In recent years, the trend of incorporating strength training into cycling and triathlon coaching has become increasingly popular. Many coaches and athletes alike are turning to strength training routines in the hopes of improving overall performance. However, these well-meaning efforts often miss the mark, particularly when they are grounded solely in research without broader context. This article aims to shed light on how to approach strength training for cycling and triathlon performance, ensuring you make informed decisions that yield genuine results for yourself or those you coach.
Misconceptions in Strength Training for Performance
One of the most common issues in the realm of strength training for athletes (not only cyclists and triathletes, but athletes in general, across pretty much all sports) is the tendency to base routines solely on research findings.
While scientific studies provide valuable insights, they can sometimes lead to misguided practices.
Studies often focus on specific aspects, such as lifting heavy weights, but can overlook individual needs and broader training contexts. For example, too much emphasis on lifting heavy can overtax the neuromuscular system, detracting from the primary sports training and leading to fatigue or even injury, while also detracting from in-sports performances.
It’s crucial to understand that effective strength training must be personalized. Coaches should consider the athlete’s current movement competencies, neuromuscular efficiency, and the specific demands of their sport. This tailored approach ensures that the training not only supports athletic performance but also mitigates risks associated with overtraining and improper technique.
Remember, a researchers job is to rule out all other factors and only focus on ONE thing in order to come to a conclusive finding.
Lifting heavy can, and should be a PART of a cyclist or triathletes year-round training program, but not at the cost of quality in their riding or in-sport training due to excessive fatigue, soreness, or incomplete recovery from previous training sessions.
The Importance of Listening to Your Body
Another key component of successful strength training for performances in sports, is the ability to listen to your body. Many athletes fall into the trap of pushing for personal bests in the gym, motivated by the desire to lift heavier weights each week, or to “do more than last week/month/year”. However, this mindset can be incredibly counterproductive. Instead, focusing on how your body moves and responds to each workout can provide better long-term results.
This approach involves being mindful of your form, the quality of your movements, and how your body feels on a given day. Progression isn’t always about adding more weight; sometimes it’s about refining your technique or increasing the volume of lifts with perfect form. This helps ensure that strength gains translate effectively into your primary sport, enhancing performance without unnecessary strain.
In fact, research has recently shown what highly experiences strength coaches who work in performance have known for decades: Your strength on any given day can fluctuate +/- 18% (or more) due to a number of factors including life stress, poor sleep, dehydration, poor fueling, or a myriad of other factors (Jovanović M., Flanagan E. Researched applications of velocity based strength training. J. Aust. Strength Cond. 2014;22:58–69).
“The Research Says…” Beyond the 8 to 12 Week Trend
These days, many cycling and triathlon coaches (as well as personal trainers) have been assigning strength training routines following an 8 to 12-week cycle, mirroring common research intervals.
However, this timeframe is often misunderstood.
Research indicates that while heavy lifting for this duration can yield noticeable gains, it’s not the endpoint. Strength training benefits from periodization—a method that involves varying the training load and intensity over different phases throughout the year.
Periodization integrates periods of intensification/ densification (a total of more weight moved for a given exercise) with periods of lower load/volume training. This cyclical approach allows tissues and the nervous system to recover and adapt, preventing burnout and injuries.
Pretty much any half-decent endurance coach these days knows this as a typical 3 week on, 1 week off approach training block.Yet they fail to either bear this in mind with the strength training, or they push too hard in the loading weeks, due to not understanding the various tissues and structures in the body have different adaptation timelines.
For example: Tendons tend to take 12-24 WEEKS (that’s 3-6 months) to adapt to a given stimulus to a degree of improvement where the tendons can allow more efficient and effective energy storage and release.
Meanwhile the bones take 4-6 months to begin to adapt to the stresses placed on them. While the muscle tissues do respond quicker, you can only push the body so far before there is too much damage to recover enough between training exposures to where high quality training can be done on or off the bike.
And this leads us to the larger underlying issue….
Consistency and Longevity in Strength Training is the Name of the Game for Performance
Consistency is the bedrock of effective strength training- especially if one is chasing performance improvements in sport.
Many endurance athletes abandon their strength routines after the initial 8 to 12 weeks, either due to perceived completion (because the research says 8-12 weeks), lack of visible progress, or due to their having been too sore or tired to complete any quality training in their sport.
