Yup. With any complex movement youāre going to be limited by the weakest link in that chain, strength-wise. Even more likely the limiter will be your technique, because complex movements are skills that require coordination, balance, muscle memory, etc. It is rare for these to elicit an optimal training stimulus on the strength side.
A big question you should ask is whether learning the skill of any given complex lift is actually helpful to your sport. Squat and deadlift are complex, but they are also highly functional. Two very basic human movements: squatting down and picking something heavy off the floor. The muscle coordination you get from learning to do these well, under load, is very beneficial for sportsāand life in general.
I could be persuaded that that cyclists (whose sport consists of a very artificial movement) stand to benefit from the coordination and mobility and whole-body sense that might come from some of these more complex routines you see on social media. But itās much closer to calisthenics than strength training. Why not just hit the gym hard with a 5x5 and then do yoga on the side?
What do you mean by complex movements, are you referring to, say, the combination of a lunge, dumbbell curl and dumbbell overhead press? Or does a one-sided exercise count where you need to compensate for the imbalance with, say, your core?
The former seems gimmicky to me (as someone who knows next to nothing about strength training), I reckon Iād be better off doing each of these three exercises separately. The latter does seem pertinent to cycling, though.
āComplexā or ācompoundā just means more than one joint involved.
A squat or bench press is complex. A leg extension or dumbbell fly is not.
Iām more using it in the colloquial sense of ācomplicatedā exercises. Whether this happens all at once or via transitioning from one exercise to another, it requires more skill and coordination than working muscles in isolation. Not to be confused with noun complexes which actually has a specific meaning in the context of lifting.
Thereās technically a distinction between compound lifts (squat, clean) and lifting complexes (clean + jerk; clean + push press).
Iāve really only used the latter when I was training olympic weightlifting or some sport specific skills. eg, you might do 2 cleans and then a jerk because you want to practice jerking with more fatigue. Some more info on complexes if youāre interested.
Take this 1 DB thruster + 2 DB push press complex. Youāre going to get more strength gains from doing these movements separately, with appropriate weight. But say you were an American football player. This is not too different from the mechanics one would experience on the line. Theoretically, it could be beneficial to get good at having a strong, repeated push press after the fatigue of a thruster. Does this āskillā make sense for a cyclist? Probably not.
I think youāre actually hitting on a different concept here, which is whether the exercise is bilateral (squat), unilateral (single-leg leg press), ipsilateral (same side single-leg RDL), or contralateral (single-leg RDL). Iām not sure the latter two are possible in movements that are not compound in some way, because it always seem to implicate the trunk? Iād have to think about this more. But contralateral, ipsilateral, and (some) unilateral exercises tend to train stability, which is often beneficial. However, they are rarely going to be your best bets for strength/hypertrophy stimulus, unless the target group is actually core. They are often accessory exercises that compliment primary exercises.
For example, single-leg RDLs are typically loaded contralaterally, which really hits the glute minimus as a stabilizer. Your stability and balance will fail on these before you reach a weight that will provide optimal stimulation for hams and glute max. But thatās fine. Minimus is getting a workout and itās getting trained within the context of the deadlift movement. Single-leg RDLs are often an accessory lift to deadlift. Your deadlift will benefit from the stability training, along with your general athleticism (youād be hard pressed to find a scenario where hip stability is bad).
Started on the weights again last nightā¦ has been way too long, and itās pretty depressing how much strength Iāve lost.
I need to put some work into putting together a decent program that doesnāt leave me too trashed / filled with DOMS to do my turbo sessions on the alternating days. Wish I could afford a coach, but thatās really not an option right now.
I just started back up again on Sunday. Planning on lifting twice a week in the morning on my endurance days (I do my bike workouts after kiddo bedtime). Only hitting bench, squats, rows, deadlift, and overhead press all using my barbell set. Also need to get some core work on top. Started up with lighter weight to rip off the start-up mega-DOMS. Just doing a tempo workout last night, the night after the first workout, I could feel the fatigue partway through my bike workout. Definitely will be easing in.
What are peopleās feelings on just taking time between sets and not getting a cardio effect in strength workouts? I feel I get enough cardio on my bike that doing supersets is unnecessary, but Iām a strength noob. 
Strength training has about 0 impact on cardiovascular fitness, even if you feel out of breath. Rest as long as you need or want to. Superset if youāre short on time or want a good pump 
Not on any major lifts though. Just accessories.
