Strength and conditioning for road riding: what, why and how?
Over the last few years there has been a gradual realisation and acceptance that strength training can have a meaningful impact on cycling performance, whether you're a recreational rider or an elite racer. This is backed up not only by scientific studies (Rønnestad et al., 2016) but by real-world experience amongst coaches and riders. However, while there is more information than ever out there, much of it good, there remains a great deal of confusion around what to do, why and when, which inevitably leads to ineffective training, and/or overtraining.
In this article we'll review what strength and strength training are, how and why strength training can help your riding, and how to start and get the most from your time in the gym.
What is strength?
As is the case with many words that have a scientific usage and a colloquial usage, there is often some confusion around what strength is and what it means. This can have consequences on how people train strength and what they define as improvements in strength. From a scientific and coaching perspective, we define strength simply as the ability to produce or apply force and we measure strength as the ability to produce or apply maximal force.
Physiologically, "strength" is not the ability to finish a race with a high power output or to ride up a 20% gradient at a good pace for 2 minutes, despite the fact that the cycling world might look at riders who do that and call them "strong". Why is this the case? Because the duration of force output in these two examples is too long for the display of maximal strength and could also be explained by physiological factors other than strength. However, a rider's ability to do those two things may be influenced by their maximal strength.
How and why does strength training improve cycling performance?
A robust body of scientific research has shown that making improvements in maximal strength through lifting weights can:
Improve endurance attributes, including cycling economy (power per unit of oxygen consumption), power at VO2max and fractional utilisation of VO2max (the percentage of your VO2max that you use at any given intensity/power)(Støren et al., 2008, Rønnestad et al., 2016)
Improve anaerobic function (e.g., sprinting ability)
Improve time-trial performance
However, strength training isn't just about power output benefits gained through improving force generation. For example, the extremely common sore lower back or niggly upper back/neck/shoulder blade can reduce our on-bike performance and our enjoyment of riding (most of us have experienced this at some point). Developing better mobility, more torso stability, better muscular endurance in postural muscles and improving balance are parts of strength training that will make you a better rider, who is more comfortable on the bike, with a more aero position. A good strength training programme will address all of these factors.
What should a good strength training programme for a cyclist look like?
Let's start with what it shouldn't look like! It may surprise many readers that despite the very real need to be wary of over-training, one major error that we tend see is not lifting heavy enough weights! This understandably stems from a number of fundamental errors:
Insufficient hip mobility to squat, deadlift or leg press correctly, safely and confidently
Insufficient torso stability to put increasing amounts of load through the hips and spine
Lack of confidence due to poor technique
Fear of overtraining
Poor periodisation: not starting lifting early enough in off-season and not progressively loading appropriately or lifting too heavy in-season.
We see a number of riders doing home strength workouts that use only a few bands or dumbbells. This kind of workout may improve certain properties that make you a better rider, such as stability, balance and coordination, but it's unlikely that the prescribed load is high enough to improve your maximal force generating abilities, and therefore it is unlikely that you will get the performance benefits that come with it.
So what should you do?
As a minimum:
Ensure that hip mobility work forms part of every S&C session warm-up so that your hips and lower back are prepared for the leg- and hip- dominant exercises that cyclists should perform. This will also have benefits for your position and comfort in the saddle.
Dedicate time and effort to learning to brace correctly and automatically – this will make your lifting safer and more productive and will mean that you get more from your "core" or torso stability work, rather than wasting your time with cheaty planks!
Prioritise leg- and hip-dominant exercises at intensities that are, in general, not much lighter than what you could lift for a maximum of 5-15 repetitions. If you think about it, this is quite heavy – if you grind up a 20% hill in Zone 5 for 1 minute at 60 rpm you will do 60 repetitions, which despite feeling really hard, is still no where near the absolute intensity of a leg press or back squat in which you cannot do more than 5 or 10 reps. It is lifting in these rep ranges that actually improves your strength, not dumbbell split squats with 5 kg in each hand...
Fuel well before and after strength training sessions, ideally with real foods (try to avoid powdered meal substitutes) that provide a healthy balance of protein, carbohydrate, unsaturated fats, vitamins and minerals. Protein intake, timing and supplementation is a controversial and complex topic, but our general advice for someone engaged in regular training is to ensure you’re getting 1.4–1.6 grammes per kg bodyweight a day, entirely from real food, and to top up with a high quality protein supplement only if your regular diet cannot meet this demand. Make your pre- and post-gym workout food part of this.
Lift twice a week in the off-season, and once every week or two in-season, if your body can tolerate it and if it fits with your race/riding schedule.
Know that sustainable and long-lasting improvements require long-term commitment to mastering strength training – you can't just cram in 8 weeks in the winter and leave it at that. This doesn't require many sessions per week, but it does require a commitment to some form of S&C throughout your whole off-season, and ideally year-round (although this doesn't necessarily mean lifting year-round).
Break your strength training programmes into blocks that allow you to sustainably increase load and develop technique. Typically for an off-season we would programme something like:
Block 1 (Weeks 1–4): Familiarisation, technique development, establishing training routine
Higher rep numbers, lower intensities, e.g. 2–4 sets of 8–12 reps at intensities around RPE* 6–8
Block 2 (Weeks 4–8): Work capacity development
Medium-high volume, medium rep numbers, medium-high intensities, e.g. 3–5 sets of 5–8 reps at intensities around RPE 7–9.
Block 3 (Weeks 8–12): Strength development
Medium-low volume, low rep numbers, medium-high intensities, e.g. 3–5 sets of 3–5 reps at intensities around RPE 7–10.
*RPE, rating of perceived exertion
You may have noticed that we haven't included learning to squat or deadlift correctly in the list above. This isn't because it's not important or hugely beneficial, but because it isn't essential to get started with meaningful strength training. In time you should definitely be striving to master these lifts, since they bring many performance and health benefits, but initially, leg presses and hip thrusts, both of which are less technically demanding are good starting points.
Also missing from the above is any upper body pushing or pulling, such as push-ups or dumbbell rows. We will nearly always include these in a rider's programme, since the strength and work capacity that these exercises develop can really help make you more robust in the upper body, which tends to reduce shoulder and back fatigue, amongst other benefits. However, we don't consider them an absolute essential to getting started with cycling-specific strength training. If time is tight, and life is stressful, we want you to do the bare minimum to make meaningful gains in the most important properites: leg and hip strength, and torso stability.
Hopefully these pointers will allow you to better understand and plan your strength training. Fortunately, if you don't want to self-programme we have training programmes available that follow the principles outlined here! Explore our training programmes.
References
Rønnestad, B.R., Hansen, J., Nygaard, H., 2016. 10 weeks of heavy strength training improves performance-related measurements in elite cyclists. J Sport Sci 35, 1435–1441. https://doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2016.1215499
Støren, O., Helgerud, J., Stoa, E.M., Hoff, J., 2008. Maximal strength training improves running economy in distance runners. Med Sci Sport Exer 40, 1087–92. https://doi.org/10.1249/mss.0b013e318168da2f