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Cycling and Weight Lifting
See Also Indoor Bicycle Trainers - Beat the Boredom, Bicycle Saddles and Comfort, and Exercise Routine
Want to start an argument? Go to a group of cyclists and ask whether a cyclist should train with weights or not.
Lance Armstrong's coach recommends strength training in the winter, while many coaches recommend against it.
The confusion stems from the lack of properly done studies, the confusion between professional cyclists and weekend warriors, and strength training vs. bodybuilding.
Since cycling is primarily an endurance sport, the first question you have to ask is what limits the power that a cyclist can sustain for an extended period of time? For most cyclists, this is limited by the amount of oxygen that they can deliver to their muscles. The upper limit for highly-trained cyclists is enough oxygen to provide about 500 watts of cycling power. Once you have enough muscle in your legs to utilize this amount, additional muscle is just excess baggage in endurance riding. The extra muscle will help in sprints and short climbs, but since most bicycle races are primarily endurance events, it's usually more of a hindrance. Of course, most people never develop their cardiovascular system to anywhere near this capacity. The average adult male can sustain about 150 watts, while a good recreational rider may be able to sustain 300 watts. Lance Armstrong is able to sustain about 500 watts. NASA did a study some years ago and concluded that most healthy male adults could be trained to 450 watts. It doesn't require a lot of muscle to push 500 watts (most adult males can do this, they just can't provide enough oxygen to the legs to maintain it for any length of time). Based on this many cyclists believe that weight training is not necessary.
However, strength training (see Strength Training Routine) can provide substantial increases in power for short anaerobic bursts, such as short steep climbs in mountain biking and finish line sprints, with little increase in the size and weight of the muscles. This is because there are two primary factors that determine muscle strength: Amount of muscle fiber, and the percentage of muscle fiber that can be contracted at a given time. Doing low reps using weights that are greater then 80% of your 1 rep maximum develops the ability to utilize a higher percentage of your muscle fibers in a single contraction.
It is not unusual for someone who has developed their leg muscles through cycling, but has never weight trained, to be able to increase their 1 rep max by 30-40% without a significant increase in muscle size by low-rep weight training. This won't help with endurance power, but can be handy in special situations.
Also, younger testosterone laden riders have no trouble developing the required amount of muscle by cycling, but older riders may need the assistance of weight training to build this muscle.
Here's a typical study on weight training and cycling and my critique
of its methodology.
From the study Med. Sci.
Sports Exerc., Vol. 31, No. 6, pp. 886-891, 1999,
Increased Leg Strength Does Not Improve Cycling Performance
Methods: Twenty-one endurance-trained, female cyclists, aged 18-42 yr, were randomly assigned to either a resistance training (RT; N = 14) or a control group (CON; N = 7). Resistance training (2×·wk-1) consisted of five sets to failure (2-8 RM) of parallel squats for 12 wk. Before and immediately after the resistance-training period, all subjects completed an incremental cycle test to allow determination of both their lactate threshold (LT) and peak oxygen consumption V(dot)O2). In addition, endurance performance was assessed by average power output during a 1-h cycle test (OHT), and leg strength was measured by recording the subject's one repetition maximum (1 RM) concentric squat. Before and after the 12-wk training program, resting muscle was sampled by needle biopsy from m. vastus lateralis and analyzed for fiber type diameter, fiber type percentage, and the activities of 2-oxoglutarate dehydrogenase and phosphofructokinase.
Results: After the resistance training program, there was a significant increase in 1 RM concentric squat strength for RT (35.9%) but not for CON (3.7%) (P < 0.05). However, there were NO significant changes in OHT performance, LT, V(dot)O2, muscle fiber characteristics, or enzyme activities in either group (P > 0.05).
The main problem with this study is the length of the training - 12 weeks. This is not enough time for someone beginning a strength program to actually gain any significant muscle. The increase in strength would primarily be expected to be due to an increase in neurological strength (the ability to contract a larger percentage of muscle fibers concurrently). Neurological strength can be trained by doing heavy weights and low reps, and will have no benefit for endurance. It's not until after a beginner gets past this phase of training (usually about 8 weeks) that they start to actually gain muscle. This is especially true for someone like a cyclist who has plenty of muscle, but has never trained it to be able contract a high percentage at once. If the cyclists in the study had gained a 35.9% strength increase due to actual muscle gain, it would have been very visibly noticeable, because their muscles would have to be about 35% more massive. The study even noted that there was no significant change in muscle fiber. So when this study concludes that weight training didn't benefit endurance, they really only determined that increases in neurological strength don't benefit endurance. It didn't really tell us anything one way or the other about what an increase in muscle would do. What the study should have done was train the resistance training group for two months first to get past the neurological phase (or continued the study past this point), take the cycling and strength measurements, do the ten weeks of training, and then look at the final results.
