What if everything you knew about getting stronger on the bike was all about to be flipped on his head? Picture two cyclists, one grinding up a hill in a monster gear around 50 RPM, while the other sweats it out under a loaded barbell doing heavy squats. Each of these two people believe that their method will unleash more power on the road. But which one is actually correct? In this video, we'll dive into the data and have a showdown between strength training on the bike versus traditional strength training. By the end, you'll know which approach or combination of approaches are going to make you a faster, stronger cyclist. This is all backed by science, and I give real performance metrics. So, let's get started by why this debate actually matters, especially if you're a serious rider who's balancing training with everyday life. In the past, pro riders often shunned heavy weight lifting, feeling it would add bulk or it detract from their time on the bike. Instead, they do high torque rides, grinding it out at a low cadence, big gear stuff, hoping to build strength on the bike. On the other hand, some coaches and racers swear by the weight room, claiming squats and deadlifts give an extra edge in sprint finishes and climbs. For 35 to 65year-old cyclists with packed schedules, the question is crucial. Which should you invest your precious hours in? Into the gym or can you get the same benefits by doing focused low cadence intervals on your bike during training? Well, recent studies have finally put this to the test. And the goal is to see which method delivers the best results in key areas: sprint power, endurance performance, and neuromuscular strength. That's how much force your legs can produce and how your muscles and tendons adapt. We'll explore each of these in turn, drawing on the latest research, including a brand new trial that directly compared on the bike and off the bike strength training programs. And the results might surprise you. I know they took me back. First, let's look at explosive power. Can gym training make you sprint faster or are all out bike sprint efforts more effective? When it comes to smashing out big watts in a sprint, specificity seems to rule. A 2019 experiment by Christopherson Etal pitted heavy strength training in the gym against short sprint interval training on the bike for well-trained cyclists. After 6 weeks, the differences were striking. The cyclists who hammered 6-second all-out sprints on the bike boosted their peak sprint power by about 4 to 6%. Whereas those who only did heavy squats saw only a mere 1% gain. Even in a fatigued state, like after a long ride, the sprint train power group, the jump they had, it far outshone the gym control group. About 6% versus 2% in 6 seconds sprint power. So, the message seems to be clear. If you want to sprint faster, have a finishing kick that outstrips your peers. Jump better out of corners. Practicing max sprints on the bike produces a bigger increase in sprint specific power than lifting weights. You might be wondering why that might be. Sprinting on the bike is, if you think about it for a second, it's a highly specific, complex movement. Nothing really recreates it. It recruits muscles in the exact firing patterns needed for cycling. Weightlifting, in contrast, it builds general leg strength, but it's not as movement specific. In the study, the gym group did get stronger. Their one rep max in the half squat went up an impressive 9%. The sprint only group actually saw no gain in that squat strength. However, bigger squat numbers didn't translate to better on the bike sprinting in the short term. Our results show a high degree of specificity, the authors concluded. In other words, you improve what you train. Lifting made them better at lifting. Sprinting made them better at sprinting. It's worth noting that both groups maintained their endurance in that 2019 study. Neither had an edge in the 5-minute allout cycling test or in cycling efficiency. So, the heavy strength training, it didn't harm aerobic fitness. That is a common concern, but it didn't boost it noticeably in just the 6 weeks either. Sprint training, meanwhile, dramatically improved explosive power without adding any gym strength. So, for pure sprint performance, on the bike sprint intervals are king, but sprint power isn't everything. What about longer efforts? It is worth noting that both groups maintain their endurance in that 2019 study. Neither had an edge in 5minute all-out cycling test or in efficiency levels. So, the heavy strength training did not harm aerobic fitness. That's a common concern, but it didn't really boost it noticeably either. Sprint training, meanwhile, dramatically improved explosive power without adding any gym strength.
So, for pure sprint performance on the bike intervals are king, but sprint power isn't everything, folks. What about longer intervals and overall endurance? Here's where things get interesting. Traditional thinking was that lifting weights might not help endurance much, but research in the last few years suggests otherwise. A comprehensive 2021 study by Vickman and Ronstead explained concurrent strength and endurance training in cyclists and found clear benefits. Male and female cyclists both improve their cycling performance by adding strength workouts to their routine compared to doing endurance training alone. In fact, the gain spanned multiple areas from better cycling economy that's using less energy at a given pace to higher peak power and prolonged time to exhaustion in rides. Critically, this applied to well-trained athletes, not just untrained newbies. The authors even noted that contrary to the old fears of bulking up, that's increasing muscle cross-sectionality as they put it, is actually an important adaptation that correlates with improved cycling performance. In other words, a little extra leg muscle, think stronger quads and glutes, can help you push harder for longer as long as it is functional muscle from strength training and not just added body fat. So, gym work can enhance endurance performance through improved efficiency and fatigue resistance, but can on the bike strength style training do the same? A 2024 study by HEPS at all suggested it can maybe even more directly than weights. They put two groups of well-trained cyclists on an 8-week polarized training program. That's a mix of highintensity intervals and lots of easy riding. The twist, one group did all their intervals at a normal cadence, self- selected around 80 and above, while the other group did the hard intervals at low cadence, 50 to 70 RPMs to emphasize higher torque. The results, they shocked me. The low cadence group saw significantly greater improvements in aerobic capacity, including a bigger jump in V2 max and maximum aerobic power. Essentially, those heavy gear intervals caused extra adaptation, boosting the engine more than the same intervals at self- selected cadence. This suggests that incorporating on the bike strength efforts like torque intervals can improve endurance and V2 max, acting as a form of strength stimulus without having to leave the bike. Another piece of evidence, classic strength training studies have repeatedly shown benefits to endurance. For