron to beef up is counter productive to cyclings needs.

ConGrUenCy

Absolutely, but weights is going about improvement in the wrong way. Weights will NOT make you a better cyclist unless you're a sprinter. To get better, you need interval training, climbing practice, core strengthening exercises etc; not weights.
Swimming is good for lungs and heart (which directly aids cycling) and works the upper body, in fact it works the entire body, particularly if you can do all the different strokes. It also strengthens the hamstrings, which cyclist often ignore. I personlly believe swimming aids cyclists more than weights. For the bones, running a couple times a week might help.

max5480

$.02:

I've been working out, my friend hasn't been and he's been riding more. Last 2/3 times we hit the local 4 mile steep canyon, I dropped him before the top - something I rarely do. He'll prolly beat me up the 10 mile canyons, but gotta love that out of the saddle sprinting strength.

merlinextraligh

But if you were spending time on the bike doing sets of short intervals and sprints for the same amount of time you're in the gym, you'd have even greater "sprinting strength"

Working out is better for your cycling than sitting on the couch, but it's not as good as cycling.

The fallacy here is that you're seeing improvements in your fitness because you're working out. But the point is you could be even faster spending that time on the bike.

ConGrUenCy

But that proves absolutely nothing. What sort of training was your friend doing on the bike? Just riding around at his own pace won't do much, but if he was doing sprint intervals, hill intervals etc he might have most likely beaten you. As merlinextraligh said, had you spent the gym time on the bike instead doing the right sort of training, you might have done even better.