Strength & Conditioningsarah & anthony

THE BEST EXERCISES FOR CYCLISTS (STRENGTH TRAINING)

with Derek Teel

34:19·2 December 2024

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Derek Tal breaks down exactly how to strength train as a cyclist—whether you should lift heavy or light, how many times per week to hit the gym, and how to slot it into your cycling schedule without tanking your on-bike performance. If you've been wondering whether strength training will make you heavier or slower, this conversation clears it all up.

Key Takeaways

Start with 2 sessions per week minimum for strength training; more than that risks interfering with your cycling training, especially if you're riding 5-6 days weekly
Always schedule strength sessions on your harder, shorter cycling days—never on easy/recovery rides, as this creates a 'grey zone' that kills both adaptations
Use 'reps in reserve' as your guide: choose a weight where you have 2-3 reps left in the tank, rather than testing your one-rep max, which is risky and less practical
Follow a periodized approach: start with muscular endurance (16-20 reps), progress to hypertrophy (6-12 reps), then strength (1-6 reps), then power—just like periodizing your cycling training
The weight gain from strength training is worth it; you'll gain some muscle, water retention, and bone density, but the efficiency and durability gains outweigh a kilo or two
Consistency and keeping your 'floor' high matters more than chasing peaks; avoid the trap of doing too much volume and living in constant soreness

Expert Quotes

"If you only train it once a week you are in the cycle of forever soreness because you can never really build based off of that previous adaptation—Derek Tal"

"Our goal as cyclists is to hit our numbers on the bike and the gym is a supporting factor of that—so if you have a really good interval session and it interferes with your deadlift numbers for that day, honestly who really cares—Derek Tal"

"Strength training has been shown to improve everything except your VO2 max—and with adequate recovery it's not going to negatively affect your endurance in the long term—Derek Tal"

KEY QUOTES

“doing two sessions a week gives your body a better opportunity to catch that recovery curve at the top where it's saying okay we're recovered from that previous session we're actually we've adapted to it and we're a little bit fitter than the previous session and now we can do another one and keep that climb going”
Derek Teel — Strength and conditioning expert specializing in cycling

“if you do 10 with but you really could do 15 or 16 or really maybe even a little bit more that's how you know that you're probably not getting the stimulus and the adaptation that you're really looking for and so you should increase the weight at that point”
Derek Teel — Strength and conditioning expert specializing in cycling

“16 to 20 reps is probably going to be your muscular endurance where you're really building a base of strength and almost like you would an aerobic base”
Derek Teel — Strength and conditioning expert specializing in cycling

