Strengthen Your Cycling

Strengthen Your Cycling

By David Kathmann, MS, RSCC, CSCS, NSCA-CPT

Written on January 28, 2013

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So you like to cycle and are probably a little competitive, whether it is on the weekend with a few friends, training for a few events each year, or on the national level.  Everyone is always looking for the competitive edge over their opponent.  That edge can be altering your nutrition, your total hours spent on the saddle, the sweat you pour during hill intervals, and recovery between rides.  However, a highly overlooked and shunned aspect of training for cycling is lifting weights.  I’m not talking about high repetition weight lifting with light weights performed in a circuit with incomplete rest intervals that focuses on endurance and “toning”.  I’m talking about lifting heavy weights (relatively speaking for each individual), like squats, deadlifts, pull ups, and power cleans, for low repetitions that focuses on significantly improving your absolute strength levels. Before you stop reading and think I’m trying to make you into the next Arnold Schwarzenegger with enormous, bulging muscles, hear me out. 

Let’s first cover a few definitions to make sure we are on the same page, starting with the term “strength.” Strength is the ability of your muscles to exert force against an external resistance.  In cycling, strength is used when you drive your pedals down with your legs. Strength is also like pushing against the ground while performing a squat. In order to build your strength, you need to find an external stimulus that makes your body work harder than it is accustomed to. Another pair of definitions I’d like to cover is “work” and “power.”  Work is defined as force multiplied by distance (F x D). The more force you apply over a set distance, the more work you complete. Power is defined as work divided by time (W / T). The more work you perform over a set time, the more powerful you are. There are plenty more physics definitions I won’t bore you with, but those are some important ones. How does this apply to cycling, and, more importantly, you? 

SRM training device is a tool that measures cycling power

Consider this, the person who is able to apply the most force over a set distance (works hardest) and is most powerful (works fastest) wins the race. Basically, the rider who is the strongest and most efficient relative to his or her bodyweight will win the race. (Yes, endurance is important too, but is beyond the scope of this article). I’ll provide an example.  Why can a male, typically (not always), beat a female in a head-to-head cycling race? A few reasons, first, males have a VO_2max advantage. A VO_2max is a measure of one’s endurance or the maximal ability of the body to utilize oxygen. Males have bigger hearts, have bigger lungs, have less body fat, have more muscle mass, and are typically stronger. Let’s look at the muscle mass and strength advantage because, ultimately, it is your muscles that move the bike.  More muscle mass and strength allows men to apply more force into pedaling, propelling them further with each stroke. The reason males are stronger and have more muscle mass is because they have more testosterone. Here’s another example: Why do cycling organizations test for steroids and testosterone? Steroids (a precursor to testosterone) aid in recovery and help boost your red blood cell count, but also make the user stronger, providing an unfair advantage. If strength didn’t matter in cycling, then steroids and testosterone would be allowed.  

  

If you still believe lifting heavy weights will slow you down on the bike, let me present you with some research.  In 2010, a review found that implementing heavy strength training (along with endurance training) for a highly trained National Cycling Team resulted in an improvement of short-term and long-term endurance capacity, and improved their time trial performance (1; additional research, 2).  This group did not have a significant gain in muscle mass, nor did they have a decrease in muscle capillary density (the amount of blood getting to your muscles), but they improved their strength and power. This improvement in short- and long-term endurance capacity has also been seen in untrained and moderately trained cyclists, but only when performing strength training at a high intensity (at least 80% of your 1 repetition max). The reason strength training improves endurance capacity is because strength training improves the neuromuscular system, the connection and function of your nerves to your muscles.  In turn, every contraction of the muscles is more forceful, which means more force being placed into your pedal strokes.

You will still look like this while lifting heavy weights

Not like this . . . I promise

            Strength training causes an improvement in movement economy too. This means that it takes less effort to maintain a certain power output. This is because you are stronger and every stroke of the pedal is at a smaller percentage of your maximal strength. Since you are stronger, this movement is a much smaller percentage than before. If you are worried that lifting heavy weights will make you look like a meathead, take heed, because an important note in this study is that there was no significant increase in body mass because the endurance side of training requires thousands of calories and when you are in a calorie deficit, even when lifting heavy weights, you cannot gain mass.

Do you want to know something even more mind blowing? Another study on competitive cyclists found that replacing hours on the bike with time spent in the weight room performing explosive movements (e.g. plyo box jumps) also improves short- and long-term endurance capacity on the bike (3).  So, if you were worried there wouldn’t be enough time in your busy schedule to put in your hours on the bike and lift weights, well you’re in luck because you can replace some hours on the bike with an hour or less in the weight room and actually improve your cycling performance. 

If you put a bigger engine in a car (let’s say trading in your Honda’s V6 for an Aston Martin V12), which obviously weighs more, does it slow the car down? Of course not!  The car is faster. Thus, if you add even a few pounds of muscle mass (your body’s engine) to your body due to weightlifting and eating, odds are you will shock yourself and have an improvement in your cycling (4). This is because you have significantly improved your body mass to strength ratio due to weightlifting.

     Robert Foerstemann squats and it doesn't slow him down.            Look at those quads!

                         (Yes, I know he is a sprint cyclist)

           You cannot, I repeat, cannot gain a significant amount of muscle-mass without gaining a significant amount of strength. However, if you put on too much fat mass, then you will definitely slow down because fat mass is dead weight [junk in the trunk (of your car)] and doesn’t contribute to improving your cycling. “The ability to gain muscle mass and minimize fat mass” talk will be saved for another day or you can speak with us over at Pro Fit Strength and Conditioning.

                                             Robert Foerstemann squatting the house! (484 LBS)

Here at Pro Fit S&C, we tailor all programs to each individual’s goals and have the education and experience to reach those goals in the most effective manner. If you haven’t checked us out or even talked with us about your goals, then you are missing out on an important facet of your training.  We love talking about exercise and any related topic, I promise we don’t bite and a friendly conversation with us is always free! So what are you waiting for?! You might even learn a thing or two.  In the mean time, get under that barbell and start squatting your way to better cycling performance and let your competition watch those powerful glutes of yours as you leave them in your dust. 

Disclaimer: All photos in this article are not property of Pro Fit Strength and Conditioning and are intended only for visual entertainment.

REFERNCES

1. Aagaard, P. and Andersen, J. L. Effects of Strength Training on Endurance Capacity in Top-Level Endurance Athletes. Scand. J. Med. Sci. Sports 20 (Suppl. 2): 39-47, 2010.  

2. Aagaard, P.; Andersen, J. L.; Bennekou, M.; Larsson, B.; Olesen, J. L.; Crameri, R.; Magnusson, S. P.; and Kjaer, M. Effects of Resistance Training On Endurance Capacity and Muscle Fiber Composition in Young Top-Level Cyclists. Scand. J. Med. Sci. Sports 21: e298–e307, 2011.

3. Paton, C. D. and Hopkins, W. G. Combining Explosive and High-Resistance Training Improves Performance in Competitive Cyclists. J. Strength Cond. Res. 19(4): 826-830, 2005.

4. Martin, J.C.; Davidson, C.J. and Pardyjak, E.R. Understanding Sprint-Cycling Performance: The Integration of Muscle Power, Resistance, and Modeling. Int. J. Sports Phsy. Perf. 2: 5-21, 2007.