Strength Training

[Samus]

@dubrose40

So I’m looking for a solid plan for the off season and will need an in season plan as well. Any recommendations?

Shy away from overly complex stuff. 5x5 is good, as @mtbjones recommended. I’m scrolling through this Dialed dudes insta and the only truly agreeable thing I’ve seen so far is a hanging leg raise. All the pics of him doing compounds are… perplexing to say the least. Clearly I’ve missed an opportunity to make some $$$.

Here’s a sketch of a plan for ya:

Day 1 - Squat

• Warmup superset
  • ATG split squat (3x10 @ some weight/progression phase that is moderate in difficulty—not too hard!)
  • Something to activate glutes like glute bridges, modified clams, or hip thrusters
  • 1-2 personal (p)rehab things you need to do, stretches, ankle mobs, etc
• Grab 2 barbells and superset:
  • Squat (3-5 heavy sets, 5-10 rep range @ 1-2 RIR)
    • 2-3 warm up sets should be done prior to heavy sets
  • Bent Over Row or Pendlay (one less set than squat, 10-15 rep range @ 1 RIR)
    • lighter = better, get shoulder blade squeeze, control the eccentric, don’t yoink
• optional upper body
• 3x15-25 a core exercise like hanging leg raise or russian twists
• extra credit: leg curls ideally single leg, one more set on weaker leg if you have an imbalance

Day 2 - Deadlift

• Warm-up superset
  • Seated Good Mornings (3x10 @ 3-4 RIR)
  • 1-2 personal (p)rehab things, stretches like piriformis stretch (avoid cramps with conventional DL)
• Deadlift or RDL (3-5 heavy sets, 5-10 rep range @ 1-2 RIR)
  • Note: 2-3 warm up sets should be done prior to heavy sets
  • I strap RDLs because I don’t want grip to be the limiter
  • For DLs I prefer mixed grip and chalk, but honestly, it’s not a huge deal for a cyclist to use straps
• optional upper body
• 3x15-25 a core exercise, perhaps something posterior chain like glute hams or reverse nordics or reverse hypers
• extra credit: Bulgarians, easy to superset with core, but suck in every other way, one more set on weaker leg if you have an imbalance

Day 3 - Single-Leg Leg Press

• Warm-up:
  • Modified Clamshell (2x10, can add resistance band to quads) or other glute activator
  • 1-2 personal (p)rehab things, stretches, etc
• Single Leg Leg Press (3-4 sets of 10-20 @ 0-1 RIR)
  • If you have an imbalance, one more set on the weaker leg.
  • Can also be done on hack squat machine or Smith machine; something with less degrees of freedom
• optional upper body, where you’d sneak in bench if you are so inclined (or declined) (or flat)
• 3x15-25 a core exercise like incline sit-up (w/ weight) or med ball crunches (w/ spinal flexion, if you do it right, it will burn)
• extra credit: some stuff to strengthen the patellar tendon: backwards incline tread, backwards sled drag, plyos that load knee joint

It’s not fancy, just tuned for time efficiency and gains. Fwiw, I have been lifting for my entire adult life and follow a lot of literature-based lifting content (Nuckols, Nippard, Israetel, Horschig). My squat and DL are in the 85th+ percentile of lifters my weight (no gear) and I train less frequently than one might guess. What you see above has yielded more gains in less time than the stuff I was doing when I was younger. Fancy programs are fancy in order to convince you that the person selling them has some secret sauce that’s worth buying. Not worth it. Getting strong is about quality training stimulus at enough volume, which is a lot harder to achieve doing some exotic 5-step kettlebell sequence. The most complicated lift you should devote your time to is squat, and that is because it is hands down the GOAT lift (especially for cycling).

EDIT: since this is getting more attention than I anticipated, I’ve reorganized and added more details.

• 10/20/24 added some notes on rep ranges
• 10/21/24 more notes on scheduling

Basic overview

Squat and deadlift are the two compound lifts most relevant to cycling, life, the universe, and everything else. They are technical movements and create high levels of systemic fatigue, so each get their own day. If you could only do one lift for the rest of your life, it would be squat. Despite its reputation for developing quads, it is also a solid glute and posterior chain developer. Deadlift is certainly more posterior chain, including more back. If you are paranoid about putting on weight, deadlift is probably the lift that is going to pack on the pounds fastest.

You need to learn the proper skill and form in order to adequately load these lifts. You can pick up the basics pretty quickly, but expect to spend the rest of your life perfecting them. Squatting above parallel is leaving some of the best training stimulus on the table. A box squat progression can be used to get squat down to proper depth. High bar, low bar, your preference. For DL, trap bar is always an option for those who are worried about their back. iirc, there isn’t a measurable difference between the two. My instinct says that sumo is not as useful for cycling compared to conventional, but I wouldn’t be surprised to be totally wrong on this.