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT2 SECTIONS

Light Vs Heavy: Training Adaptations

Roadman welcome back to the podcast Mr Derek tal Derek is one of the foremost experts in strength conditioning in the world when it comes to cycling this is part two of a conversation with Derek last time we talked about strength conditioning and whether cyclists should do it I highly encourage you to go back and watch this episode today's conversation focuses more on what type of strength training you should do should you lift light weights heavy weights how many reps on what days at a week you should integrate your strength training into your cycling training regime I think this is a conversation you're really going to find valuable welcome to the podcast Mr Derek tail Derek welcome back you're looking fit you're looking healthy thanks it's great to be back man an honor to be on the show again last time we spoke and I'm going to link that down below we it was almost part one of this conversation where it's should you strength train the importance of strength training who strength training is suitable for today I want to get a little bit more tactical and dive into given that we know now we should be strength training and the evidence is pointing pretty unequivocally to that and you even referenced off air the T Pacha podcast with uh Dr Peter Tia just dropped and when he was asked what's his big difference from 2023 to 2024 I want to get into the specifics now when it comes to strength training what's the fundamental differences between using light weights with high repetitions and heavier weights with lower repetitions from a cycling perspective it's very similar to cycling training in that there are different zones to train and to be the best cyclist you want to train all the zones but you can't do it all the time and it's not going to be the most effective to train every Zone all the time so for you to lift lighter weights and do more repetitions you're really just going to create a different adaptation in your body which is going to be more lean toward muscular endurance now the heavier you go the lower the reps are going to get naturally and that's going to be way more toward a pure raw strength adaptation and then you have other specifics like the raate at which you move it which could be more focused on power you could have more of a m muscle growth stage uh which is considered hypertrophy and kind of between those two extreme rep ranges and the truth is you want to do it in a way that they support each other because if you even want just max strength gains and you're not conditioned to do it or you don't have some type of muscular endurance base you're going to go to the gym and do a heavy set of five squats or leg press or something and you're not going to be walking straight for days maybe even a week and so you have to be strategic about it as well it's easy to say oh wow This research paper said that a 5x5 program is going to work the best for strength and that is the strength rep range is that kind of one to six Zone but again it's you have to work up to it to do it the most effectively and for it to not really destroy the rest of your training yeah so I guess that's like almost like a training to train phase where you just need to get into the gym and you know that old analogy to heaviest weight in the gym is the front door you need to get past the front door just get in there and be doing some stuff for a period of time to get past that early phase of you know you just come home and you're totally wiped cuz if you do a big session like I had a friend who hasn't been in the gym for maybe 18 to 24 months and great athlete triathlete and he went and done like a hro session with a f another friend who's like a full-time hrock athlete honestly it was two weeks where he could hardly jog after it I believe that I actually did I experimented with Crossfit at one point and the intensity is very Sim similar I think CrossFit uses heavier movements for the most part and hyrox is a little bit more on the uh more endurance side but still as someone who's done pull-ups their entire life I could not straighten my arms for a full week I had to walk around with my hands in my pockets because my biceps were so destroyed from doing pull-ups at the intensity and the volume that I did it because it was just it was just honestly too much and that's a another thing with strength training that I think is understated at at this point is that you it could potentially be very dangerous just like riding a bike can so you have to be somewhat conservative and you can't think that you can just go throw around all of this weight and you're going to be okay because if you're not trained that's it's probably not going to be the case you really have to take these baby steps for it to be for one the as safe as possible but also the most effective I love your analogy of zones so weightlifting is like zones and cycling I've never heard that before it's let's run with that and try and unpack it a little more cuz it's very applicable and I think the audience can really understand that so if we're taking an exercise like deadlift and at the bottom of that exercise by Zone one zone two it's going to be light weights with high repetitions what qualifies as high repetitions and I guess as a Corry to that it's like almost weight Choice how do I choose the suitable weight to get the equivalent of the zone 2 adaptation from the deadlift exercise that's a big question to unpack I actually just did a blog post on choosing the correct weight so I'll try and answer that at the same time that we talk about what repetitions they would be as well but and if you send me a link to that I'll put that into the description so people can jump over and check that out if they want to go deeper on it thank you it it would be helpful because it is a very common question that I get and it's understandable because it has to do a lot with intensities and again it's these adaptations based off of the rep range so So when you say uh Zone one zone 2 what comparable rep range would that be in the strength training world most likely it would be the muscular endurance phase which is a 16 to 20 rep scheme the thing is doing more than 20 reps it starts to get I don't want to say it starts to get redundant but for one doing 20 shoulder presses in a row is it's actually kind of boring and it's painful in a different type of way almost similar to Zone 2 riding can be but the effects really aren't the same after 20 20 reps and there's different ways to do your sets and rest time in between but I think the best most simplest way to look at it would be 16 to 20 reps is probably going to be your muscular endurance where you're really building a base of strength and almost like you would an aerobic base and so in cycl you know we've amazing Sports physiologists who have been looking off the chat with like Prof Professor Steven Syer and he'll Advocate an 8020 distribution of low intensity to high intensity on