Cycling has a long history of treating the gym with suspicion. Coaches warned about adding unnecessary mass. Riders worried about wasting energy on exercises that don't involve a saddle. That scepticism has been largely dismantled by a decade of controlled research and by the practical experience of coaches working at the highest levels of the sport.
The debate isn't really about whether cyclists should lift. It's about how heavy, how often, and when. The answers from sports scientists and S&C coaches point in the same direction.
The consensus: heavy lifting beats more volume after 35
Bjørn Rønnestad's work at Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences has been the anchor for most of the evidence-based discussion over the past fifteen years. Across multiple studies, Rønnestad compared heavy resistance training at 4–10 repetition maximums against moderate or high-repetition protocols in trained cyclists. The heavy loading group consistently showed greater improvements in cycling economy, mean power output, and time-to-exhaustion. The neuromuscular explanation is straightforward: high-load work recruits more motor units and increases rate of force development in ways that translate directly to the pedal stroke.
Prof. Stephen Seiler, whose research on polarised training Anthony has discussed at length on the podcast, makes a related point about the physiology of masters athletes. After 35, two processes compound each other. Muscle fibre quality declines, particularly fast-twitch type II fibres. And neuromuscular efficiency — the ability to coordinate and activate muscle — deteriorates without stimulus. Endurance training alone does not arrest either process. Heavy lifting does.
Joe Friel has documented this extensively. In his work with masters cyclists, riders who committed to two or more gym sessions per week through the off-season retained significantly more top-end power entering the race season than those who skipped strength work entirely. The gap widened with age. A 38-year-old who skips the gym through winter is starting February behind where they left off in October. A 50-year-old in the same position is starting considerably further back.
The implication for programming is that heavy loading — working at 80–90% of one-rep max in the 3–6 repetition range — is not optional once you move past your early thirties. It's the training stress that produces the adaptations. The notion that high-rep, low-load work is "safer" or more "cycling-specific" is not supported by the outcome data.
The minimum effective dose
Two sessions per week. That figure appears consistently across Rønnestad's protocols, in coaching practice at World Tour level, and in the guidance S&C coaches give amateur athletes. Below two sessions, the stimulus is insufficient for measurable strength gains. Above three, accumulated fatigue starts to compromise the quality of on-bike training.
Derek Teel, who coaches elite cyclists and has been on the podcast to walk through his approach in detail, makes the point that the minimum effective dose depends on what each session contains. Two sessions of ten sets of heavy squats and Romanian deadlifts produce very different outcomes than two sessions of band work and bodyweight lunges. The load has to be there. Otherwise you're going through the motions and calling it strength training.
A practical minimum-dose week for a cyclist in early base phase looks like this: two sessions, three to four exercises each, working at 75–85% of one-rep max, with four to six sets per primary exercise. Total gym time per session sits around 45–60 minutes. This leaves ample capacity for three to five bike sessions per week without the gym becoming the limiting factor.
The question of what counts as an adequate load is worth addressing directly. If you can perform more than eight clean reps with a given weight, you are not in the range that produces the neuromuscular adaptations relevant to cycling performance. The reps need to be genuinely hard. Sets of 15 squats at a comfortable weight produce muscular endurance, not maximal strength, and muscular endurance is not the limiting factor in most cyclists' performance after the first few months of riding.
If you're looking for a structured S&C plan that applies these principles across a full training cycle, the Roadman Coaching programme builds it around the five pillars including strength from day one.
In-season vs off-season programming
The off-season and early base phase are when the heavy work happens. This is the period when bike volume is low, intensity is controlled, and the body can absorb the systemic load of genuine maximal strength training. Rønnestad's standard protocol runs eight to twelve weeks of this phase, with progressive overload across the block, before transitioning to a maintenance phase when racing or high-intensity cycling resumes.
In-season, the goal changes. You are not trying to build new strength. You are trying to preserve the adaptations built during the base phase while the bike carries the primary training load. One session per week at 80% of one-rep max, three to four sets per exercise, achieves this. Rønnestad's data shows that dropping to one session per week does not produce measurable detraining in strength or power output over an eight-week period, provided the load remains high.
What causes problems in-season is not the frequency of gym sessions. It's the timing. A heavy squat session 48 hours before a race or a high-intensity bike interval session will blunt performance on the bike. Most coaches recommend placing the single in-season gym session immediately after the hardest training day of the week, giving maximum separation before the next key session. Some athletes place it same-day as a hard ride, completing the gym work first when neuromuscular freshness matters.
Understanding how to sequence this properly is part of what periodisation means in practice. The structure of the year has to account for when strength adaptations are built, when they are maintained, and when, during the peak racing period, even the maintenance session gets dropped for two to three weeks without penalty.