However, to an even higher extent than endurance training, strength improvements and tissue adaptations build gradually and require sustained effort over months and even years. Regular strength training sessions—aligned with your broader training schedule—can lead to significant long-term performance enhancements.
Understanding that improvements in strength, much like fitness gains, are not instantaneous is critical. It takes time to see the benefits of your hard work manifest in your primary sport. By maintaining a consistent training regimen, adjusting loads as needed, and allowing for adequate recovery, you will set the stage for substantial, lasting performance gains.
Integrating Strength Training with Sport-Specific Training
Finally, it’s essential to integrate strength training seamlessly with your sport-specific workouts. This means considering how your strength sessions affect your cycling or triathlon training and vice versa. Proper integration ensures that neither aspect of your training detracts from the other, but rather, they complement and enhance each other.
To achieve this balance monitor your recovery and performance metrics. These metrics include, but are not limited to:
- Your day to day mood
- Your energy on a day to day basis
- Soreness or pain
- Ability to maintain high quality movement patterns for exercises
- Enthusiasm and mental readiness for each training session
- Quality of sleep
Adjust your strength training load based on these metrics to avoid overtraining and ensure ongoing progress in all areas of your athletic performance.
By following these guidelines, you can see phenomenal strength training program gains that genuinely enhance your athletic performance, helping you become a more resilient and capable athlete both in the gym and in your primary sport.
But they have next to nothing to do with how much weight is on the bar, but rather with how well you’re moving, your ability to train with high quality on a consistent basis, and not pushing your body -or mind- beyond its abilities to recover and adapt to a given training session.
Recovery and Adaptations: Ensuring Continued Progress
One of the pivotal aspects of strength training that often gets overlooked far too often, is the importance of recovery and adaptations.
Without sufficient recovery, all the hard work put into strength training sessions can quickly unravel, leading to stagnation or even regression in performance. This is particularly notable among cyclists and triathletes who tend to push too hard during the off-season or base training phase, leading to burnout and decreased ride quality.
Common Signs of Overtraining:
- Chronic Fatigue: Feeling persistently tired and unable to perform at your usual capacity.
- Decreased Ride Quality: Noticing a drop in performance metrics such as power output or speed.
- Mental Fatigue: Feeling mentally drained and lacking motivation for workouts.
- Soreness: Muscular or joint soreness or achiness that is present on a day-to-day basis, or consistently 1-2 days after a given strength workout.
Tailoring Strength Training Programs for Cyclists
Generic programs, like the popular powerlifting 5×5 strength routine, have been touted as effective for endurance athletes as it epitomizes “Lift Heavy $h*t!”.
However, for cyclists and triathletes alike, this program and other powerlifting programs like it, can be inappropriate due to the unique demands of the sport. Cyclists must balance a variety of physical demands including tissue, neurological, metabolic, and cardiorespiratory demands on their bodies, which require a very different kind of strength training programming. To truly benefit from strength training, the goal should be to achieve sport balance rather than sport-specific strength.
Key Considerations for Cyclist Strength Programs:
- Tissue Demands: Understanding the specific muscle groups that need strengthening as well as the different tissues which need to be either strengthened or improved.
- Neurological Demands: Focusing on exercise technique in a way that improves neuromuscular control and coordination.
- Metabolic Demands: Incorporating routines that boost metabolic efficiency and endurance.
- Cardiorespiratory Demands: Ensuring the heart and lungs are able to handle the rigors of extended cycling events. This includes breathing exercises which target different muscles, joints, and tissues via positioning and postures in order to regain an ideal “Zone of Apposition” for the pelvis, diaphragm, and glottis of the throat. This allows for more efficient and effective breathing, as well as improves the athletes abilities to move from a “fight or flight” (aka racing/training hard) status, into a “rest and digest” status.
Training Timing: Aligning Strength Workouts with Sport-Specific Goals
Understanding when to incorporate strength training into your routine is another critical aspect for maximizing performance benefits for cyclists and triathletes.
The timing of your workouts can significantly impact the effectiveness of both your strength training and sport training. Generally, the focus should be on what is most important during a particular time of the year.