I used to simply alternate squat and DL days. However, I have more recently elevated single-leg leg press to its own day for a couple reasons. Squat and DL are skills, and part of what you are training is the skill and coordination, as opposed to merely strength and hypertrophy. Additionally, as double-leg exercises, they can mask asymmetry between the legs. You want isolated efforts to deal with asymmetries. You also want less freedom of movement in order to safely pile on bigger loads. The rate-limiter of single leg squat/DL variants (eg, Bulgarians) tends to be balance, not strength. So you never get to properly load them.

Leg press takes most of the skill and balance and danger out of the equation. That’s why they’re done at higher reps, closer to failure, really dwelling in that stretched eccentric phase because you’re no longer scared of failing the lift. Ideally, your legs will be shaking for a few minutes afterward. That’s the training stimulus you’re after. Probably should be timed after your hardest bike intervals of the week.

You could fold leg press into one of the other two days, in the “accessory” slot. It just takes a lot of time to do high reps single leg.

Scheduling

The basic structure of my sessions is:

1. Warm-up
2. Big Lift
3. Optional upper body
4. Core
5. Extra credit accessory work (supersetted with core)

For upper body I have my own supersets (mostly for delts, lats, and tris). These are complimentary exercises (not working the same muscles) that are convenient to perform together, giving the location of equipment in the gym. For example, I might pair seated cable rows with tricep pullovers because the stations are next to each other on same cable machine. For core I try to make sure I’m covering upper rectus, lower rectus, and obliques over the course of a few weeks. The extra credit accessory work is usually single leg variants of squat and DL. Or whatever I think might be fun to try any given week.

I don’t do any planning based on days of the week (eg, no “Monday is Bench Day”); the Big Lift is whatever is next in the rotation when I happen to get into the gym. Big Lifts, upper body, and core tend to rotate around independent of one another. Squat might be paired with delts and hanging leg raise one week, but tris and sit-ups the next week. The modularity allows the program to bend around my schedule and is fairly robust to missed sessions. When I’m pressed for time, I try to get my warm-up + Big Lift (#1-2) in, and then maybe core (#4). I might swap which Big Lift gets hit based on proximity to cycling workouts.

Timing around cycling workouts is going to involve some trial and error. Leg press is the main thing I’d keep away from high intensity work on the bike. DOMS is more of an issue if you haven’t been lifting recently, and mostly goes away after a few weeks. Fatigue for lower body tends to be worse on the second day, so sneaking in interval session the day after hitting legs, before DOMS hits, might be an option. Deadlifting affects cycling the least, in my experience, except I’ve had some issues with back tightness during very long endurance rides immediately following deadlift days. I’ve had luck stacking squat or DL lifting sessions right before interval sessions, but everyone is different.

I tend to lift 2-4x a week when I am not training for cycling, and 0-2x a week when I am actively training for cycling. No crazy hours in the gym, which is the benefit of focusing on quality training stimulus. For someone starting out in their off-season, just try an average of 3x week sessions and see how that goes. If you are still learning squat and DL, you might skip the leg press day (or fold it into Squat day as extra credit) in order to get more frequent technique reinforcement. During season you can cut the down the frequency to 1-2 sessions a week, with working sets of 3 as opposed to 5.

Volume, sets, reps

The set, performed within 0-3 reps to failure, is the primary unit of volume. If you’re not training close to failure, you’re not getting much in the way of stimulus for strength and hypertrophy. This is why fussing around with body weight and fractions of one’s body weight (KBs and DBs) is chump change when it comes to strength training for lower body. It’s a poor stimulus, and you’ll need lots more volume to equal efforts that are close to failure. Gymnasts can become jacked with mostly bodyweight exercises because they have no lack of volume—it is the entirety of their sport. You are a cyclist who can barely make it into the gym a few times a week.

There’s quite a lot of factors that contribute to the rep ranges prescribed in a program: strength development, hypertrophy, fatigue, injury risk, technique development. Most lifters unconsciously learn appropriate rep ranges through osmosis over the years, but here’s a good video explaining the rationale. Having explained the rationale behind leg press, you can start to extrapolate why squat and DL are in the 5-10 rep range with 1-2 RIR (“reps in reserve”). For lifts that are a potentially risky to fail, we prefer 1-2 RIR, which should be sufficient for the majority of gains compared to training to failure. 12+ reps for complex, high-amplitude movements tend to hit technical failure far sooner than muscular failure. That’s part of the reason why squat and DL are programmed at 5-10 reps. You don’t want to be cranking out reps of squat and DL after your form has collapsed. < 5 reps is great for strength adaptations with less mass gained, but the fatigue and injury risk are much higher. Powerlifters (who regularly do sets with lower reps) have much higher injury rates than bodybuilders (who almost never do lower reps), and 99.999% of cyclists are less skilled at lifting than the average powerlifter. There’s a hypothetical 1-in-a-million pro cyclist who is also an extremely skilled powerlifter that might benefit from min-maxing the mass-to-strength ratio by pursuing the lower rep ranges. But that is probably not you.

