Benefits Of Strength Training For Cyclists
The evidence base for combined strength and endurance training having a positive impact on cycling performance is mounting every year as researchers study the subject more comprehensively and practitioners improve their knowledge and application of strength training methods to individual athletes.
In this post, we’ll provide a brief overview of the benefits that strength training can bring to cyclists. We’ll look specifically at the different physiological components (e.g. endurance, economy) that can benefit most from a strength training program.
To start with, it’s important to note there are several reasons why you may undertake strength training as a cyclist:
To improve endurance
To improve cycling economy (we can broadly define this as how much oxygen or energy it requires to produce a given wattage)
To increase anaerobic capacity
Increase peak power output (e.g. maximal sprints)
Reduce injury risk or for injury rehabilitation.
Let’s take a look at each of those reasons…
Endurance
Endurance can be defined as the ability to perform work for a sustained period whilst resisting fatigue. It is a term used in cycling which usually refers to the ability to ride for multiple hours at a time. It can also be defined as the ability to produce a maximal effort after several hours of riding.
What’s interesting in this context is that strength training can improve the ability to produce power after several hours of riding.
For example, Rønnestad et al. (2011) found that a 12-week strength training intervention alongside concurrent endurance training in elite cyclists resulted in a 7.2 +/- 2.0% higher 5-min maximal power output at the end of 3-hours of cycling in Zone 1 (~40-55% FTP).
In contrast, the control group who performed endurance training only had no change in their 5-min maximal power after 3-hours of riding.
This obviously has very specific benefits for competitive cyclists, as important moves in races are made in the latter stages of an event. Often it is the athletes with the smallest decline in the ability to produce a maximal effort after several hours of riding who will be successful, more so than the athlete with the highest maximal power values when fresh.
The reason that strength training improves endurance is not yet fully understood. One theory is that when riding at a given power output (say 60% of threshold power), increased muscle strength means that muscle fibres are working at a lower percentage of their maximal load, resulting in less muscular damage (Rønnestad, & Mujika, 2014). Another theory is that the increased strength of Type I fibres means that fewer Type IIa fibres need to be recruited for a given output. As Type I fibres are more aerobically efficient, this may result in increased glycogen sparing, meaning more glycogen is available for hard efforts in the latter stages of riding/racing (Rønnestad, & Mujika, 2014).
Concurrent strength and endurance training has been found to reduce lactate levels at a given sub-threshold power output, which would tend to support this theory (Rønnestad et al., 2010a).
Economy
Economy can be understood in the context of cycling to be the amount of power produced for a given metabolic cost.
Studies have also shown strength training alongside concurrent endurance training results in improved cycling economy when compared to endurance training only (Sunde et al., 2010, Bastiaans et al., 2001, Rønnestad et al., 2011).
It could be that increased utilisation of more aerobically adapted Type I muscle fibres (as described above) also partially explain the improvement in cycling economy (Rønnestad, & Mujika, 2014). Other explanations include a shift in fibre type from Type IIx to Type IIa, and an improved rate of force development (how quickly a muscle contracts), which is linked with better blood and oxygen supply to the working muscle (Rønnestad, & Mujika, 2014).
Strength training has also been linked with improved musculo-tendon stiffness, which means more energy can be stored as elastic energy during the eccentric phase of movement (i.e. as the muscle lengthens). However, this is more likely to play a part in improved economy for sports such as running, where the eccentric phase is much more dominant than in cycling.
Anaerobic Capacity & Peak Power
Anaerobic capacity is the amount of energy that can be generated through anaerobic energy pathways (such as glycolysis and the phosphocreatine system). Having a greater anaerobic capacity manifests in training and competition as greater power outputs over durations up to around 2 minutes.
When we talk about peak power, these are efforts typically of 15 seconds or less, which are fuelled predominantly by the phosphocreatine system, a very quick anaerobic metabolic process, but one that is exhausted very quickly.
