I have no excuse, lol…I just hadn’t thought of it before when I weight trained as I was never working towards any specific target nor comparing my results to others - just personal incremental improvement. So the exact weight never mattered. Still, the “I’m an idiot” moment was a pretty stark while listening to the podcast on the way in. On the bright side, even if the bar is light (i.e. I use a 35lb estimate for “standard” bar vs. 45lb olympic), I’m much closer to lvl 3 than I initially thought. Except chin-ups…those are pretty sad.
Personal bests now look much stronger, don’t they? 
But I agree that it is only useful if you want to compare yourself to some standard. Otherwise just lift, put on more weight and lift some more.
It’s funny because ever since I started lifting I had talked to friends or read things that all included the bar. Because this is the way that the strength training profession and the sports of Olympic lifting and powerlifting do it also, I never thought about it a different way. Until my girlfriend started lifting and we started discussing it.
In her head she was tracking it by only thinking of the weight on one side of the bar (e.g. she would say 25 for what was actually 95). It worked for her because it was just easier to look at one side of the bar than to double that and then add 45. And obviously if you’re not competing or ever comparing to other people then it doesn’t really matter. Just make that number go up!
Though it did make it very confusing initially when she would say she lifting 30lb and I would have to clarify how that 30lb was being counted.
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Question for the more experienced strength athletes here: how different would the benefits conceivably be between using dumbbells at home for all these exercises vs. committing to a gym membership and using a barbell for workouts?
I am thinking of buying the PowerBlock Elite adjustable dumbells and a workout bench for home (no room for a squat rack) since they are adjustable and go up to 70lbs each. I’m a light rider (under 130lbs) so per the suggested %'s included in the original post, I should be fine in hitting all of these targets.
Thanks for any thoughts!
I like this method! I have no idea how much time I lose doing the math trying to figure out how much to put on each side of the bar. I may switch to this! So long as it works for the individual, who cares what others think.
If you join a good gym and actually go, you’ll have access to more equipment and maybe even some decent trainers for coaching and technique help so that’s the gold standard. But, are you really going to go regularly and how hard will it be on your time?
Something done at home done regularly can be of great benefit even if it is not the gold standard.
For me- I have a pretty good Planet Fitness that is only 1/2 a mile from my house and only $10 a mo. But I still train at home! My 15 min morning routine would be 30 minutes if I hit the gym, about as good as you can get, but that’s still too much for me.
Thanks for your thoughts! I agree… there are gym options around me that I can afford, but it’s just so hard for me to do 2-a-days before and after work (bike in the morning, lifting at night) when I have to get in the car and drive somewhere to compete with a bunch of bros for the one or two squat racks. A 20 minute workout suddenly takes an hour or more.
I feel like having the ability to knock out meaningful exercises at home consistently each week would allow me to get the work done.
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try doing some honest step-ups (knee at 90 degrees, no bouncing) with a 70lb dumbbell in each hand, and tell me that’s not a legit leg workout. Ditto for weighted Bulgarian split-squats, Romanian single-leg deadlift, etc. That PowerBlock Elite dumbbell set is more versatile than you might think.
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The gym I go to has a 15kg bar sprinkled amongst the olympic bars. I didn’t even know there was such a thing until I used it by accident once.
I would start really light, and just with a few compound exercises. Get your body used to the neural patterns of doing the exercises with minimal stress and gradually build up from there. You should be able to get a pretty good strength routine in about 30 minutes a session once you know how to do the lifts and how to go from one to the next while maintaining some quality.
Before i got in to tris i was really trying to bulk up and even those were almost hardly more than an hour for each session.
As a general suggestion, free weights are very easy to find on craigslist and usually less thsn $1 per pound. You can spend about 2 to 3 months worth of gym membership on a starting set and do it on your own time to really help with scheduling.
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I understand, that these are “just” training goals.
But how do I get there? Which number of reps do you recommend for a cyclist?
Or should I just go with 5 reps even in bulding to this target.
Thanks a lot for the help 
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Don’t feel bad, I’m only slightly lighter than you but I’m 5’8" on the dot… I was shooting for 150 race weight this year, but looks like 152 was where I landed since I didn’t want to sacrifice quality of my harder workouts by under-fueling so I erred on the side of maintaining weight but feeling good over dropping the extra 2 lbs for missing some intermediate workout/power goals. I hear Jonathan talking about lower half of 140’s at 2.5 inches taller and I know I won’t be anywhere near that weight/height ratio.
Just to continue on @bclarkson’s post, I can do the majority of the level 3 lifts without doing any serious focus on lifting. It does look like some of the elite off-road triathletes have a pretty similar body comp, just a bit lower bf%, and triathletes in general tend to have a bit more weight/height than a typical cyclist or runner. I think @chad was being pretty conservative with some of these lifts, as I do agree that the gravity guys are probably doing considerably more than those lifts. I also don’t think I’m losing much in the trade-off though as I’m getting in to the mid 4’s for W/kg, but doing a lot of short power work I don’t really know my true FTP.
The basis of the list is once you’re there, you’re strong enough to compete and any additional gains require more work than it may be worth for most of us, or enough strength work such that it really detracts from your endurance training.
I lived the latter back when I was my strongest, squatting 2xBW, deadlifting 2.8xBW in particular, and all I did was get injured and my endurance was for crap. I think it helped me put out high peak power numbers for sprinting, but at the time I wasn’t doing anything that would require sprinting at all.
When I get back into my strength routine, I’ll aim for level 3 even though I’m more of a level 2 type athlete. I’ve had good success in Cat 5 crits, but there’s some big boys in Cat 3 who I can decimate on a hill and they can overpower me on any flat and it’s not going to matter how much I can squat and deadlift… it’ll matter more if I can raise FTP into the 4s, but even then I’m sure they’re in the mid300s just because they weigh 190. I should stick to road racing!
Off the top of my head…
- Crossfit
- Body weight fitness routines like Overcoming Gravity or others
- Find a personal trainer at a local gym
- Powerlifting programs like Starting Strength or 5/3/1
There a wide variety of approaches to building strength, and what’s appropriate will depend on (among other things) your capabilities now, what interests you, and your budget.
I’m a little late to this party, but I’m wondering what’s a good way to maintain the strength I have? 5x5 for each exercise once a week? I’ve spent my whole powerlifting life striving for increases that I never thought about what it would take to just maintain strength.
Look for lifting programs that are targeted for a cut. There are many out there. The theme tends to be a reduction in volume (so not 5 sets per exercise), but at a high intensity.
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When do you perform the last strength session before a race ? Maybe less weight or fewer reps ?
I have always the problem that with to long absence from my weights, i face DOMS when I start again. So I prefer a brake as short as possible, but I not want to risk the race performance.
Any opinions ?
Perhaps you can try 1 session per week where you do only one set of really slow reps to failure on 3-5 compound movements.
Good way to get your dose of DOMS 
It might be a way to lessen the impact on cycling training in general but I wouldn’t recommend it before a race. Slower reps focus on eccentric contractions which are the main cause of DOMS. Performing the reps to failure just amplifies the magnitude.
@Thorsten I did a lighter session on Tuesday before Sunday’s race. Usual exercises but lighter weights on leg movements. Also lower volume. For abs, back and shoulders I did more or less the usual. I too have a problem with DOMS when I skip my strength sessions for more than a week. I don’t race that often yet but training camps without gym are problematic as well.
Same for me. The week of a race I generally do only 1 workout, early in the week, with somewhere around two-thirds of whatever my working weight would otherwise be. Then I’m back at it the week after the race and it hasn’t been quite long enough away from weights for DOMS to return.