You can and should ride endurance (zone 2 power) after you lift. Get through the first ten minutes and your legs will feel much better so donāt give up. Strength training should supplement not replace your aerobic training and you donāt need rested fast twitch fibers to pedal for 90 minutes at an endurance effort. If you have not done leg work in a while then donāt do any higher intensity riding just endurance efforts and focus on being consistent: leg work twice a week and endurance riding after you lift and on days you donāt, week after week, month after month, consistent.
This isnāt about which order I do things in, itās about having Monday / Wednesday / Friday as weights and the other days for turbo work (with days off as necessary). If I do any meaningful amount of leg work I generally leave myself incapable of doing my harder turbo sessions (threshold / vo2max) on the following day. I have done strength days with (shortish) endurance rides afterwards though.
Iām not really interested in being ārace fitā for cycling any more, just trying to maintain decent all round fitness.
What about the interference effect? It was my understanding that cardio would dull the signalling from the strength training and to try separate the two as much as possible.
You should not be pushing the pace between sets. You are only diminishing the quality of the training stimulus for strength training, and for nil aerobic gains. āCardioā from weight training is going to be drop in the ocean for an endurance athlete. Take as much time as you need, within reason, some good tips here on how to gauge this on a per-lift basis.
DOMS will diminish in a few weeks and your strength will come back faster than you expect. Just lift consistently and your fatigue will become much more manageable. Thereās a whole muscle memory effect and itās easier to get back to a level you were at previously.
You could try less frequent but longer lifting sessions to maximize rest time before turbo sessions. Total volume per week matters more than frequency. Nuckols is a big proponent of frequency, but has to pool data from many isovolumetric studies in order to start seeing a measurable effect. Perhaps start with more frequent sessions to get past that initial DOMS slump, then cut the frequency down while keeping the volume the same. This presumes that you feel confident in the lifts (frequency helps technique development). There is high inter-individual variation in optimal scheduling, so you need to see what works for you.
Thanks for the write-up.
Thereās nothing in there about explosive strength though. How do we go about converting gym strength to sport-specific strength? In running, this is done through plyometrics and single-leg power exercises that mimic running biomechanics. How would this factor in a cycling gym programme as youāve outlined?
This also plays quite nicely as you go from off-season through early base into later base. 
Hmmm, good question. I am an ultra-endurance cyclist, so explosive strength training for cycling is not something Iāve thought too hard on. Knee extensors (quads), knee flexors (hams) and hip extensors (glutes) are the main power sources in sprinting on a bike.
Leg press (at lower weight) would be a place you could practice explosive strength during the concentric phase. Descend to the low position and then explode upwards. Most leg presses will put you in a state that is very flexed at the hipsācloser to how you would be positioned on a bike. Iām not sure where one might find this magical machine, but you can do alternating explosive leg press on a regular leg press (please make sure to put the safeties in a place that will protect you, should you mess this up).
Honestly most pylos (like box jumps) would be applicable. A lot of lifts can be done explosively at lower weights, eg, BB jump squat and trap bar jumps. Thrusters will have a bit more spinal erector engagement, which has been correlated with sprint strength. The press portion might be awash as far as cycling goes; Iām more thinking about the front-loaded weight forcing more erector engagement. BB explosive step ups might be another good alternating leg option. I used to do them a bunch for football, really stomping the bench on the way up.
You can also do explosive strength training on a stationary bike at very high resistance using all-out effortsāthe maximum you can sustain for X # of seconds. (Iām sure track cyclists have better ideas about how to set this up.)
Youāll notice I didnāt put clean and snatch on this list. The olympic lifts are actually not as explosive as they appear. I was taught to yoink the BB up during football, but then had to un-learn that when I did a bit of training at a proper weightlifting gym. It also takes an order of magnitude more time to learn these compared to squat and DL.
EDIT: I should add that itās not that gym strength needs to be converted to sport-specific strength. You just need to make sure that your gym strength is relevant to your sport (ie, are the muscle groups and movements relevant to cycling?). Squat is very relevant to cycling. Bench press is not. (I truly have no idea why bench is on TRās strength standards, other than its outsized importance in the XY community.) More info on proposed mechanisms for why strength training benefits cyclists can be found here. Weāre after adaptations in the neural system, muscular efficiency, muscle size (hypertrophy), mind-muscle connection, etc. Finding cycling-relevant gym exercises to benefit explosiveness in particular is just tuning the type of adaptions weāre after to those more correlated with explosive strength.