the road so 80% of your riding then some physiologists will go and say it's 90% now with that's Zone one zone two riding and then one or two key higher intensity sessions per week does the same hold true in strength training world I think it's a it's similar in that you have a periodized phase and like so for examp example when you are in a cycling program you'll likely start with a base phase you'll start to increase intensity as it goes on like maybe you're doing more high intensity toward the end of a training block than you would initially and it's it's similar with the strength program because you toward the end of it you're not just doing high intensity in fact a lot of times to do a very heavy strength movement or a very fast or power-based strength movement you have to prep before you can't just not warm up or not get your system primed and ready uh to at least do it safely so you're still going to spend time in these different rep ranges in those later workouts but it's just going to be less frequent and that high intensity is going to be a little bit more often toward the end so I think there is a similarity there uh but early on in a strength program and this is probably coach dependent but you're probably not going to want to do super heavy movements until you really get that base in there's almost real no no need for it I think there's probably more risk than anything so how do heavy weights and light weights how do they affect muscular adaptations differently particularly in terms of endurance strength and power outo it's your ability to move the weight for a duration of time and and that actual load itself is is dependent on the rep ranges if you keep the intensity the same so this kind of gets to like what weight should I choose and so so there's your rate of perceived exertion which is a it's a factor that's really considered in cycling because you have all these metrics and you have power and you have heart rate and you have uh so many pieces of data that you can refer to to basically tell you how you feel but at the end of the day the athlete still needs to be introspective enough to know how they feel and that rate of perceived exertion is a very important thing to train alongside even all the data so with strength training you also want to do that because if you don't have some goal of a rate of perceived exertion the only other alternative really is to find a one rep max which you can't do on every productive strength training movement and that exposes you to a lot of risk initially when you are untrained it's like why would you go do the heaviest force that you can do potentially with form that is not up to par it it's just it's the risk is not worth the reward of having a number where you can now work percentages off of it's I'd almost equated to when somebody totally new that hasn't been on the bike for years goes to a coach and they're they're like okay we need to set a Baseline and they jump straight in and they're like do 20 minutes full gas it's like like we could definitely get started and ease them in here without doing 20 minutes full gas so now their very first memory of getting back on the bike is total torture and you're risking injury you're risking you know the the mental fatigue of something like that it's just the risk to reward on that type stuff for me just doesn't add up and it's the accuracy too because okay so it's the accuracy because a 20-minute power test does take some strategy and some understanding of where you can ballpark start to actually get your best result on a 20-minute test so you don't go too hard in the beginning or whatever so there's those factors that also could determine what your quote unquote Fitness level is and it's the same way with strength training if you're form isn't right that alone could make a huge difference in the amount of weight that you push and again you're exposing yourself to risk and you are it I I almost didn't even think about how bad of an experience it is for you to get back into it because now you're aligning okay I'm starting this again and oh my gosh it's way worse than I thought and so difficult um and I want to be very clear too I'm not a on the bike cycling coach I can speak the language I work with coaches uh I work alongside coaches all the time to make sure our programs integrate I have a coach myself uh but so I don't want to speak for what every single coach is doing but I do have a lot of experience and see that that does get prescribed and I understand because it makes a coaching numbers perspective it makes things more tangible and easy from from that side of it but yeah how does the person feel uh all those things really do need to come into play and that's where rate perceived exertion is very uh very valuable so when you start strength training you should almost go with the mindset of having a rate of perceived exertion of like like a like a six or a seven maybe an eight Max but it coincides with a a strategy a lot of trainers are using now which is reps and Reserve in in regards to picking a weight for a certain rep range so for you you go in with the mindset of okay I always want to make sure I have a few reps in reserve and that is going to also somewhat line up with a rate of perceived exertion so for example just to make the numbers easy if your rep range is 10 that day or that's your goal Reps for a given exercise and you're like okay I want a rate of perceived exertion of a seven or an eight that means that you should have two to three reps in reserve after the set that means that if your life depended on it and you had to do 12 or 13 reps you could but if you choose a weight that you could you do 10 with but you really could do 15 or 16 or really maybe even a little bit more that's how you know that you're probably not getting the stimulus and the adaptation that you're really looking for and so you should increase the weight at that point and it takes a little bit of a guess and check but it's very different to get to that ballpark range than to just test a one rep max right off the bat we are so excited to announce that we are partnering with whoop whoop are changing the game when it comes to wearable technology and health monitoring whoop is a wearable health and fitness coach that provides you with feedback and actionable insights into your sleep your recovery your training your stress and your overall health Sarah and I have been using whoop for years and we love the insights it provides into our body's in our workings it really gives us a look under the hood and you're going to see mat vandero Richard carop pass and other Elite level cyclist wearing whoop but it isn't just for those Superstars all the data is personalized to your unique physiology and Fitness levels if you're interested in taking control of your health and your Fitness so that you can excel in all aspects of your life you have to go and check out whoop go to the URL now which is 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Why Maintenance Is Underrated

