Granted there are no pictures posted here except one guy, but even he isn’t really all that jacked, maybe compared to a “cyclist” he is. Hell, his first photo is jacked compared to a lot of cyclists, but I wouldn’t say he is compared to a lot of people who lift a bunch and try to get bigger while staying pretty lean.
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I have seen some local jacked endurance riders. It is doable and genetics play enormous role…from time to time there are freaks of nature and we all have seen one. It is always better to incorporate muscle building in your training. It will help you big time later in life. I have decided to put more muscle mass and i actually did. Feel much better. For average person who is not paid to cycle strength training will make you feel better all around. Plenty of locally racing endurance athletes near me…and the old guys are example for great endurance and nothing else. Good that they have carbon bikes if not they can’t lift them if they fall with that spaghetti arms. All of them look fragile…after seeing this in person i have decided to chose another direction. I can’t stand seeing grown man with spaghetti arms, good that they have cardio fitness, but that’s nowhere near enough for better heath. Still better than nothing! Just my 2 cents. I’d like to see more lean average endurance athletes.
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Amen. I was selected as volunteer UCI anti-doping control during the Tour of California. Was back stage with Sagan and Gaviria and TJ Van Garderen (I was his chaperone). Much rather look like Sagan than TJVG.
You have to question why they are doing it. Nick Bare, the guy posted below, sells supplements. Having the right “hybrid” look is for the camera and to sell more supplements. It doesn’t appear that he ever won anything - endurance, crossfit, or otherwise. Or maybe he likes to workout a lot and likes the look but he’s main job is selling.
Have these other jacked cyclists ever won anything? I think it would be safe to say that no top endurance athlete is going to carry around an extra 30 pounds of muscle and win anything next to other athletes who have optimized their body composition for the event.
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Absolutely for some genetic freaks. I grew up with a guy that was an excellent weightlifter with a deadlift, bench, squat total around 1200 lbs, pretty heavset guy. He could also run a 37 minute 10km. He definitely put the work in, but had amazing genetics.
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You would be quite surprised how “jacked” your upper body can get from consistently doing sets of dips, push-ups, and pull-ups three days each week even while riding 10ish hours per week as long as you get the calories and protein. You won’t win a bodybuilding contest but you will gain size and definition. Dip bar and pull-up bar you can order from Amazon and push-ups you just need a floor. No gym needed; do the workout any time of day or night. Easy.
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right. I’m no @Aeroiseverything - he could be my son or grandson - but I’m just getting started and FWIW if you wanna see an old dude upper body and compare it to your social media influencers here ya go
the pecs look more impressive with arms down 
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Good ol’ lance . I like how fit he is it is inspirational for that age. https://youtu.be/Y1RROJsRc-I?si=SQ5OyzJJkMxIhUBo .
I can pretty easily build some muscle in the offseason when cycling 10-12 hours a week, 2-3 gym workouts a week. It just needs a lot of food and consistency.
When I’m cycling 15 hours or more I can only maintain or slowly loose muscle and strength until I build it back in the fall.
I could probably be 2-3 kilos lighter with less strength work and be marginally faster on the bike but I’m almost 38 and want to stay healthy and injury free as long as possible.
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Realistically, to look jacked where non athletes notice you will need to be in the gym 3-5 times per week for roughly an hour each session. Does that leave enough time for decent cycling (10+ hours) and recovery? Potentially yes. If we’re talking proper long distance athletes (20 hours +) then probably no.
So what’s an example of someone I believe to be a normal human, natural, strong and decent on a bike? The Youtuber Jasper Verkuijl. His job would make steroids very difficult (pilot, getting your cycle and ancillaries through airport security and worrying about drug tests).
He has a good deadlift (175 kg for reps) and fantastic front squat (120 kg for reps) and a great single leg squat at 90 kg for reps.
He has a good body but not what I would call ‘jacked’. He could get bigger by doing more hypertrophy work and training other parts but then he would be slower on a bike. He’s a good example of a strong natural cyclist with a great work ethic and day job.
The other examples would be Olympic track cyclists (drug tested so lets assume natural but even if they do use they are forced off it and don’t have carte blanche access to pharmaceutical help all year), they definitely look more ‘jacked’ but you’d have to check their Strava’s for their long distance capabilities.
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Just don’t be this guy
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Funny how he does all that work and doesn’t looked “jacked”. Armstrong looked very jacked in comparison and I wouldn’t put it past him to visit an anti-aging doc. And why shouldn’t he as he’s not competing.
The most interesting thing about that Armstrong video posted up there is that you can still see that killer instinct in Armstrong. Most cyclists don’t have it to that degree.
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That old trick of put on shorter shorts to show more thigh higher up, to make it look as though they hsve changed 
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Your grandson
Very sweet of you to think of me first though 
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grandson is a stretch but hey I’m early sixties so maybe its possible? My kids are in their twenties and not married, so lets go with son!
somewhere on this forum is an old post, with a picture of you, and I still recall thinking “wanna be Aeroiseverything when I grow up!”
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Lift big, ride long, eat lots.
