Yeah, to lose a significant amount of muscle you’ll probably have to:
cut the strength training to a minimum
go through periods of a calorie deficit
By strength training you’re telling your body that the muscle is still required, so it will try to keep it. And by not eating in a deficit your body won’t go looking for that energy to lose anything.
I’d go through a period of a calorie deficit where you have maybe one light lifting session and maybe one other like core/pre-hab session a week.
for myself, I’m 6ft tall (~182cm) and came to cycling from weight lifting at ~95kg. The first 8ish came off quick, the next 7 more slowly, and now with eating at a general maintenance calorie and lifting 1-2 times per week I’m staying pretty steady at about 80-82kg. So still larger than a lot of 6ft cyclists but not massive. But even 1 lifting day a week maintains most of my muscle mass.
If you start doing structured training with progressive overload, you’ll need de-load weeks. Usually that is three weeks on / ONE week off (easy). The off season break should be like two full weeks off though you can be active. The mid season break is usually a week off.
During the cycling season you can go into maintenance mode with lifting - once a week, higher reps, lower weight.
You are already out putting down a decent amount of watts, so unless if you are struggling up the climbs, then I wouldn’t worry too much about losing upper body weight. If you do opt for a leaner look, just be aware that it should still hold up for gravel racing. Even in cycling there are advantages to strength. Perhaps rather tinkering with low level weight swings while performance is being monitored. 95kg/450W FTP would be a very good weapon.
This is way too much easy for most people. 3 weeks on/one week easy is a good place for most people to start. I usually do that but my rest week is only the weekdays and then get back to work on the weekend so it’s more like 23 days on/ 5 days recovery. But those ‘on’ weeks also have recovery and off days during them.
Agreed that you should go into maintenance during the season but most people would get more benefit out of low rep, high weight. It’s the opposite of whats happening on the bike and you’ll maintain your strength better.
What I usually do is: say I can do maybe 100kg squat for 3 sets of 5 in the off season. In-season I’ll do ~100kg for 2 sets of 2-3 reps. Enough to touch the high weight but not enough to really cause much fatigue.
Not that my opinion is as valid as the cycling beasts on here, but I just wanted to add that I agree with most of the above. Post 40, I think we all need to consider maintenance of muscle mass.
Its one thing to back off lifting a bit for a few weeks just before an A race or during a particularly hard build, but quite another to make a deliberate decision to cut valuable muscle from upper body just for a bit more cycling performance. Your stats are amazing for an amateur so early in their cycling career, but you are getting older and you are not, and never likely to be, a well paid pro. Is loosing 4 kg of valuable muscle really worth a few more places in a race? That is not to belittle any race achievements, Im sure there will be many, and way more than most of us could hope for, but at the end of the day, its not the tour, and you still have a life to live off the bike. When you are 80 and still feeling strong as an ox, youll be glad you kept that strength.
I would think you could probably loose s considerable amount of mass to improve on the bike but that would come with less overall strength and unless its your job I would not try to loose too much muscle. Maybe work on explosiv movements to improve sprinting Power. But with your numbers you should be able to do pretty well on flatter and rolling gravel/ road events.
So many cracking responses - thank you to everyone that is taking the time to reply to me
I totally agree that I need to build in some recovery. I do too much and too often. It’s a bit tricky from the point of view that I have to cycle to work at least once a week as we’re a one car household. So that’s 44km total, regardless.
The other issue (and this relates to strict structured training too) is that I just love riding my bike. I live in a really rural and quiet part of southern Sweden which is best described as gravel paradise. Even my commute is 90% gravel, and the kind of gravel you’d go on holiday for. So taking time off is tough, and also applying structure can be tough sometimes as it’s so much fun just bombing around like a 10 year old on a BMX track.
I will heed your collective advice and not seek to lose muscle, but I will try to trim off a few kg of fat. It’s not going to leave me much, but I’ve always been naturally lean anyway.
@grwoolf - a dexa scan is definitely something I’d like to get. I’m back in the UK in a few weeks, so I’ll have a look to see what’s available. I think that I probably have very high bone density due to a lot of heavy weight training from ages 18-23, which contributes to my high weight. But it would be nice to check.
@dsirrom thank you for your thoughts on racing - it’s always nice to get an external perspective as I haven’t raced since I was 15 (well, apart from a couple of 25km TTs I organised here, and a couple of segment style gravel races).
I love riding gravel, and it now represents about 90% of what I do. Where we live is incredibly low in population (think NW Highlands in Scotland) so organising races can be tricky. There are good road races in Linköping (2hrs north) and a sprinkling of excellent gravel races too. I’ll focus on gravel, and my hope is to qualify for the UCI Gravel Worlds this year.
I say keep lifting and keep riding. You’re never getting paid to ride a bike, so you might as well continue with your more holistic approach to physical health.
I was sorta joking as I have some pretty incredible gravel riding out my door as well, but I would love to do some travel adventure riding, so you have my interest
Fortunate to live where we do! This is about 10 minutes from my door:
I’m in Oregon, US. The headwinds absolutely can be brutal, but they make you strong I also have some very steep fire roads about a 20 minute ride from my front door.
Standing invitation if you ever find yourself out here! I’ll try to keep up!
I also have some very steep fire roads about a 20 minute ride from my front door.