If you want to ride well, you need strength training

Every road cyclist wants to be stronger and faster, but if you only do aerobic training, then your training is incomplete.

Why Cyclists Should Focus on Muscle Strength Training

You might think that if you care about building muscle, you would go to the gym or other training instead of riding a bike. But for cyclists, building muscle is essential.
For example, strength training helps prevent imbalances that lead to injuries. It also improves bone density, which is important not only for people over 40, but for all cyclists because this sport is low-impact, but it also makes you stronger and improves your cycling performance.
In this regard, the certified coach of the American Cycling Association said: "As a supplement to cycling, strength training has significant benefits and relatively few negative effects."

Building Muscles and Building Strength

Before discussing the effects of cycling on muscles, it is important to understand what building muscles and building strength mean, although they are not the same.

In general, if you focus on building muscles, you will become stronger in the process, and vice versa, but there are some key differences. Generally speaking, when our muscles are stronger, we can have greater strength, but there are exceptions. For example, a bodybuilder is not necessarily stronger than a powerlifter, even if they appear stronger and have more muscle mass. If your goal is to gain more power with less effort, leave the goal of muscle building to the bodybuilders. Developing strength is more in line with what you need to do well on the bike.

How to Help Build Muscle

Many factors come into play, including your current cycling volume and intensity, your training background, and most importantly, your goals.

For some people, this new stimulus may be strength training, but for others, increasing the volume and/or intensity of your cycling workouts will be enough.
I recommend focusing on fundamental movement patterns rather than specific body parts. This means prioritizing squats, hip joints, single-leg exercises, pushing and pulling in the horizontal and vertical planes, and rotation and counter-rotation exercises. To get the most out of your workout, lift as much weight as possible, maintain good form, and perform one to five repetitions per set, with two to four minutes of rest between sets.

If you want to optimize your cycling workouts for strength, focus on short, intense climbs and sprints to develop your type II muscle fibers. The suggestion is to warm up with some easy riding, then head to the “steepest hill you can find” and do a series of hill repeats. There, you’ll ride all-out for 10 to 15 seconds at 60 to 80 revolutions per minute (rpm), recover for three to five minutes, and then repeat three more times for a total of four all-out repeats.

The recovery time between intervals may seem ridiculously long, but that’s exactly the point. We want to maximize power, not fatigue. When you give your body the time it needs to fully recover, you can do the next interval at the same intensity, which will stress the physiological systems that promote muscle strengthening.

Otherwise, you’re just stressing your cardiovascular system. The only metric to worry about is the rate of perceived exertion (RPE), which is scored out of 10.

That’s because the intervals are too short for your heart rate to respond, and if you’re targeting a specific power zone, you may be neglecting power.

For years, it was believed that cyclists didn't need as much protein as strength athletes, but now science shows that cyclists need at least 0.7 grams of protein per pound of body weight to maintain normal activity. This means you need to eat a lot of protein. Without adequate protein intake, the body will break down other structures to get the protein it needs, which is not an ideal situation.

Finally, I hope you can build muscle and reach a stronger level of cycling! Climb higher mountains!

Tags: #workout strength #muscle strength #cycling optimization #protein