Another common problem seen in some studies is muscle specificity. A study will test the cycling abilities of a group, place them on weight training for a period of time, then retest their cycling abilities and they show little improvement. They problem with this approach is muscle specificity. It is well known that muscle abilities are specific. For example, you may have experienced the following: You train on a machine at the gym that uses a particular muscle group. You then switch to a machine that uses the same muscle group, but in a slightly different way, and you can't push much weight on it. But, use it for a few weeks and your muscles rapidly adapt to the new machine and the workout poundage rises rapidly. For muscles to perform their optimum on a particular exercise, they have to train on that exercise. But once muscle is developed it can quickly be adapted to another exercise. For the studies to be meaningful, they should use the weights to develop muscle, then spend a few weeks training the muscle specifically for cycling, and then retest for cycling performance improvement.
The importance of
specificity during strength training. Subjects performed
squats for 8 weeks and made impressive strength gains. On
different exercises that used the same muscles, strength
gains were much less.
From ADAPTATION TO EXERCISE: Progressive Resistance Exercise |
Bottom Line: Is weight training beneficial for endurance cyclists? It is up to a point. Then it becomes counter productive. Arnold Schwarzenegger didn't win many bike races. It can lead to overtraining if you are putting in a lot of miles on the bike also. However, cyclists should do enough to maintain their neurological strength. Large muscle gains will not provide much benefit for endurance events, but muscle gains have been shown to be beneficial for shorter cycling events, such as those less than an hour.
Also, cycling doesn't do much to maintain bone mass. This is a very good reason for older cyclists to include weight lifting in their training.
Another question you have to ask is why are you cycling? If your goal is to be the fastest possible cyclist you can be in endurance events, then you need to be concerned about the excess weight that extra muscle can add. But if you are a recreational cyclist whose primary interest is overall fitness and health, then a strength program should be part of your exercise plan.
What exercises should a cyclist do?
The main exercises that work the primary cycling muscles are the
Squat,
Leg Press,
and Leg Curls.
Although leg extensions would seem like a good choice, they have been
shown to provide little benefit to cycling strength. Mountain
bikers need more upper body strength than roadies. Bench rows and
seated rows are good for developing the strength needed for lofting the
front wheel over countless obstacles. As for alleviating back pain
from riding, strength training hasn't been shown to be much help for this.
It doesn't matter how strong your back muscles are if they tire out and
quit working. Conditioning exercises, such as Pilates for your
trunk muscles, seem to be more effective for preventing back pain.
See Exercise Routine for a
description of a general overall strength routine. We are also
working on a free customized workout routine generator. Check back
soon.
Side Note: I recently competed in a solo 6-hour mountain bike race. On my last lap with only 3/4 of mile to go, my rear hub went out. I picked up my 28-pound bike and ran with it to the finish line, still managing to take 3rd place overall (1st in my age group). The extra upper body strength was certainly helpful in that situation.
Other studies and information
- Strength Training Routines: Is strength training really beneficial for endurance athletes? Here's a sport-by-sport review
- To Lift or Not to Lift; That is the Question
- Weight Training for Bicyclists
- Carmichael Training Systems
- Proper Planning Makes Weight Training Effective for Cyclists
- Swimming workouts & swimming strength training
- Weight Training for Cyclists
Muscle Specificity
- A New Look at Specificity
- Adaptation To Exercise: Progressive Resistance Exercise
- Developing Fundamental Athletic Movement Patterns, Coordination, Speed, Agility, and Power
- Muscle specificity: strength, endurance and functional improvement
- Cycling Performance Tips - Developing a Training Program
- Specificity of Training
- Specificity of Training - 3
- Speed Of Weight Training Exercises Improves Performances At Similar Speeds
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2006-03-16 Anonymous, Serious Competitor, age 20-29, wrote
Interesting, Factual
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