To lift or not to lift is a question that has, well, exercised physiologists, cyclists, and coaches for quite some time. Two recent papers have just come out (one a study, and the other a review article) with opposing conclusions as to whether or not lifting weights will benefit cyclists, and the appearance of these two articles combined with a continuing interest of mine prompted me to return to this long-neglected blog.
Let me begin with an apparent contradiction: I personally lift and suggest that some of the athletes I coach lift regularly, but not because lifting will benefit directly their cycling performance. There are very few situations in which pure strength (such as the effort needed to squat 2x your body weight) factors in cycling. Some common instances would be steep, technical climbs off-road in which you are moving at a slow speed, track sprinting, and BMX starts. (Interestingly enough, apparently some of the highest wattages ever recorded at the national level come from BMX riders training for the Olympics, but those numbers are from a dead stop and not after several hours of racing). So, then why lift? There are several reasons both physiological and psychological; I will cover them in what I see as decreasing order of importance below.
First (and most importantly to me and many of my athletes): the Master’s athlete. There is strong evidence that as we age our Type II muscle fibers (the “fast-twitch” muscle) decrease in both number and size. This is borne out by anecdotal evidence — many basketball players or wide receivers in football “lose a step or two” towards the end of their careers. Or in a more specific example, a cyclist who early in his career was a top sprinter, but later either had to change his approach or be content with getting close but not quite winning a lot of sprints he did formerly (think Erik Zabel in the last few years of his career). That loss of explosiveness results from the deterioration of Type II muscle fiber. The good news is that regular sprint training and resistance training (especially exercises that incorporate explosive movements) can stave off this decline. A corollary here might be the athlete whose sprint is lacking; however, it’s been my experience that if a rider doesn’t have a strong sprint either their overall fitness is weak (it doesn’t do you much good to have a great sprint if you’re not at the front when the bell rings) or they can adjust their tactics (e.g. attack multiple times until they form a break) and place highly that way.
Second: address imbalance and injury. Cycling is great for the muscles that extend your knee and hip (quads and glutes), but most other muscles don’t get much of a workout. Resistance training can help balance the focus cycling places on the legs. Thus, core and upper body exercises are key, and even if you don’t lift at all with your legs, you should incorporate some form of core and upper body work. The relatively static nature of the cycling position can also exacerbate any imbalance we have in our strength (and we all do; the human body is never perfectly symmetrical). In my own case, my left shoulder and arm are much weaker than my right (a broken collarbone on that side didn’t help matters), to the point that I would sometimes have to end sprint workouts early not because the legs gave out, but because my left shoulder did. Ever since then I have been assidiously working those muscles 2 or 3 times more than I do the right side.
Third: avoid burnout. We can race only so many stages of the “Tour de Trainer” before we begin to go a little nuts. Resistance training provides a way to keep training without resorting to the trainer day in and day out, at least early in the season. Incorporating a day or two of lifting should help you mentally so that when February and March (and beyond depending on where you live) roll around and you absolutely must be on the bike, no matter what the weather. An added benefit here is that resistance training will increase lean muscle mass which burns more calories which will help keep you closer to racing weight over the winter.