example, multiple experiments saw cyclists increase their time to exhaustion at high intensity by 17% or more after adding 8 to 12 weeks of heavy leg training. Others found improvements in cycling economy and threshold power, meaning you can hold higher power output before fatiguing for up to 60 minute period. That was after doing a strength training program. The key point is that whether you lift heavy or you grind big gears, adding some form of strength stimulus can make you a stronger endurance rider, not just a better sprinter. Okay, that doesn't really answer the question though as to which one we should be doing. Is one method better than the other for endurance. So far, the research shows that both can work. Weight training improves muscle fibers and neural recruitment, while on the bike low cadence work can transform some fast twitch muscle fibers to behave more like endurance muscles and boost aerobic metrics. Notably, the 2024 study that we mentioned earlier, the one that directly compared the on the bike versus off the bike strength training protocols found that both approaches improved maximum aerobic power at ventilary threshold by similar amounts. That's a fancy way to say that both groups got better at sustained power output. Neither group in that trial saw a big change in V2 max itself. That's the endurance capacity stayed about the same across the 10 weeks, but their ability to push power at threshold improved and it improved equally whether they were squatting or doing the on the bike efforts. So for building your aerobic base and threshold, adding strength work on or off the bike, it's beneficial. The advantage of the on the bike approach is that it doubles as cardio training, conditioning you for your event in other ways, but the gym might target specific weaknesses better. It's a draw for me in this category. Both methods can support your endurance gains when done correctly. Folks, excuse the brief interruption. We'll be back at the video in 30 seconds. I want to tell you about an amazing free resource I've built for the community. If today's video sparked a few light bulbs, if you're thinking, "Okay, I get that strength training matters, but how do I actually train it properly?" I've put together something to help you. It's for those who want to get stronger on the bike. If you're looking to boost your sprint, sprints, hold more power in a time trial, or just stop fading at the end of a long ride or group spin.
What I've put together, it's called Get Strong, and it's a free 7-day email series that dives into the exact strategies, tools, and training principles, which will help you to build effective strength on the bike. Strength that actually transfers into your cycling. We're not talking about generic gym workouts or stuff you can get online or endless low cadence sessions. This is a practical sciencebacked stuff tailored for cyclists in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond. and it's designed to slot right into your existing training without burning you out. Over the next week, I'll be in your inbox. I'll send you a short email, probably a threeinut read each day, breaking down what the research actually says about getting stronger, what to avoid, how to train smarter, and finally, how to turn that strength into speed on the bike. There's no spam, just solid advice that you can use right away. You can take the session and go and do it that evening. one email a day for 7 days. You can sign up at rommancycling.com/getstrong. I'm going to put that link down below in the description. It's completely free and the first email should land in your inbox within a couple of minutes. All right, let's get back to the video. But if getting stronger is one of your goals this year, you know where to go. Now, let's talk about raw strength. Not just about how fast you can sprint or how long you can ride, but how much force your muscles can produce and how they can adapt structurally. This is where we see some differences in how the adaptations play out between pumping iron in the gym or pushing the pedals a little bit harder. Traditional weightlifting is fantastic for building maximum force. When you lift heavy, like doing squats at 80% of your one rep max, you engage nearly all your available muscle fibers in those movements. This leads to increased neuromuscular coordination. Your brain gets better at recruiting motor units and often muscle hypertrophy. at the fiber growth in specific muscles used. In cycling terms, heavy squats, leg presses, deadlifts primarily strengthen quads, glutes, hamstrings, calves, the prime movers for pedaling. So, it's no surprise that studies show big increases in measures like one rep max squat and leg press after a strength program. For instance, one study showed that cyclist squat one rep max increased over 14% in eight weeks of a leg training program along with a 16.7% boost in squat explosive force. That's a huge gain in gym strength. Literally making your legs like 17th stronger than before. And indeed, the 2019 Christopherson study saw the gym group get 9% stronger in the half squat. Whereas the cyclists who skipped gym and only went for the low cadence torque work saw basically no improvement in maximum squat strength. But here's the kicker. Being able to squat the weight of a house doesn't automatically mean you can push more force onto the pedals beyond a certain point. The 2024 on the bike versus off the bike trial gives a neat insight. Both groups, gym and bike, improved what the researchers called MDF, maximum dynamic force, which is basically a measure of how much force they could apply in a cycling specific movement. No significant differences were found in any strength or performance parameter between the two groups, meaning the on the bike strength training group matched the gym group's gains across the board. However, there were some nuance differences. The on the bike group improved their pedal specific peak force slightly more whereas the gym group gained slightly more in pure leg press squat strength and saw a larger increase in quadricep muscle size. The on the bike trainers did get some muscle growth too enhancement of quad size but also showed gains in tendon thickness like that patellar tendant. This could imply that cycling based strength training might lead to adaptations in connective tissue, possibly making tendons stiffer and more efficient, whereas traditional lifting leans more towards muscle hypertrophy. Speaking of injury, the study did note an interesting trend. The gym group reported more injury related symptoms over the 10-week block. This might be due to the higher joint loads and technique challenges of heavy squats and lifts, especially for those not well conditioned to them. The on the bike strength sessions, essentially the low cadence stuff, appears much safer in that regard. No weight room mishaps or tendonitis from poor lifting form if you're going to go with the on the bike varieties, but you do need to be cautious of the technique when you go into the gym. All participants in these studies did have 100% compliance and there was zero dropouts. suggesting that both protocols were manageable, but the extra niggles in the weight group are worth noting.