Strength Training for Cyclists, What the Trials Show

James. Hello, and welcome to the WattPlan Podcast. I'm James. When I'm not juggling family, the day job, the odd podium and building WattPlan, I'm reading sports science I should have put down hours ago. This week, the classic January casualty. Strength work. Every winter I swear I'll do it, and by February it's gone. So does a cyclist without a gym actually need it? Lyra's here, our AI research voice, and every study she mentions is linked in the show notes.

Lyra. You and most of the turbo room. Yes, it's worth doing, but for durability more than watts. One or two short bodyweight sessions a week, fitted around the riding rather than piled on top of it. What it probably won't do is lift your threshold. If anyone promises you a power gain from squats, they're selling something.

James. Durability's a bit of a woolly word, though. What do you actually mean by it?

Lyra. Fair. Resistance work builds strength, it helps your nerves and muscles work together, and it stiffens tendons. For a cyclist, the strongest case is resilience through the hips, trunk and lower back, the bits holding you in position for hours. And some loading through the skeleton, which riding gives you very little of. I'll be honest about how far the evidence goes on both.

James. I've definitely read that lifting makes cyclists faster, though. Is that just gym folklore?

Lyra. Not folklore, but it comes with a big condition. We looked at two reviews for this episode. The first is from 2013, in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports, by Bent Rønnestad and Iñigo Mujika. It looked at endurance-trained runners and cyclists who added heavy or explosive strength training, and for cycling it recommends heavy strength work for economy, which is how much power you get for the oxygen you use. [2]

James. Heavy as in proper barbell heavy?

Lyra. Heavy as in heavy. That's where they found the most convincing evidence of a benefit to cycling performance. On power at threshold, the findings were mixed. So the watts story is real, but it's a barbell story, not a living room one. If your limiter is aerobic, and for most of us it is, strength work won't fix it. The riding does that.

James. Why would lifting make you more economical on a bike, though? It's a completely different movement.

Lyra. The review's best guesses are that your nerves recruit the muscle more efficiently, and the muscles and tendons get stiffer, so less of each pedal stroke is lost in the give. Those are the authors' explanations rather than something every study measured, so hold them loosely. The economy result is the part with the evidence behind it.

James. So the squats in front of the turbo are doing something else entirely.

Lyra. They are, and the second review is the more interesting reason to bother. It's a 2012 systematic review in BMC Medicine, Olmedillas and colleagues, which pulled together 31 studies of bone in cyclists. Despite some conflicting results, adult road cyclists in regular training tended to have low bone density in key areas, the lower spine being the one they mention. Their reading was that road cycling doesn't appear to build bone at all. [6]

James. All those hours and nothing for the bones? That's a bit grim.

Lyra. It's the position. Long hours supported by the saddle, and then a lot of sitting and lying down to recover. Mountain biking, or mixing cycling with other sports, looked better. What that review didn't test is whether bodyweight work changes any of it, so think of it as some loading, not a fix. And if your bones are a genuine worry, that's a question for your GP, not a podcast.

James. Here's my problem, though. Six hours a week. Surely twenty minutes on the bike beats twenty minutes on the floor?

Lyra. For your threshold, probably, yes. But that's the wrong trade. These sessions are short enough to sit after a ride you were doing anyway, so you're not swapping riding for strength. The real failure is the opposite one. Strength bolted on top of an unchanged week, the total creeps up, nothing comes out, and something gives by February.

James. Which is my January to February, every single year.

Lyra. So the useful thing about the way WattPlan does it is the rules about where strength isn't allowed. It's optional and off until you turn it on. It goes after a ride you're already doing, never on a rest day, never the day before a hard or long ride, and not at all in taper or race week. A recovery week gets one gentle session at most. If a week has nowhere sensible for it, you get fewer sessions rather than a worse ride.

James. That's the bit I always get wrong. I do it the night before the long ride because I've finally got a free evening.

Lyra. And then the long ride pays for it. The sessions themselves are bodyweight only, fifteen to twenty five minutes, and they build slowly, a little more work in each movement for three weeks and then an easier one. If you already go to a gym, tell the plan about that night instead, and it won't put a hard session on the day after.

James. So I could keep my Tuesday class and the plan just works round it.

Lyra. That's the idea. You add it under Schedule like a club ride, it stays out of your Load, and the hard days move to where they don't collide with it.

James. Say I'm starting from nothing. I haven't done a press-up since school.

Lyra. If you're new to this, or coming back after years off, start with the gentlest level, Foundation, once a week. The usual way this ends in week two is starting with the harder sessions, being sore for days and missing rides. Every movement has an easier option, so use it first, and stop any movement that hurts.

James. And for someone who lives by their power numbers, will any of this show up?

Lyra. If you train with power, nothing on your chart moves, and that's deliberate. Strength stays out of your Load, Fitness and Form, so don't go looking for it there. If you're doing the harder sessions, ride first and leave a few hours before the strength if you can. And if the ride has flattened you, cut the session short or skip it. The ride was the point of the day.

James. What about racers? I'd have thought they'd want more of this, not less.

Lyra. If you race, the bigger win from lifting is the heavy kind, from that first review, and that's a gym job with coaching, not fifteen minutes on the lounge floor. What the bodyweight work gives a racer is the same as everyone else, a sturdier body for the training. And the plan keeps strength out of your taper and race week, because fatigue there buys you nothing.

James. So where does the evidence actually stop?

Lyra. Quite early. Neither review tested sessions like these. One is about heavy and explosive lifting in trained runners and cyclists, the other about bone in cyclists, not about what strength work does for it. So the case for bodyweight work is a reasoned one, sturdiness and some loading, not a measured gain. Nobody has run the trial of fifteen minutes after a turbo session, twice a week, for a whole winter.

James. Give me something to actually do before Sunday, then.

Lyra. On your Plan, tap Add strength sessions, choose one a week at Foundation, and save it. Do it straight after the ride it's listed with, while you're still warm and changed. And when a movement starts to feel easy, slow the lowering part down rather than adding more.

James. Once a week, straight after a ride, easy version first. And not the night before the long ride, which is the one I'll actually have to stick to.

Lyra. Strength won't make you faster on paper. It makes you the rider who's still turning up to ride in March.

Lyra. The full article and every study we mentioned are on the WattPlan blog, linked in the show notes. And if you've enjoyed this, follow the WattPlan Podcast wherever you're listening, so you don't miss the next one.

James. And if you want a plan built around the time you've actually got, get WattPlan on the App Store or Google Play. Thanks for listening.

Voices produced with ElevenLabs. James's voice is a clone of his own, Lyra is an AI voice, and James reviews every episode.