Woop.com roadman I'm going to pop that in the description below and you're going to get a free month's access to whoop membership on me I promise you won't regret it but and that makes total sense like when I spoke with the head of performance of Bora hrove Dan laang one of the things that he know into me was the biggest reason that athletes and this is for professional and amateur athletes the biggest reason they don't hit their goals it's lack of consistency and the number one reason athletes don't exhibit perfect consistency it's intensity so when you do too much intensity your consistency falls off and your consistency falls off it undermines your long-term performance goals absolutely and I think that maintenance is I I think it is is uh underrated is the term I'm looking for I think I really do think maintenance is underrated especially the fitter that you get of course people coincide maintenance with a plateau and I think that's legitimate and something to consider if you're trying to progress but I bring it up because often times just decreasing the intensity so that you can be consistent means that you might spend more time in a maintenance level and I I just think it is underrated and it's not a very sexy thing to talk about because people want to talk about insane gains but often times these people are in these Peaks and valleys of their training and I think what I'm trying to promote is to have your valleys not so low and and that doesn't mean in like a week span of how your training should roll so that you recover it means like over the long period of Time how consistent are you and how at your worst how is your Fitness and it it doesn't need to be such an extreme you know and and not only that but like the thing that all of your cycling doesn't really the thing that's different about strength training to that intensity other than the intensity on the bike is the soreness factor and this is something that your hrb score your your metric your health data and all these like Readiness scores they struggle to capture it capturing your soreness level is something that I have not been able to do at least personally trying to figure it out and even nutritionally it's a challenge to capture it yeah yeah yeah and and there's things that you can do to really improve and and mitigate these risk but that's a thing that people don't consider when they say oh just go to the gym and just do heavy strength work all the time because that's the most effective for building raw max strength which yeah of course it is but also there's these repercussions that are different than you what you would experience on the bike and the soreness really probably is one of the biggest ones I I love that idea of the Peaks and valleys and that's something again that's been a if I could pull out probably 10 recurring teams through the podcast that would be one of the teams that most of the top sport scientists physiologists coaches agree on that we're not very much defined by our Peaks the height of our ceiling we're more long-term outcomes defined by the height of our floor so we want to keep those bad days those bad weeks those bad months to a minimum so with that in mind how do you think about consistency what does you sort of op um weekly training schedule look like amount of times in the door in the gym this is something that I really worked through for years as a strength coach once I've started specifically working with cyclist and I was actually my first client in this realm because I was starting to do a lot more trail riding a lot more time just out in the endurance world but I was training three to four days in the week pretty dang hard and the confliction started happening quick so I I started thinking what is the minimum that I could do in the gym to actually get benefit that doesn't interfere with my on the- bike training and the goal is to not set the bar as low as possible but you kind of have to understand what that limit is so you can use it as your bar to maintain or progress in strength and based on super compensation which is pretty much your recovery cycle like anyone could go to Google and type in super compensation and see how you do an initial uh session your performance drops because muscle is broken down and you need time to recover and ideally you would recover beyond that initial level of performance and there's this curve well that curve rolls back to maintenance after about a week and so if you're doing one session per week There's a chance based on the combination of things you're doing you could progress but it's very unlikely and it's more likely that you're just going to maintain whatever strength that you have and also that tends to be the cycle of forever soreness and this is why people will go in and train legs super hard and not train them again for a week because it takes that long to recover yeah and feel better again and and probably be motivated again to do it but if you only train it once a week you are in the cycle of forever soreness because you can never really build based off of that previous adaptation at at least in a in a time frame that would be motivating for yourself or really e efficient and so doing two sessions a week gives your body a better opportunity to catch that recovery curve at the top where it's saying okay we're we're recovered from that previous session we're actually we've adapted to it and we're a little bit fitter than the previous session and now we can do another one and keep that climb going so doing two two to three you think two sessions a week three sessions a week depending on your ride volume so two would be the bare minimum I'd say for for anybody but the higher your writing volume and frequency goes then the more you the more you want to uh hesitate on doing more than two sessions per week if you only ride your bike two days a week you could absolutely do three sessions in the gym and it probably won't affect it but the SE once that frequency comes up of the ride and the ride volume overall it's going to start interfering if you do more than two sessions so if I'm riding my bike six days a week where am I slotting these sessions in say we're taking Monday's a rest day I would definitely keep your rest day a rest day do not put strength training on your rest day because if you're having a quality strength training session there's enough intensity to where it is no longer a rest day again it's your heart rate may not climb up the same way it does on the bike but the effects to