The relationship between strength and hypertrophy is still murky, and even murkier still is how strength training impacts cycling (we’re fairly certain it has a positive effect on performance, but we’re not sure why). With that in mind, I think a lifting program for cycling should pursue strength and hypertrophic adaptations, leaning towards the strength range, but not to the point of significantly raising injury risk and fatigue.

Total training volume (# of working sets per week) matters more than training frequency (# of sessions per week). This has interesting implications for cyclists. For example, if you’re time-crunched, you could try one long lifting day per week, and see how that goes.

You’ll notice for extra credit I put a hamstring developer on squat day, and a squat variant on DL day (as opposed to making it push/pull ant/post). There’s a bit of evidence that given two isovolumetric weeks, increased frequency can give some marginal gains. But I wouldn’t stress about this at all; if you want to double down on hams during DL day instead, no big deal.

Warm-up supersets

There’s quite a lot of valid ways to warm up for squat and DL, ranging from 30-min sequences to the minimalist “just do fast and light reps of the same exercise.” It’s all diminishing returns in terms of time spent. My warm-up for each Big Lift, not including ramp-up sets of the lift itself, is a superset of 2-3 exercises/stretches. I’ve found that anything above 3 sets of 3 exercises starts to be a drag, but this is highly personal. My efficiency hack is to sneak in auxiliary exercises (that are worth progressing for their own sake) as primers for the Big Lift. These are performed at moderate intensity compared to what they would warrant as a solo act; this creates enough training stimulus for long-term improvement without accruing too much fatigue in the short-term, so as to compromise the Big Lift.

I like ATG split squat as a warm-up to squat for a couple reasons. It moves you through the whole ROM from extension to hyperflexion. Pausing in the hyperflexed position can also hit ankle mobility, one of the big form-killers and rate-limiters to squatting. There’s a huge chain of progressions you can find for ATG split squat; start easy, foot on bench, and work your way up. One of the big goals of the lift is to progressively load the patellar/quad tendons in a way that builds tendon strength. Cyclists use these tendons repetitively, but rarely load them. Knee tendons often hamper beginner progress in the gym because they need a lot more time to strengthen than muscles. (Note: for actual patellar tendinopathy, see Jake Tuura.)

A glute activator exercise prior to squatting is great all lifters, but particularly cyclists. Cycling is like 95% quad, and when you take someone who is so quad-focused and have them start squatting, you’ll find they often skip the glute activation/hip hinge, which puts way too much load on the knees (whose tendons, as mentioned before, aren’t used to serious loads). In fact, I might recommend, in addition to a glute activator warm-up, using a band around the quads to force the glute activation during squat itself.

I am lucky to have a hip thruster machine right next to the squat racks at my gym—otherwise I don’t mess with loaded BB thrusters as an activator because the setup is too onerous for a warm-up. If you have the time, why not. The modified clamshells were recommended to me by Horschig, and I’ve found them to be annoyingly effective for such a dorky looking movement.

Seating good mornings. I’ve been evangelizing this lift for the past two years. It’s a warm-up to deadlift, but it’s also a heavy-ish lift that should be progressed for its own virtues. I haven’t worried about low-back issues with DL since using these as my warm-up. The lift will prime your back for the immediately following DL, all the while building long term strength in the erectors and low back. It will also improve one’s ability to hinge at the hips, which benefits squat and the TT aero position on bike. Cyclists live in a state of spinal flexion. Some spinal flexion is fine, lots of flexion severely compromises the ability of the erectors to take shear load off the vertebrae. With cycling, the less you can hinge at the hips, the more you have to compensate with lumbar flexion to reach the bars. I’ve heard of many Unbound DNF’s due to hydration bladders + rough terrain causing back spasms over long distances. You’ll never regret beefing up your spinal erectors. Good for cycling, good for a life spent sitting in at a desk with bad posture.

You’ll notice is that I have slots for 1-2 prehab/rehab exercises built into the warm-ups. Most athletes develop this or that nagging issue, and most PTs assign way too many exercises that would eat up the entire lifting session if the Rx was followed to the letter. Whole sessions of boring PT are demotivating, and often decrease lifting frequency. It’s better to just pick 1-2 exercises per session and still love going to the gym. Consistency and sustainability is more important. Rebuilding Milo is a good book for self-diagnosing and managing issues that might crop up.

