Navigate to any cycling-centric blog, website or social media page and guaranteed you’ll find a plethora of articles detailing the importance of strength training for riders interspersed with those titled ‘10 best exercises for cyclists’, which is inconveniently 10 entirely different exercises to the other article you just read. Whilst all of these articles have merit, going from a world where you’re used to speaking in watts and zones into reps and sets, the abundance of information and knowing what to do with it can be overwhelming.

As is the case with any form of athletic training, a prescriptive, cookie cutter approach is only going to get you so far, quite simply because it is not tailored to your individual strengths, weaknesses or goals. However, they can certainly be a valuable resource to get you started, especially if you don’t have access to a strength coach or bespoke programme. The aim of our Cycling Strong series is to equip you with a basic understanding of some of these strength training fundamentals, highlighting potential pitfalls and answering any of your questions, enabling you to draw from all of the information available and ultimately craft a strength routine to suit you as a rider.

Key terms:

Reps: short for repetitions. A rep is a single execution of an exercise. One squat is one rep, ten squats are ten reps etc.

Sets = a group of reps performed without rest. So ten squats may be one set.

When a programme says ‘Squats: 12 reps for 3 sets’, this means you do 12 squats, rest, 12 squats, rest, 12 squats.

Aim for Progressive Overload

When it comes to all and any improvements in muscular strength and endurance, progressive overload is the core principle of strength training. By progressively overloading the muscle, you are forcing it to adapt to the stimulus you place on it which translates to an increase in strength, power or endurance. In other words, this means progressively making it harder for the muscle to work over an extended period of time.

The most common way people know to do this is by increasing the weight they’re lifting, however this is not the only option, so before you whip out the ‘I don’t have a gym membership’ excuse, think again. You can progressively overload your muscles by:

● Increasing weight
● Increasing the volume (the number of sets and/or reps you perform)
● Increasing the range of movement
e.g. if your lunges are feeling too easy, try elevating your front foot and performing the exercise, so that you have to work the movement pattern further
● Increasing time under tension (how long you hold in the active phase)
e.g. instead of performing a squat and standing straight up, consider holding at the base of your squat for several counts before standing. You’re increasing the amount of time your muscle is actively tensing or working.
● Decreasing rests between sets
● Increasing training frequency

Quality over quantity

One of the big caveats when it comes to progressive overload is not compromising the quality and form of the exercise in order to lift heavier or increase volume, it’s a sure fire way to sustain an injury. Equally, you don’t always need to overload every set, of every exercise, of every workout – muscular adaptation is not a rapid process and why many programmes span over 8 to 12 weeks! It’s all in the name, progressive overload – you want to incrementally make your muscles work harder so they’re given a chance to adapt, not massively jump from lifting 10kg to 20kg in a single session.

One leg or two?

Another way to focus on overloading a particular muscle or muscle group is through unilateral (one-sided) work; that could be performing an exercise one leg or arm at a time, or loading weight on one side of the body. Whilst you won’t be able to move the same weight on the leg press with one leg as you can with two, working the leg in isolation ensures a much more reliable and targeted firing of the muscle.

Whether we’re aware of it or not, many of us have one side of the body that is favoured in movement and therefore stronger – it may be something you’re aware of if you’ve ever seen your power output for each leg when pedalling. For example, when squatting you may unknowingly be relying more on one leg to generate power than the other, but by progressively overloading the legs individually means you can work the muscles equally and ultimately addresses any strength imbalances. In a later post we will also highlight the benefit of this modality when it comes to mind-muscle connection and injury rehab/prevention.

So now you have an understanding of the basic mechanics of a successful strength training programme, which will develop over this series as we dive a deeper in to exercise types, training modalities, how many reps and sets you actually need to do (hint: not as many as you might think) as well as much more. If you have any questions, or a strength training dilemmas, follow us and send us a message over on Instagram, and we’ll be sure to address it in a future post!