Strength Workout Before Sport Workouts:If your primary goal is to build muscle mass (no, not like Arnold, but rather lean muscle mass you can use and apply in your sport), improve tissue quality, or enhance absolute strength, performing strength training sessions before your cycling or triathlon workouts can be beneficial. This sequence ensures you have ample energy and focus to lift heavier weights or complete complex movements with proper form and intensity.And that you’re telling your body “Hey this is important and our main focus”.
Sports Workout Before Strength Training:Conversely, if your target is to improve your cycling, running, or swimming metrics, such as functional threshold power (FTP), VO2 max, or sprint power, then completing your cycling or triathlon training first is advisable. Prioritizing sport-specific training helps ensure these sessions are done with maximal energy and effectiveness, preserving the quality of work needed to enhance endurance and power metrics. And again, telling the body what is most important.
There is a time and a place within the training year for both of these. During the “off-season” and Base period, the strength training should be first.
After Base moving into build, it will depend on what the rider needs most.
Using Perceived Exertion As Your Primary Strength Performance Metric
Monitoring perceived exertion (RPE) is a straightforward yet extremely effective way to gauge the intensity and efficiency of your workouts. By paying attention to how you feel during each session—considering fatigue levels, energy, and overall physical sensations—you can better tailor your training to your current state. This personalized approach allows for adjustments that can enhance performance and prevent overtraining.
Metrics to Focus On in Your Strength Training:
- Perceived Exertion: Subjective measure of how hard you feel you’re working on a scale of 1-10. We want to land in an RPE range of 6-7 out of 10 for the vast majority of your working sets
- Movement Quality: Ensuring exercises are executed with proper form and technique, moving the best you can, with a weight that allows you to move well, but challenges you a little the last repetition or two.
- Movement Decay: Does your technique worsen set to set?
Advanced Metrics for Performance Assessment
While perceived exertion and movement quality form the foundation of effective strength training, advanced metrics can provide deeper insights into your progress and performance, but ONLY after you have gotten to the point of movement mastery, or at the very least movement proficiency under fatigue.
For most strength training individuals, this requires 2-4 years of regular, focused, purposeful practice in their strength training 2-3 days a week.
These advanced metrics include:
- Velocity Based Training: Helps determine loads for a given day based on that athletes desired/ needed training adaptations, and especially training readiness on any given day.
- Force Plate Analysis: Evaluates power output and balance during dynamic movements, as well as gives the coach the ability to determine changes in training readiness and changes in movements over medium to long periods of time.
Integrating these metrics can help tailor your training with precision, ensuring that you are constantly progressing towards your performance goals. However, jumping right into these before learning how to move well, and taking the time, effort, and consistency it takes to build up movement proficiency is a waste of both time and money.
Learn to move better, practice moving better, move better, and only then look to move advanced tools to guide your strength training.
Failures and Progression: Learning Through Movement
One key aspect of strength training for performance is understanding that failure, when handled correctly, is a crucial part of progression. Unlike bodybuilders or powerlifters who may aim to lift maximal weights, cyclists and triathletes benefit more from mastering movements that create the right amount of tension and stiffness in specific parts of the body.
We, as endurance athletes should NEVER be lifting to failure. The risk of injury is too great, and it is completely unproductive in the chase for better performances on the bike, or in triathlon.
When we speak of “failure” we are talking about the challenges of maintaining great postures and positions for your strength training exercises, and getting the body to organize itself in a more effective and efficient manner, such as.
- Movement Mastery: Focus on perfecting form and technique rather than lifting heavy.
- Creating Tension: Understanding how to generate the right amount of muscular tension, in the right places for efficient and highly effective movement.
- Progressive Learning: Continuously improving your skills and adapting your training to ensure ongoing progress.
Taking It Deeper: Unpacking Strength Training Exercises
To genuinely maximize the benefits of strength training for cyclists and triathletes, it’s essential to delve deeper into not just the ‘what,’ but also the ‘how’ and ‘why.’ This approach ensures a more comprehensive understanding of the exercises, their applications, and the appropriate progressions.
Understanding the Purpose of Each Exercise:
- Mid-level Application: It’s not enough to simply perform an exercise; understanding how it fits into your overall training program, and how it serves that individual, is crucial.