As for how these would fit into the program above, Iāll admit Iām a bit out of my lane here. My main experience with plyos was back before I started self-programmingāI just did whatever my coaches told me to do. The general rule of thumb is to do them before lifting for the best results, but Iāve also seen them after, and during (mixed in or swapped with the lift theyāre associated with). They definitely should be gradually eased into if you havenāt done plyos in a while. Iāve started adding some baby plyos into the end of my workouts, supersetted with core, after upper body work has given the lower body some respite. Not for explosiveness training, just working on loading my injured knee/quad during dynamic movement.
I am not concerned at all with interference effect, especially with respect to cell signaling, and I base this on my undergrad background, personal experience, and research studies Iāve read. Just to nit-pick with #thescience, what is the interference? What does the biochemistry under the microscope say? You make 92.5% instead of 100% of the strength and hypertrophy gains per workout? Or you have to wait an additional 16 hours before full adaptation occur? This isnāt defined. What is also not defined is āenduranceā exercise. I am talking about what we refer to as zone 2 (potentially zone 3 if you have a significant lifting and cycling background and know how to manage consistent recovery days). Some researchers consider any primarily aerobic exercise to be endurance exercise, so they will have a study combining strength training with VO2 max intervals as proof that combining weights with endurance exercise results in poor performance. I would consider that to be proof that foolishly training yourself into the ground multiple times each week results in poor performance.
When you do serious strength training your fast twitch fibers will be shot for a couple or few days, but the slow twitch fibers will recover quickly. Thus, simple zone 2 endurance riding is quite doable after you lift, and if cycling performance is your goal you do not want to sacrifice consistently improving your aerobic base, so lifting should supplement, not replace, pedaling. Just make sure you are eating additional calories (primarily protein) to account for the energy expenditure required not just during lifting (which isnāt all that great), but importantly, during recovery.
I incorporate the following polymeric exercises into my two-day split strength training sessions:
- Squat jumps
- Lunge jumps
- Single leg pogo hops
- Box jumps
- Single leg drops
- Lateral bounds
- Depth jumps
I donāt get too crazy and usually do 2 sets of 10 reps for each. I mostly use them as a supplement for strength training, reduce injury, and for overall balance in the stability muscles that arenāt as targeted through the standard strength training exercises.
Thanks for your reply Garratto.
Iāve found the concept of interference to create most of my scheduling issues.
I really enjoy going to the gym. As a 70kg 50 yr old I have found enormous performance benefits after 2 years consistent strength training.
I do 2-3 full body workouts/wk, using MAPS Aesthetic currently, simply because itās nice to follow a program. Usually often split each workout into two sessions due to time constraints; completing the bulk of it at 6am, then popping in the final sets after work or the next morning.
What Iāve been trying to do is separate any strength work by at least 8hrs, but ideally 24hrs from my running training (mainly z2, but includes all zones). This can make things tricky.
One session Iād really like to do is a leg strength workout, mixed in with plyometrics, stair climbing, incline treadmill etc. Iām training for mountain running these days (my next A race is a Skyrace in 35 weeks time). Iāve shied away from this session in the belief I may be creating fatigue but dulling the adaptations by mixing it all up. What are your thoughts on this idea?
Thanks for taking the time to answer.
If you look at the paper that gets cited most often about the interference effect (forgive me for not having a link) what they did was have an endurance group, a lifting group, and a group doing both.
Literally both. They just took both protocols and slammed them together. Now ask yourself how your body might react if you tried that. I know mine wouldnāt like me very much. Itād just be too much work to recover from, and Iād probably get better adaptations from doing less total work but programming it more intelligently.
Bottom line (as @Garratto pretty much already said) is - donāt sweat the details too much. Program what you can perform with good (not necessarily perfect) quality and can recover from (FAFO) and enjoy yourself.
I think itās a fair guide but itās a guide.
Ultimately, more than āinterference effectā imo is the more generic principle of executing your workout now so that you can comfortably do the next workout.
So blowing your legs out on maximal squats at 8:00 when you have a 90 min vo2 Stretch workout at 12:00 is going to be a bad idea. Probably a bad idea even if the gap is 12hrs.
So yes itās pretty unlikely Iām going to have a high quality run session, and probably increase injury risk if I lift heavy beforehand on the same day.
I would not worry so much if I want to lift heavy before a moderate indoor bike or after a moderate run or swim.