After the warm-up superset, squat and DL sessions have 2-3 ramp up sets working up to your heavy sets. There’s a variety of ways to ramp the load up for these lifts, maybe try the progressive pyramid. For upper body I have my own supersetted rotations (mostly for delts, lats, and tris).

Home gym alternatives

It is very hard to load legs without a squat rack or barbell. You’d need some serious DB’s (50-100+#), lifting straps, and should probably focus on more single-leg work. If you’re saving for a squat rack, get the barbell and plates first for DLs, thrusters, and landmine work. Landmine is the best way to fill in the gaps of a home gym left from the lack of cables or machines. If you don’t have access to a leg press, you can do single leg/split/tripod variants of landmine hack squat. That should provide more stability than traditional Bulgarians or lunges. Replacing isolated ham work is tricky with a home gym. Reverse nordic might be best bet, or single-leg RDLs, using a low-mounted barbell right at the hip crease for support. Be careful with reverse nordic, as people have injured knee caps.

Core and knees

You’ll notice I don’t do planks or other isometrics for core. This is partially because I find doing core for reps & weight to be more motivating and easier to progress, and also partially because heavy compound movements already hit isometric core through bracing. Core exercises need to be properly loaded and progressed like every other lift. The king of core is hanging leg raise, and you can employ lifting straps if grip is the rate-limiter. The progressions and variations for this are enough to keep most people busy for a lifetime, but if you’ve somehow reached a plateau doing a controlled toes-to-bar, you can start grabbing DBs with your feet.

I’ve put a decent amount of emphasis on the patellar and quad tendons. The knee is a major pain point for cycling, and a rate-limiter for lower body lifting. Squatting with proper form (including glute activation) will improve the whole chain of biomechanics often implicated in knee pain. The tendons themselves also deserve attention, and we’re fortunate to live in a time where there has been much advancement in our understanding of tendon and ligament strengthening.

Trivia and tidbits

• My personal opinion, but I don’t think there’s a good reason for a cyclist who isn’t also a powerlifter or bodybuilder to be using a belt. It is more likely going to mask bad technique or core bracing.
• For most lifts, you want slow and controlled eccentrics that maximize stretch. This seems to the optimal training stimulus.
• There is nothing to be gained (other than time) from minimizing rest. Do the next set when you’re ready. It’s similar to intervals in this way. You’re just wasting the effort if you don’t rest enough.
• BB rows are an order of magnitude less important than squat, I just superset them together because it’s an efficient pairing. Squat, change plates on squat, then BB row, then rest.
• Supersetting complementary lifts is largely how you save time, particularly when you do this based on the proximity of equipment. You can proceed to a supersetted lift that hits a totally different muscle group without much of a rest period.
• Most cycling lifting programs prescribe way too many exercises, jumping between a few sets of this, a few sets of that. It is more time efficient to get a really nice stimulus on one lift, then save the other lift for the next session.
• There is no point to benching other than to have a high bench; as far physique goes, there are better lifts. As far as function goes, there are better lifts.
• No point to 1RM, just progress based off submaxes.
• Squatting is best done using platform lifting shoes, which lower the amount of mobility you need in your ankles. In lieu of this you can purchase a wedge to place or heels on, or even place your keels on some thin change plates. Deadlift is best done in a flat shoe with minimal sole. You don’t want shoes with thick EVA soles that prevent your feet from stably planting into the floor. That said, I have done all these lifts in platforms, I’ve done them all barefoot, I’ve done them all in cushy running shoes. Don’t stress about it.
• There is nothing magical about doing the lower body lifts barefoot. I happen to, but largely because it helps me with proprioception in my injured leg. Barefoot DLs are whatever, if properly progressed into; maybe it strengthens arches, idk. Most people do not have the ankle mobility to squat barefoot. You end up trading superior form and depth for “rootedness” (connection to the floor).
• 20-40g of protein 4x a day if you’re actively trying to maximize gains. The g/kg formulas tend to overestimate protein needs for heavy people and underestimate them for lighter people.
• I don’t take any exotic supplements. Just creatine, UC-II collagen, fish oil, iron, multivitamin.

Final note

The vast majority of cyclists are nowhere close to needing an advanced lifting program. Sustainability is the main pitfall. There is always this inevitable exercise creep that happens where you keep adding to a program and never subtract. Then the program becomes overwhelming and you start dreading your gym sessions. At some point you have to cut everything back to the basic lifts and the few additional exercises that can be reliably done each week. At the end of the day, consistency is key. Non-optimal lifting done consistently beats optimal lifting done inconsistently.