Improved anaerobic capacity and peak power is likely due to a combination of improved neural stimulation of muscle fibres and an increase in the maximal load each fibre can withstand.
Rønnestad et al., 2010a found that after a 12-week program of strength and endurance training, peak power in a Wingate test was increased by 9.4%, and the rate of fatigue across the test was also reduced when compared to the endurance-only group.
Injury Prevention
Given that consistency of training is one of the cornerstones for sustained improvements over long periods of time, preventing training-induced injuries is of huge importance to competitive cyclists.
Injury prevention can be facilitated by strength training in several ways, including improved tendon strength and resistance to injury (Kjaer et al., 2014) and improved core stability for better biomechanics (Abt et al. 2007).
Relative Importance
It’s worth noting that overall, the benefits of strength training are generally comparatively small relative to the gains from the primary cycling training. For example, while studies usually tend to favour concurrent strength and endurance training versus endurance training alone, the differences are often not large enough to be detected statistically (Rønnestad et al., 2010a, Bastiaans et al., 2001).
This means that in theory these apparent strength training benefits could have occurred by chance, although the frequency with which these small benefits are observed across multiple studies does tend to support the use of strength training.
Overall, there will be individual variation as to the need for and benefits seen from strength training. However, as a general rule, we believe that, strength training should usually be considered as supplementary to the on-bike training, which should take priority (i.e. you shouldn’t skip important training sessions on the bike in favour of strength training).
Drawbacks
It’s worth also considering here whether there are any drawbacks to strength training.
One important question to ask is whether strength training results in a gain in lean body mass, which could negatively impact a cyclist’s power to weight ratio, and might also result in poorer blood flow to working muscles (due to a reduced capillary to muscle ratio) (Rønnestad, & Mujika, 2014).
In general, while strength training can result in an increase in lean muscle mass or size, this is usually very small compared to the gains that would be seen when doing strength training alone (Rønnestad et al., 2010a; Rønnestad, & Mujika, 2014). The high ratio of cycling training to strength training in most cycling training plans will usually prevent too much mass accruing.
In our view, the main potential negative in performing strength training is whether it interferes with the ability to perform important training sessions. However, this can be overcome with appropriate planning, which is a topic we will cover in another post.
Free Workout Handbook
Be sure to grab our Key Workouts Guide, a short and practical PDF download that outlines 10 effective training sessions to develop the major components of high cycling performance:
References
Abt, J. P., Smoliga, J. M., Brick, M. J., Jolly, J. T., Lephart, S. M., & Fu, F. H. (2007). Relationship between cycling mechanics and core stability. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 21(4), 1300-1304.
Bastiaans, J., Diemen, A. B. J. P., Veneberg, T., & Jeukendrup, A. (2001). The effects of replacing a portion of endurance training by explosive strength training on performance in trained cyclists. European journal of applied physiology, 86(1), 79-84.
Kjaer, M., & Heinemeier, K. M. (2014). Eccentric exercise: acute and chronic effects on healthy and diseased tendons. Journal of applied physiology, 116(11), 1435-1438.
Rønnestad, B. R., Hansen, E. A., & Raastad, T. (2010a). Effect of heavy strength training on thigh muscle cross-sectional area, performance determinants, and performance in well-trained cyclists. European journal of applied physiology, 108(5), 965-975.
Rønnestad, B. R., Hansen, E. A., & Raastad, T. (2011). Strength training improves 5‐min all‐out performance following 185 min of cycling. Scandinavian journal of medicine & science in sports, 21(2), 250-259.
Rønnestad, B. R., & Mujika, I. (2014). Optimizing strength training for running and cycling endurance performance: A review. Scandinavian journal of medicine & science in sports, 24(4), 603-612.
Sunde, A., Støren, Ø., Bjerkaas, M., Larsen, M. H., Hoff, J., & Helgerud, J. (2010). Maximal strength training improves cycling economy in competitive cyclists. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 24(8), 2157-2165.
