My N=1 experience is that your body will adapt to the extra training load relatively quickly, and you’ll get that energy back. Especially if you’re only doing upper body lifting so it really is just the energy that’s short, you’re not trashing your legs.
If the goal is to get stronger without putting on much mass, then I think heavier weights and lower repetitions would be a better way to go. Takes up less time as well! Other tip is to lift in the evening of the same day as your cycling workouts instead of on alternate days, if your schedule can accommodate that. That way you’ll have ~36 hours of recovery instead of ~24. Can definitely focus on both disciplines at the same time, just need to be clear what the priority is. I.e. if the priority is cycling then you make sure you’re as fresh as possible for the cycling workouts, and you hold back a little on the weights rather than pushing to failure on every set.
I just started weightlifting again after a 2 year hiatus (was really into crossfit). Decided I would do Starting Strength but 2 times a week and build myself back to the #'s in Chads recommendations for a sprinter.
My timing couldn’t have been worst, it lined up with my final week of SSB2 LV. I failed all 3 workouts in the week, Spenser +2, Lamarck, Leconte, making it about halfway through before being completely decimated. It’s so disappointing to fail a workout and it’s safe to say I wasn’t too happy that week with my performance.
After reading around a bit and thinking it over I’ve convinced myself that I have to accept a lower FTP for the moment. There is a new adaption period and eventually it will go beyond my current FTP but it’s not realistic to believe that you can tax. I want to be as fast as possible all the time, but more importantly I want to be healthy and in great overall shape so temporarily dropping my FTP is fine by me.
Thank you all for the help/advice, The info from C10oky is very interesting because it did very much seem like my lactate threshold was lower during the failed workouts than it usually is.
I am going to up my kcal intake and keep an eye on my weight over the next couple of weeks and see what happens with the energy levels. Fingers crossed my body will adapt to the additional stress I am putting it through.
Prioritize cycling - Do your TR workout when you are fresh - weight lift later the same day. This puts all your “intensity” on one day. The day after will probably be a recovery or easy endurance day. Weight lifting won’t be optimal as you have already done a TR workout.
Do less structured workouts. If TR wants you to do 3 or 4 per week, you could cut that down to 1 or 2 per week plus weight lifting. The rest of your riding will be easy endurance.
Prioritize weight lifting - do weight lifting and then just do endurance rides. No hard intervals on the bike.
Outside of that, you could drop the protein shake. Unless you’re protein-deficient, it’s not helpful over the long run, and may be displacing the carbohydrates you need to support endurance exercise.
Well cycling is my first love but I would like to keep my upper body strong so my goal is to do both, balancing both activities as best I can is what I am aiming for.
The protein shake is just there to supposedly help with recovery however it may not be required as I tend to stick to a healthy diet. I am conscious of not putting myself into a calorie deficit and as my weight is stable at this time as it was before I starting the weight training, adding a protein shake may be beneficial given I am adding additional load to my body.
You could always make weight training your priority until you hit your weight training goal. Then, once you achieve it switch to lifting only once per week. Once per week is enough to maintain weight training gains
It’s an open secret in the scientific community. Millions of $$ have been spent studying the effects of acute protein/amino acid supplementation on muscle protein synthesis, cell signaling, etc., using highly-sophisticated methods. Indeed, some individuals have essentially built their entire careers around such studies. As it turns out, however, the acute responses are not predictive of chronic adaptations, something that the aforementioned individuals are loathe to discuss.
It is well-established that both resistance and endurance exercise increase chronic protein requirements over those of untrained individuals. Most people, though, already consume adequate amounts of protein in their normal diet to meet even these elevated demands. Supplementation is therefore generally unnecessary, and in fact is largely ineffective.
For your weight training exercises…cut the volume to a third. Go like that for a week. Re-assess.
You don’t need to crush to get material benefits if your are relatively untrained in the weightroom. Eventually you’ll be able to work your way back up to the volume you want…but not this week or next week. Walk down the hill…walk down the hill.
I lift weights and use TR, here is what works for me.
I currently lift weights / perform plyometric exercises 3x a week. I go to an olympic style gym and my lifting coach trains track racers. He understands I am into crits and short TT’s, so my volume isn’t as intense, but it’s still heavy.
I perform my lifts on the same day as my TR interval days, so that is T, R, and Sat. I do my TR workouts on my lunch break (WFH) and lift in the evening after work. This gives me Wednesday to do an active recovery day and Sunday to do low stress but a long ride. Monday and Fridays are completely off. I use the low volume plan, and insert rides of my choosing for Wednesday and Sunday (outside preferably). This works out to be about 85-100 miles / week. So think of it this way: 3 hard days, 2 easy riding days, 2 days completely off, per week.
I have no problem completing my workouts and I feel very strong on the bike, with no pain. Since most of my work is leg, glute, core focused, you would stand to believe it would be too much, but having real recovery days / rest days is absolutely how you do this. Diet plays a big role and I suggest you keep a food journal as well. More so during the build phase, where after ride nutrition is really important.