The exercises every expert recommends
The specifics vary by coach and athlete, but the same movement patterns appear across virtually every expert recommendation: heavy single-leg work, bilateral posterior chain work, and some form of upper body pulling to balance the forward-leaning position on the bike.
Single-leg work is prioritised because cycling is a unilateral sport. The pedal stroke is alternating. Most cyclists have measurable asymmetries between left and right sides. Bulgarian split squats, single-leg press, and rear-foot-elevated step-ups all address this directly. They also require lower absolute loads than bilateral exercises, which reduces spinal loading — a relevant consideration for athletes who spend 10–20 hours per week in a compressed cycling position.
Bilateral lifts — trap bar deadlifts, back squats, hex bar variations — build the raw posterior chain strength that transfers to generating force through the hip extensors at high power outputs. These exercises allow heavier absolute loading than single-leg variations, which drives the neuromuscular stimulus.
For a more detailed breakdown of specific exercise selection, Derek Teel's best exercises episode covers his full hierarchy of movement choices, with the rationale for each.
Romanian deadlifts deserve specific mention. They train the hamstrings in a lengthened position, which is the position they are loaded in during the downstroke. Hamstring strength in that lengthened range has direct mechanical relevance to cycling. Most cyclists' hamstrings are comparatively undertrained relative to their quadriceps, and the Romanian deadlift addresses this imbalance directly.
Upper body pulling — single-arm dumbbell row, seated cable row, chest-supported row — is not about adding power to the pedal stroke. It addresses postural fatigue. A cyclist who reaches hour four of a long ride with a fatigued upper back is not holding an efficient position. Pulling work builds the capacity to maintain that position.
What experts say about core training
The term "core training" covers a wide range of activities with very different outcomes. Pilates, functional movement, stability work, plank variations, anti-rotation exercises — these are not equivalent, and treating them as interchangeable produces confused programming.
The S&C consensus for cyclists is that core training should be anti-movement: exercises that resist unwanted motion rather than produce it. Anti-rotation presses, Pallof press variations, deadbugs, and single-arm farmer's carries all fall into this category. They train the core to stabilise the pelvis and spine under load, which is the mechanical demand during cycling. Crunches and sit-ups do not replicate this demand.
There is no meaningful evidence that high-volume core work improves cycling performance in already-fit athletes. Where it matters is in injury prevention and in supporting the positions required by heavy compound lifts. An athlete who cannot maintain spinal neutrality under a loaded squat is limited in how much training stimulus they can safely absorb. Core work enables heavy lifting. Heavy lifting drives performance.
The practical implication is that core work should be included in each gym session, probably as accessory work after the main compound lifts, and should not consume a disproportionate amount of session time. Ten to fifteen minutes of well-chosen anti-movement exercises is sufficient for most cyclists.
Breathing mechanics also come up consistently in this context. The ability to brace the intra-abdominal canister — to use the diaphragm, pelvic floor, and deep abdominals together — is foundational to both safe lifting and efficient power transfer on the bike. This is not something most cyclists learn unless they work with a qualified S&C coach.
How to start if you've never lifted
The most common mistake athletes make when starting strength training for the first time is treating it like an extension of cycling training. They go to the gym with the same mentality as a five-hour ride: accumulate volume, stay comfortable, avoid anything that feels genuinely hard. This produces no meaningful adaptation.
The correct approach for a cyclist starting in the gym is to spend the first four weeks on technique and movement quality at moderate loads. This is not the time to test one-rep maxes or chase numbers. It is the time to learn the squat pattern, the hinge pattern, the lunge, and basic pulling movements. Four weeks of consistent technical practice, two sessions per week, is enough to establish the movement vocabulary needed to begin progressive overload safely.
From week five, the load increases systematically. Many coaches use an 8-to-5 progression: begin with sets of eight at a given weight, and when eight reps are achievable with good form across multiple sets, reduce to five reps and increase the load. This provides a simple framework for progressive overload without requiring one-rep max testing, which carries injury risk for untrained athletes.
The numbers from that point should reflect genuine effort. If you finish a set of five squats and feel like you had six or seven reps remaining, the weight is too low. The last two reps of each working set should require real concentration and effort. That's the stimulus. Everything else is movement practice.
The Roadman "Not Done Yet" coaching programme includes a strength component from the first week, built around these principles and adapted to each athlete's training history, equipment access, and on-bike load. At $195 per month, it covers all five pillars — training, nutrition, strength, recovery, and accountability — with 1:1 coaching rather than generic programming. For a cyclist who's been avoiding the gym for years and doesn't know where to start, that context matters more than the specific exercises.
Start with two sessions next week. Use heavy enough weight to make five clean reps genuinely challenging. Do that for eight weeks before you touch anything else. That is the shortest version of what every expert on this subject actually recommends.