And truthfully, most cyclists don’t know what TF they’re doing in the gym. If they even get into the gym at all. The lifting plans I’ve seen from cycling coaches look like they were designed for 90’s women hoping to get “toned.” It’s just not smart programming. Most lifts are in some super high endurance rep range, nowhere close to failure, without any sense of progressive overload. Relatively low volume all added together. You’re just not going to get jacked on these aerobics-marketed-as-strength plans, even if you stopped cycling all together and ate five rotisserie chickens a day.
Then there are the rare coaches who actually know what they’re doing and prescribe an extremely low rep range (3-6), chasing after neuromuscular adaptations–similar to powerlifters and olympic weightlifters. The goal is to build as much strength as possible without adding more mass. You’re also not going to see much bulking up from this strategy (relatively speaking).
If you want to lift for hypertrophy, you need a plan that is targeted towards that. You still can get hypertrophic gains in the very low and very high rep ranges with enough volume, but the hours it would take is pretty prohibitive, especially as cross-training for an entirely different sport.
I’ve lifted for most of my adult life. Might as well consider me a lifter who dabbles in ultra-distance cycling. I have more muscle now than I did back in my football days. My maxes are higher now on squat and DL (bench is another story). That’s all been built back up from scratch in the past few years, after a 5-ish year hiatus from lifting, during which I picked up cycling. The main difference now (other than a lack of explosive strength) is that I can roll out of bed any given weekend and crank out a century like it’s NBD.
My lifting has gotten a lot smarter thanks to the increased availability of science-based lifting content. I’ve found that I can stack an hour of lifting back-to-back with an hour of intervals if I keep the lifting very anaerobic (5-8 rep heavy sets @ 1-2 RIR). I think 5-8 is the sweet spot for compound lifts in relation to my goals of building strength and mass without risking injury. Most other lifts end up in an 8-12 or 12-15 range, depending on the lift and goal. 8-12 reps @ 1 RIR tends to be for more complex movements that aren’t as systemically fatiguing as the big compounds. 12-15 reps @ 0 RIR/RPE 9-10 is more for the isolation exercises where hypertrophy (read: vanity) is the main goal. It takes a while to understand what ranges work best for what lifts in relation to your goals.
I absolutely, one-thousand percent pay the price for this in cycling, especially when it comes to hills. But lifting makes me happy, so what can you do.
There’s a point in ultra endurance where you end up going full circle and recruit your Type II muscle fibers when your Type I fibers fatigue. You can actually get away with a lot more muscle mass in the extremely long distance categories. Ultras don’t require as much top-end and performance is less determined by raw athleticism compared to other forms of cycling. Endurance gains stick around, so you can take huge breaks from cycling training, hit the weight room hard for months, and not be utterly devastated when you get back on the bike. The marginal gains by this or that wattage-optimization can be entirely neutralized by a competitor who takes half as much time getting in and out of the convenience store. Ultras are not competitively saturated either. You’ll find a lot of pro-level athletes who dabble in the really long races and they’ll lose to people with better strategy, grit, and/or self-support skills. It’s hard to find athletes who have all of those attributes all together, so what you lose in speed you might make up for in other areas.
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Combining Hard gym workouts with your primary sport is a must. After 50 when sarcopenia strikes it even more important. Strength training helps daily life enormously just like endurance training, you will be able to do more for longer.
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I’ve been wondering about this recently. I know studies now support what lifters knew for a long time about muscle memory (a lifter’s ability to quickly regain muscle built years ago and then lost). Do studies also support the same concept for endurance sports? So someone who was a highly trained endurance athlete in their 20s who picks the sport back up again in their 40s or 50s will more quickly get to a higher level of fitness than if they’d never done the endurance work in their 20s.
I doubt there are any studies but anecdotally, it seems to be true.
Studies show that one can gain significant fitness in 6-12 weeks. If you road previously at a high level for 5 years, then you already have all those years of muscle firing patterns hard wired and don’t need to relearn those. You just need to train for 6 weeks and get into some shape.
Also, if you were an outlier in your 20s then you’ll probably be an outlier in your 40s. I know a guy who road the Olympics (no medal but top 10) and raced pro (rode the Giro even). He retired from cycling, worked, gained weight and didn’t ride at all for years. Then he decided to race again, and within a few months of training was in good enough shape to lap competitive masters 1,2,3 fields. He still had the superior genetics.
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One thing we do know from studies is that for many metrics the baseline seems to be higher, even after complete detraining. Additionally, a decent percentage of many adaptations can be retained by a small amount of maintenance work. Some things don’t seem to change at all even after months of completely sedentary lifestyle. For example studies have shown no decrease in capillarization during detraining. Mitochondrial content will tank, but aspects of mitochondrial function linger on for much longer.
I’m curious if endurance can act as maintenance for strength gains and vice versa. I alternate between lifting and cycling (sometimes taking months off of one to focus on the other) and it doesn’t seem to set me back that much in the de-emphasized discipline (compared to if I had just been completely sedentary for that time). FTP seems the most affected.