your body and the recovery needed is it's not a rest day anymore I see that with a lot of cyclists trying to just fit it in there so don't do it on your rest day if you ride six days per week that means you're going to do two sessions per week at least to start if you're doing three you're likely a pro cyclist and it's the off season uh because even the time management it would takeen the commitment to do three sessions on top of six rides per week it is a lot so you're going for two sessions per week and I would probably aim to do them on your shorter high intensity days on the bike and this is actually something I've changed my mind about over the years but if you are putting a strength session on top of a easier ride day when you're supposed to be getting some recovery from that ride now all of a sudden you you don't get that recovery and then you slowly start to burn out so ideally you would put your strength training session with a shorter high-intensity day on the bike because if you put them on top of a zone two ride a day that your coach is probably hoping you get some form of recovery you're still building up volume in your aerobic base but it's not really that damaging if you put a strength training session on top of that all of a sudden those effects from the ride are not going to be as effective because you're not you're not resting enough on those days it's not a pure rest day but again it's a day that you probably are recovering from harder efforts Ro man I know how serious you take your goal setting whether they're Fitness or life related goals if you're looking for a powerful alloy to support you on this journey look now forther than heu heu has become my secret weapon for when I don't have time to prepare a balanced meal it ensures I get the nutrition I need without sacrificing time or taste plus it stops me from reaching for that takeaway menu I always trow Bott into my backpack when I'm heading into the city to work and it stops me eating junk convenience food snacking on crossant and bars of chocolate because I know I don't support my training goals it's a handy nutritious meal on the go and it's got over 22 gram of protein hu is perfect for athletes that don't have time to cook or prepare food before a training session it's convenient nutritious fuel at your fingertips ensuring you hit your daily fueling needs for that session hu ready to drink has 26 essential vitamins and 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super motivated just leave the door after work and go for a zone four ride so everything kind of falls into this middle Zone zone three Sweet Spot riding and when you zoom out and you look at a macro view of their training plan then hard days aren't hard enough easy days aren't easy enough recovery days aren't restorative enough and they fall into just total Gray Zone it sounds a little bit like what you're saying when you take a training session a training day that has some endurance but also was meant to have some restora benefits and you couple that with a strength training session it's elevating the physiological stress of that total day into more of a gray Zone that's a really good way to say it and I'm totally guilty of that as well I've fallen into that trap and that's almost what made me realize that there needs to be a little bit more EV and flow between the hard days and the easy days within a given week and so if you were to do your strength training session on the same day that you have a interval session if your real focus is to have performance on the bike and that is your number one priority doing your strength training session after the interval session sometime later in the day is probably the best way to do it because there are specific numbers that you want to hit and even though if you strength train before an interval session you'll often start the ride feeling a lot better because your muscles are activated maybe you did some specific work to rid any compensations hopefully you have a smart enough training program like that and so you start you feel like you need less of a warm-up the first interval or two feels really really good but you might feel that fatigue catch up with you toward the end of your interval session if you strength trained before and it could affect the numbers there but on the flip side doing your strength training session after just means that your numbers in the gym might be a little bit more affected but again our goal as cyclists is to hit our numbers on the bike and the gym is a supporting factor of that so if you have a really good strength or interval session and it interferes with your deadlift numbers for that day I mean honestly who really cares especially if you're using the rate of perceived exertion for your key metric that's good advice so with cycling training principles we normally flow from the general to the specific theer of specificity so if I'm uh targeting the Criterium national championships my training might start out in January quite broad lot of Zone to some on the bike strength work and as I get closer to the Criterium national championships the demands of my training begin to mimic the demands of my target event so it's a lot more explosive stuff on off sprinting out of Corners how do you think about structuring strength training on a macro scale like that you want to periodize it in a similar way so like I've said even though a strength phase where you're doing movements that are one to six reps I probably wouldn't ever do just one rep but if you're in that strength Zone that's going to be the most effective for building build raw strength but you you have to work up to it so I follow what's called an opt model and it's just the education that I went through initially as a trainer with which is all just periodization and it's withstand the test of time it's withstood the test of time so you start with at least a month of muscular endurance and this is that 16 to 20 rep range and then you move from there to more of a hypertrophy focused and this is a like a 6 to 12 rep range and then you move to a raw strength phase where the main movements are one to six reps and then after that you can stay in that 1 to six rep range for the following phase which would be power but once you get to power it's about the speed at which you move a weight and not necessarily the weight itself so some of these rules change a little bit it is a little bit more complex but that's essentially the order that you want to structure your training in it's