This is going to be a loooooong response
To be honest i made it up myself based on some reading and listening to a combination of Dylan Johnson and various weight lifting channels. Jeff Nippard has a lot of content explaining the lifts as well as the science behind maximising the gains from gym work - but it’s tailored towards body builders and you have to out up with the constant ads for “macrofactor".
The goal:
The goal is to lift heavy weights, but you need to build up to it slowly. You can start in higher rep ranges, but longer term you want to be in the 6-8 range and approaching failure (unable to complete the lift) on the last rep.
Muscle targets:
Here are the exercises I use the most, in priority order.
- Squat: Quad dominant. Glute, abs, back secondary. Needs good technique.
- RDL: Hamstring and glute primary. Abs and back secondary (stabilisers) as they keep your spine neutral.
- Leg press: Almost entirely quad, some glute activation.
- Calf raises: Calves. (You can go surprisingly heavy on calf raises)
- Hip thrust: Glutes
- Bulgarian split squat: Primarily quad, but puts a significant amount of work into your stabilisers (glute medius, adductors, abductors) as it’s a single leg exercises. Hard to go REALLY heavy on this.
I then add a few upper body exercises depending on available time these include: bench press, row, lat pulldown, bicep curl, tricep pushdown. This is just about overall health and general strength, rather than targeted training.
You should select exercises based on what you need: for example the bularian is about helping me prevent a flare up of a hip/glute injury - you may not need it as an XCO rider as you move around much more on the bike.
The leg press is because my squat and RDL are limited by my core/back, where the leg press lets me really push my legs.
Rep ranges:
Each set is 6-8 reps. If i can do 8 reps in two sessions back to back i add weight and drop to 6 reps. I do 3 sets, per exercise with 1:30 rest between sets. I find that’s a good balance between intensity and rest (roughly 1:2 work:rest).
In TR - warmup sets shouldn’t be counted. So that set gets me 6 full body (squat + RDL) + 12 leg sets.
DOMS…
A word of warning: after your first few sessions you’ll get DOMS for 2-3 days and, if you’re like me, it’ll be so bad walking is a struggle! You likely won’t be able to do on bike training in that timeframe.
Therefore, it’s best to add weight training in the off season or when you have a block of time where a drop in riding time is OK. This only lasted for the first 2-3 sessions in my experience.
Once you get over that initial DOMS period I’d recommend that you schedule an endurance day the day after a gym session. In my experience I struggled to push high intensity numbers the day after the gym.
You do get bad DOMS if you take a couple of weeks off. So bear that in mind and knock the weights back if you’ve taken a longer period off weight training.
Periodization:
Weight training should be periodized, just like on the bike training. I’ve found this works well for me:
- Off season: Gym work 3x per week. Exploit the time to make gains.
- Base season: Gym 2x per week. Steady gains throughout this period.
- Training block: Maintenance mode. 1 session per week and dial the weight back slightly. If you’re making progress it should be slow and measured. Prioritise on the bike time.
- Racing blocks: Need to be careful when you schedule gym time in. On bike time and recovery should be prioritised. I got this wrong at points in the crit season last year.
That’s everything I can think of at this point. There are loads of resources available online, but I wouldn’t necessarily use an off the peg “plan".
