Most cyclists who walk into a gym for the first time make the same mistake: they follow a programme written for a 25-year-old rugby player. Heavy barbell squats. Conventional deadlifts. Bent-over rows with loaded barbells. These movements carry significant injury risk for our audience — riders aged 35-55 who've spent years hunched over handlebars with tight hip flexors and dormant glutes.
You don't need to lift heavy to lift well. Derek Teel, who has worked with everyone from recreational cyclists to WorldTour riders, puts it simply: build movement competency first, then add load. Skip that step and you're building strength on top of dysfunction.
This 12-week plan follows three phases. Each builds on the last. Miss a phase and the next one won't stick.
Phase 1: Stability and Mobility (Weeks 1-4)
The goal here isn't to get strong. It's to move properly. Most cyclists have restricted ankle dorsiflexion, locked-up thoracic spines, and hip flexors tighter than a drum. Phase 1 fixes those patterns before we load them.
2 sessions per week, 30 minutes each.
Session Structure
Warm-up (5 minutes)
- Ankle rockers — 2 x 10 per side. Stand in a split stance facing a wall, drive your knee forward over your toes. This addresses the ankle mobility deficit that forces compensatory movement in squats.
- Band pull-aparts — 2 x 15. Hold a light resistance band at shoulder width, pull it apart to your chest. Opens the thoracic spine and fires up the posterior deltoids that cycling completely neglects.
Main Block (20 minutes)
- Stability ball hip bridge — 3 x 12. Feet on the ball, drive hips to the ceiling. The instability forces your deep stabilisers to fire rather than your dominant quads doing all the work.
- Stability ball roll-out — 3 x 8. Kneeling, hands on ball, roll forward under control. Anti-extension core work with zero spinal load.
- Goblet squat — 3 x 10. Hold a dumbbell or kettlebell at your chest. Sit back and down. The goblet position forces an upright torso and teaches the squat pattern safely. Start with bodyweight if needed.
- Single-leg balance with reach — 3 x 8 per side. Stand on one leg, reach the opposite hand toward the floor in front of you. Fires the posterior chain and exposes any single-leg stability deficits.
Cool-down (5 minutes)
- 90/90 hip stretch — 60 seconds per side
- Thoracic rotation — 8 per side
By week 4, your goblet squat should feel controlled and balanced. Your ankles should have noticeably more range. That's when we start adding load.
Phase 2: Strength (Weeks 5-8)
Now we build force production. The movements here are still single-leg dominant because cycling is a single-leg sport. Every pedal stroke is a unilateral push. Training both legs together on a barbell hides asymmetries.
2-3 sessions per week, 35 minutes each.
Session Structure
Warm-up (5 minutes)
- Ankle rockers — 2 x 8 per side
- Band pull-aparts — 2 x 12
Main Block (25 minutes)
- Split squat — 3 x 10 per side. Rear foot elevated on a bench if stability allows. This is the single most transferable strength exercise for cycling. Prof Ronnestad's research on heavy strength training for cyclists used exercises in this category, and the results — improved cycling economy, increased time-to-exhaustion — were consistent across multiple studies.
- Renegade row — 3 x 8 per side. Plank position with dumbbells, row one to your hip while the other stays planted. Trains pulling strength plus anti-rotation core stability simultaneously. Two birds, one session.
- Lateral lunge — 3 x 10 per side. Step wide, sit your hips back over the working leg. Cycling lives in the sagittal plane only — forward and back. Lateral lunges build the frontal-plane stability that prevents knee drift and hip drop.
- Goblet squat — 3 x 8 with heavier load than Phase 1. You've earned the right to push this now.
Finisher (5 minutes)
- Band pull-aparts — 2 x 15
- Dead bug — 2 x 10 per side (from our core routine)
The load should be challenging for the last 2-3 reps of each set. If you're breezing through, increase the weight. If your form breaks down before rep 8, reduce it. Simple rule.
Phase 3: Power (Weeks 9-12)
Strength is the ability to produce force. Power is the ability to produce force quickly. This is where the gym work starts showing up on your power meter. Phase 3 takes the strength you've built and teaches your neuromuscular system to apply it at speed.
2-3 sessions per week, 35-40 minutes each.
Session Structure
Warm-up (5 minutes)
- Ankle rockers — 2 x 8 per side
- Band pull-aparts — 2 x 10
Main Block (25-30 minutes)
- Jump split squat — 3 x 6 per side. Start in split squat position, explode upward, land softly. If the jump feels unstable, regress to a fast concentric split squat (push up as quickly as you can without leaving the ground).
- Dumbbell push press — 3 x 6. Dumbbells at shoulders, slight knee bend, drive upward explosively. Total-body power production with zero spinal compression risk.
- Lateral bound — 3 x 6 per side. Single-leg hop sideways, stick the landing for 2 seconds. Builds reactive strength in the frontal plane.
- Renegade row — 3 x 8 per side (maintained from Phase 2, keeping that pulling strength).
- Goblet squat — 2 x 6, explosive concentric. Same pattern, faster output.
Cool-down (5 minutes)
- Hip flexor stretch — 60 seconds per side
- Thoracic rotation — 8 per side
Programming Rules
Never train S&C before a key bike session. Place gym work after easy rides or on separate days. If you ride hard on Tuesday and Thursday, strength goes on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday.
Rest 60-90 seconds between sets in Phases 1 and 2. In Phase 3, rest 2-3 minutes between power sets — you need full neural recovery to produce maximal force.
If something hurts, stop. Joint pain (especially knee or lower back) is a signal to regress the movement, not push through. There's a difference between muscular discomfort and structural pain. Learn it early.
Don't skip Phase 1. I know it feels like you're not doing much. You are. The stability and mobility work prevents the injuries that would otherwise knock you out during Phases 2 and 3. Every rider who has skipped straight to heavy split squats has regretted it.
What Comes After Week 12
Cycle back through. But now your Phase 1 is what Phase 2 used to be. Your floor has risen permanently. Two to three gym sessions per week, year-round, is what the research supports and what we prescribe in every Roadman coaching plan.
If your training has stalled and you're not sure whether gym work, nutrition, recovery, or on-bike structure is the limiter, the Plateau Diagnostic walks through the four-question audit that points you at the actual bottleneck. Four minutes, free.