periodized kind of like a cycling program muscular endurance hypertrophy strength and then power and when you get to the power phase when you're down the lower reps where kind of one to six rep type stuff does that negatively impact our endurance are you talking about the power or the strength phase the anything that's like low repetition does that have a potential to undermine our Endurance on the bike if you're carrying fatigue and soreness it does in the in the short term but if you're recovering in the long term strength training has been shown to increase everything except or improve everything except your VO2 max pretty much much so even in longer efforts your time to exhaustion is a lot longer opposed to you know just yeah I I guess I said that in a weird way but it strength training has been shown to improve everything except your V2 Max and so with adequate recovery it's not going to negatively affect your endurance in in the long term I guess one of the reasons that traditionally cyclists have avoided the gym was the obsession we had with weight what's the latest research saying between the links between strength training and weight gain you will gain weight if you strength train I'm not going to hide that for a second and it's not just muscle mass there's a little bit of water weight because water is now coming into your muscle to help it repair but you also have bone density but Anthony you just experienced a crash where you were shocked with actually how little injuries you had especially bone uh based and and you've been running and you've been strength training two of the things that improve your bone density better than anything so you have to ask yourself it's like what is the real goal is it long-term consistency which we also just talked about as one of the best factors at your overall performance if so you have to make yourself a little bit durable and even toad was just on a podcast talking about how the biggest thing that he changed coming into this season was uh more core work more strength training it more off the bike work like running and so to rule it out because you're going to gain a kilo or two it doesn't make sense in my opinion especially when you could just be making that muscle more efficient as well so often times if you don't strength Trin you have muscle that's not being utilized to its full extent so yeah maybe you do have glutes and hamstrings I mean everybody has glutes and hamstrings but maybe you have what looks like active glutes and hamstrings but if they're not functioning in supporting your pedal stroke if your glutes and your core aren't supporting your back you could have muscle that is there but not being utilized to its full extent so to make your body as efficient as possible you have to strength Trin to make sure everything is working together and supporting each other and if that comes with a little bit of weight gain it is well well worth it in my opinion I don't think anybody that implements strength training and gains a little bit of weight regrets it unless they're on the Very extreme end and the people who go too hard with strength training 3 days a week beat themselves down they're constantly sore they they also gain weight and part of it is a lot of inflammation because they're so beat down they have a negative experience and they're like you know I just didn't feel as good on the bike and I'm like well no wonder you you went way too far with it so again it's find that minimum base that you can consistently do that keeps you motivated and doesn't beat you down that way it's probably going to come with some some way weight gain but as long as you're building that strength appropriately uh in my opinion making sure you include functional exercises then you'll be more efficient on the bike it'll be well worth the weight in how do you think Tad would have optimized or Tad strength coaches would have optimized his strength training routine to minimize weight gain because obviously weight when his his goal where I might have conflicting goals performance might be important to me but longevity is also important to me being resistant is also important to me his goal is likely just high performance I I definitely can't speak for them specifically cuz I haven't had any contact with them but my first thought would be overall volume and making sure that he's not doing a volume that is putting himself in in a constant state of hypertrophy and this would be for an extreme example on the other end a bodybuilder really focuses on the hypertrophy rep range so so they don't spend as much time in allout strength and they're often not as strong as powerlifters who may not be as big but it's just because it's a different stimulus so it's I I actually train mostly hypertrophy rep range funny enough and that's sort of a different conversation but I would assume that tot's coaches have him spend less time in the hypertrophy rep range and make sure his overall volume does not increase to a point where the weight gain is really happening because you could do muscular endurance you could do strength and you could do a little bit of hypertrophy and and really gain a minimal amount if very much at all and still get the activation and the strength benefits really enjoyed this Derek every time we chat it's totally eye open and it just reminds me how little I know about staining every time we chat uh what's the best place where people can jump on and learn more about your programs or work with you because it's getting to that time of year now where everyone is starting to question oh should I be getting into the gym and yes you definitely short I could not agree more and making sure you find a program that is realistic for you to execute week in and week out not only through the offseason but moving in toward even a maintenance phase when you're doing your races and your events throughout the year so go to Dow health.com that's d a l d h a.com and you can get a subscription there which actually gives you access to every single platform and workout uh that I've built and you can have access to it so you can go there you can also follow me on Instagram at di health or listen to the DI Health podcast where we discuss very similar topics awesome DK your G thanks for joining me thanks Anthony if you enjoyed this conversation please click up here there's another video I know that you're absolutely going to love and click over here and subscribe to the channel so you don't miss any of our amazing upcoming guests