- Timing of Application: Knowing when to incorporate specific exercises in your training cycle can enhance their effectiveness.
- Progression Plans: Properly staged progressions help avoid plateaus and injuries while boosting performance gains.
Emphasizing Smarter Training
“Train smarter, not harder” might sound like a cliché, but it’s a guiding principle that stands the test of time in endurance sports. For cyclists and triathletes, this means making every workout count through strategic planning and execution.
Components of Smart Training:
- Optimal Load: Balancing intensity and volume to prevent burnout and promote adaptations.
- Recovery Strategies: Implementing active recovery, proper nutrition, and sleep to support training demands.
- Consistency: Regular and structured training sessions that align with long-term goals.
Leveraging Knowledge to Boost Performance
Equipped with the right knowledge and resources, cyclists, triathletes, and their coaches can transform their training methodologies to achieve superior performance outcomes. Through a combination of instructional content, well thought out training plans, and ongoing education, the journey to peak performance becomes a well-charted path.
But it is vital to not just read or watch, but to DO.
Integrating Knowledge:
- Apply Learned Techniques: Put newly acquired skills into practice, adjusting as needed based on your specific needs, and the needs of the athlete or client in front of you.
- Monitor Progress: Regularly track performance metrics to ensure that the adopted strategies are yielding the desired improvements. Don’t get stuck on the numbers on the bar… focus on movement proficiency, and the ability to do high quality work on a day to day and week to week basis.
- Seek Feedback: Use feedback loops, whether through self-assessment or external coaching, to continuously refine your approach to find what works for you, and helps you see improvement.
- Be Patient: Strength training for performance involves far more than just the muscles! Tendons, ligaments, bones, nerves, fascia, and the hormonal system of the body all are challenged, but they each adapt at their own pace!
The key to unlocking performance improvements is not executing an 8-12 week strength training blitz every “off-season” or base period- it’s in the consistency of showing up on a regular basis 2-3 days a week, for 50-52 weeks a year.
Conclusion
Implementing a thoughtful and strategic strength training program, aligned with your specific athletic goals and competition calendar, can greatly enhance your performance as a cyclist or triathlete.
Prioritizing recovery and adaptations needed from strength training, listening to your body, and utilizing perceived exertion and how you’re performing each exercise can create a balanced and highly effective training regimen. Maintaining consistency, aiming for 2-3 days a week of strength training during base and build, and 1-2 days a week of strength training the remainder of the year are the keystones to success.
This consistency as well as avoiding common pitfalls and continually evolving your training approach will help you achieve sustained performance gains and resilience in your sport, while helping you add life to your years, and help you stay healthy, move better, and enjoy your chosen sport now, and for many years to come.
Resources for Further Learning
For those interested in delving deeper into the intricacies of effective strength training for cycling performance, several resources can provide detailed guidance and structured learning opportunities. From podcasts to books and online courses, you have various avenues to expand your knowledge and enhance your training regimen.
Recommended Resources:
- Podcasts: Strong Savvy Cyclist and Triathlete Podcast which has over 188 episodes including expert interviews and deep dives into the world of performance training.
- YouTube Videos: The HVTraining YouTube Channel has hundreds of instructional videos on strength training techniques for cyclists and triathletes
- Courses: My Training Peaks University specialized courses Strength Training for Cycling Success and Strength Training for Triathlon Success offer coaches and self-coached endurance athletes alike insights and applications of strength training for endurance performances.
- Certification: The Strength Training for Cyclists Certification has been helping coaches, trainers, and self-coached endurance athletes around the world since 2019 to learn how to best apply strength training for cycling improvements. From Assessment and how to build a strength training program, to the exact exercise progressions and regressions, the certification course will put you ahead of the class in your results and skills.
- Books: “Strength Training for Cycling Performance” has been called the “Strength Training Bible for cyclists and coaches alike” and is an international best seller.
“Lift Heavy Sh*t: Intelligent Strength Training for the Masters Cyclists” offers Masters Cyclists the perspective and actionable items on how to lift heavy while staying healthy and seeing performance improvements on the bike. Both are available on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback formats
By integrating these resources into your training approach, you can better understand the principles of strength training for performance and apply them effectively to boost your cycling and triathlon capabilities.