Upper body workouts shouldn’t be crushing your performance on the bike unless your diet is way out of whack.
I’m also facing similar dilemma here: I’m not sure whether to start a ride when my legs are super sore following a weight day.
Reading all the comments here, am I right to conclude that combining weight training with TR workouts requires scheduling full recovery days in between workout days, instead of simply interchanging weight days and TR days?
Is such full recovery day only necessary when you have sore legs or every other day regardless?
That’s not necessary at all imo. I was (am) a bodybuilder before becoming a cyclist, so my n=1 will be different from someone new to lifting, BUT… provided you adjust your diet (MORE FOOD!!) and rest (sleep) accordingly you don’t need to juggle things that much.
I’m on the bike 4-6 days a week and lift 4-5 days a week without issue (caveat: I’ve been lifting for 20 years). If it’s a hard day on the bike, I try to give at least 4 hours between the two. If that’s not possible, the bike gets done first. Unless it’s a Z2 day… that I can do whenever. The podcast crew were advocating for gym sessions the same days as your hard days on the bike, and keeping your easy days easy, which I’d agree with for most people.
As for dealing with leg DOMS and riding, I would try to do your lower body work the day before your rest day(s) or easy Z2 day on the bike. I find that DOMS isn’t a problem at all if I’m doing Z2 on the trainer or just riding unstructured outside. I wouldn’t really want to start a SST or threshold workout with sore legs, but could physically do it. Mentally, probably not most days.
Nutrition really is the key. Just so, so important when it comes to lifting if your goals include either getting stronger or bigger (idk why you’d bother if you didn’t want at least one of those). Doubly so if you don’t want to negatively impact your training on the bike. Just listen to your body… don’t fry your CNS. You likely need to do a lot less volume in the gym than you think.
From my N=1, no it’s not. I lift twice a week and ride 6-7 days a week, the lifting has little to no impact on my TR workouts unless I’m really pushing it in terms of both timing and how hard the workouts are. E.g. doing a lifting session in the evening where I increase weight/reps, and then trying to do a “stretch” TR workout before work the next morning is a bad idea. But doing that weights session followed by an endurance or recovery ride would be fine, or maybe even an “achievable” ride with more high intensity. And doing more of a maintenance strength session and then a hard ride the next morning would also be fine. Ideally I prefer to lift in the evening of a day when I’ve done a harder workout, with an easier Z2 or recovery day the next day. “Ideal” isn’t always possible though, and doing a dialled down strength workout that doesn’t interfere with a hard ride the next day is better than not doing it at all!
Sleep and nutrition is key to being able to do both. And there’s also an adaptation period. If I haven’t lifted in a while then it certainly takes a few weeks for my body to adapt to the lifting training load before I can start increasing cycling training load again. And I guess if I was totally new to lifting or hadn’t done it for a long time then that adaptation could be months not weeks. But absolutely worth doing it.
I had a huge comedown when I started lifting heavier again. Was crushing workouts on the bike when my training plan looked like:
Monday - rest
Tuesday - VO2 am / Z2 pm
Wednesday - Z2 am
Thursday - SS am, Z2 pm
Friday - Z2 and swim am
Saturday - threshold am
Sunday - weights pm
As soon as I added a strength session in on Friday pm, I started failing workouts. I moved the threshold session to a Sunday morning and went straight back to crushing workouts. After failing two Saturdays in a row, AT dropped me from 5.0 to 3.2 - I’ve just completed a Stretch 4.8 with no real issues.
I’d advise adding strength to the harder days and having a minimum of 24 hours between lifting and riding. That way I can prioritise the riding training, and leave the strength stuff as the supplementary training.
Your focus is upper body strength/toning. I find upper body training easy to combine with structured training. After an adaptation period, you won’t get very sore (unless when you switch exercises). Eat, sleep and keep in mind that you don’t have to kill yourself to make progress. Ensure perfect form, and start with the minimum effective dose. Many beginners do way too much volume. Also, I would not turn lifting into metabolic sessions (you get enough of that on the bike).
I know the general recommendation is to keep hard days hard, and rest days easy. Personally, I’ve never managed to get my ass to the gym on hard days (also for logistical reasons) and always lift on rest days. It’s not a problem. For lower body, I have accepted that till June I benefit more from cycling than from lifting so I train lower body only once a week, just to preserve strength.
I think most cyclists try to lift too much when they start adding strength training to their cycling routines. If a cyclists hasn’t been strength training, it doesn’t take much to add some strength. For legs, I like to keep my hard days hard and my easy days easy. So, I generally do two hard cycling days per week which would be VO2max intervals or a hard group ride/race…after those workouts I will do a set of Bulgarian split squats with dumbbells and a set of deadlifts. Now, I’m fortunate that I have weights in my basement next to my bike trainer so this is easy to accomplish after my cycling workout, even if separated by a few hours. On my easy days I’ll do some upper body weights and core work. The main point is if cycling is your number one sport, don’t train like a body builder or a power lifter…that’s just not smart.