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Should cyclists lift heavy or light weights?+

Derek Teel recommends periodising across multiple rep ranges rather than committing to one approach. Muscular endurance work sits at 16–20 reps, hypertrophy in the middle, and pure strength at 1–6 reps. The key is sequencing lighter endurance phases first to condition the body before progressing to heavier max-strength work.

How many days a week should cyclists do strength training?+

Teel advises treating the gym like bike training, integrating strength sessions in a way that complements rather than undermines riding. Building a proper base before adding heavy load is essential, as jumping into heavy lifting without preparation can cause soreness that sidelines cyclists for a week or more.

What exercises should cyclists do in the gym?+

According to Derek Teel, the strength training programme should be periodised across distinct phases targeting muscular endurance, hypertrophy, and maximum strength. Each phase targets a specific adaptation, so exercise selection and rep ranges must align with the current training goal rather than following a generic routine.

How do you periodise strength training for cycling?+

Derek Teel structures strength training in phases that mirror how cyclists periodise their riding. The sequence moves from higher-rep muscular endurance work at 16–20 reps through hypertrophy, and finally into low-rep maximum strength at 1–6 reps. Starting with the endurance phase conditions the muscles and connective tissue so the body tolerates heavy loading later in the programme without excessive fatigue.

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Key Takeaways

Start with 2 sessions per week minimum for strength training; more than that risks interfering with your cycling training, especially if you're riding 5-6 days weekly

Always schedule strength sessions on your harder, shorter cycling days—never on easy/recovery rides, as this creates a 'grey zone' that kills both adaptations

Use 'reps in reserve' as your guide: choose a weight where you have 2-3 reps left in the tank, rather than testing your one-rep max, which is risky and less practical

Follow a periodized approach: start with muscular endurance (16-20 reps), progress to hypertrophy (6-12 reps), then strength (1-6 reps), then power—just like periodizing your cycling training

The weight gain from strength training is worth it; you'll gain some muscle, water retention, and bone density, but the efficiency and durability gains outweigh a kilo or two

Consistency and keeping your 'floor' high matters more than chasing peaks; avoid the trap of doing too much volume and living in constant soreness

Expert Quotes

"If you only train it once a week you are in the cycle of forever soreness because you can never really build based off of that previous adaptation—Derek Tal"

"Our goal as cyclists is to hit our numbers on the bike and the gym is a supporting factor of that—so if you have a really good interval session and it interferes with your deadlift numbers for that day, honestly who really cares—Derek Tal"

"Strength training has been shown to improve everything except your VO2 max—and with adequate recovery it's not going to negatively affect your endurance in the long term—Derek Tal"

KEY QUOTES

“doing two sessions a week gives your body a better opportunity to catch that recovery curve at the top where it's saying okay we're recovered from that previous session we're actually we've adapted to it and we're a little bit fitter than the previous session and now we can do another one and keep that climb going”
Derek Teel — Strength and conditioning expert specializing in cycling

“if you do 10 with but you really could do 15 or 16 or really maybe even a little bit more that's how you know that you're probably not getting the stimulus and the adaptation that you're really looking for and so you should increase the weight at that point”
Derek Teel — Strength and conditioning expert specializing in cycling

“16 to 20 reps is probably going to be your muscular endurance where you're really building a base of strength and almost like you would an aerobic base”
Derek Teel — Strength and conditioning expert specializing in cycling

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Should cyclists lift heavy or light weights?+

How many days a week should cyclists do strength training?+

What exercises should cyclists do in the gym?+

How do you periodise strength training for cycling?+

THE BEST EXERCISES FOR CYCLISTS (STRENGTH TRAINING)

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Light Vs Heavy: Training Adaptations

Why Maintenance Is Underrated

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