What strength training actually does to a cyclist's body
The honest answer to "should cyclists lift weights?" is yes — and the science has been saying so for well over a decade, even if the message hasn't fully reached amateur training groups. The mechanism isn't about getting bigger. It's about becoming more efficient. When your pedal stroke is supported by stronger hip extensors and knee stabilisers, you produce the same watts for less metabolic cost. That's cycling economy, and it's one of the most trainable aspects of performance — one that pure endurance training barely touches. A 2025 meta-analysis in the European Journal of Applied Physiology confirmed that heavy strength training improves key physiological determinants of cycling performance, including cycling efficiency and maximal metabolic steady state, both of which translate directly to sustained power output over long efforts.
There's also the anaerobic side of things. Cycling races, even long ones, aren't won in steady state. A decisive attack on the final climb, a sprint out of a corner, the burst required to close a gap — all of these require neuromuscular power that endurance training alone won't develop. Strength training builds that capacity. And then there's durability: the relatively recent concept capturing how well your physiology holds up after two, three, or four hours of racing. Cyclists who train for durability — keeping their functional threshold stable deep into a long ride — tend to perform better in real-world events than those who peak early and fade. Heavy resistance training appears to contribute to this quality by reinforcing the musculature that keeps pedalling mechanics intact when you're fatigued.
For master cyclists — broadly, anyone over 35, though the effects accelerate from 45 onwards — strength training stops being optional. Age-related muscle loss begins in earnest in your late thirties and compounds over time, directly eroding cycling capacity. A 2024 study from Nord University found that while most master cyclists understand this intellectually, many still fail to train consistently for it. The cyclists who maintain meaningful strength work into their forties and fifties consistently outperform peers on power-to-weight and sustain competitive capacity longer through a season. This isn't about vanity. It's structural maintenance for an engine that's slowly losing horsepower every year you don't address it.
The interference myth that keeps cyclists out of the gym
The standard worry goes like this: if I lift heavy, I'll build muscle mass, and extra mass will hurt my power-to-weight ratio and cost me on the climbs. It's a reasonable instinct, but it's largely wrong — at least at the doses most cyclists are realistically going to train at. The interference effect, which describes how concurrent strength and endurance training might impair adaptations from both, is real but heavily context-dependent. In well-trained endurance athletes, it appears minimal, provided programming is sensible. The 2025 systematic review was explicit on this point: interference effects are limited in trained cyclists and should not be used as a reason to avoid the gym entirely.
As for the muscle mass question, a growing body of research suggests that increasing cross-sectional area in the primary locomotor muscles — quadriceps, glutes, hamstrings — is not only benign for cyclists but potentially beneficial. More muscle means more contractile units available, allowing you to generate the same force with those units working at a lower fraction of their capacity. That translates to a higher power ceiling and, more practically, better sustainability at sub-maximal efforts over long rides. You're unlikely to add meaningful mass from two gym sessions a week of compound lifting. And even if you do, it's almost certainly offset by the gains in economy and neuromuscular power. The research on sex differences is also encouraging here: both male and female cyclists show similar improvements from concurrent training, with some data suggesting women see a larger effect on cycling economy specifically.
What the pros actually do — and when
A 2025 study published in PLOS One surveyed 147 professional road cyclists about their strength training practices. The pattern was consistent across the peloton: two sessions per week during the off-season and pre-season, dropping to one maintenance session once the race calendar became busy. These aren't bodybuilder programmes. No cable crossovers, no isolation curls, no machine work. The focus was compound, multi-joint exercises that mirror and reinforce cycling's movement patterns — squats, leg presses, Romanian deadlifts, single-leg movements, hip hinge patterns, and targeted core stability work. Sessions were structured to be efficient: most riders finished in under an hour.
This matters because there's a tendency among amateur cyclists to either skip the gym entirely or to improvise something from a generic fitness programme. Neither approach works. A generic programme isn't designed around cycling's specific demands and may generate fatigue that disrupts on-bike training without producing the adaptations that matter. Doing nothing means missing a critical adaptation window, especially in the off-season when you have the space to absorb heavier loads without it affecting race performance. The professional approach — high frequency in winter, reduced maintenance in season — is not complicated, but it does require actually committing to it. The riders who are consistent from October through December arrive at February training camps with a structural advantage that compounds across a season.
How to fit strength work into your training year
The practical structure mirrors what professionals use, scaled for someone working with 8 to 12 training hours a week rather than 25. In the off-season — typically October through December in the northern hemisphere — two sessions per week is realistic and sufficient. Volume can be moderate: three to four sets of compound movements in the six to ten repetition range, with enough load that the final reps are genuinely challenging. The goal isn't physique development; it's inducing neuromuscular adaptation and building the structural strength you'll rely on when training loads increase in February. Squats, Romanian deadlifts, step-ups, and Bulgarian split squats cover the cycling-relevant patterns well. Add a couple of upper-body pulling movements and a short core circuit, and you have a complete 45-minute session.
As base training intensifies, reduce to one session per week and shift the focus toward explosive strength — lower rep ranges, higher intent. Jump squats, heavy single-leg press, and loaded step-ups develop rate of force development, which transfers most directly to on-bike power generation. Be disciplined about timing: avoid high-volume lower body strength work within 24 hours before or after hard cycling sessions. The fatigue interaction is real and will compromise both. Most riders find that scheduling strength work immediately after a moderate aerobic ride, or on a dedicated easy day, manages the interference well.
During the race season, don't abandon it. One session per week of maintenance-level lifting — lower volume, same intensity — is enough to preserve the adaptations you built over winter. Professional cyclists maintain this across a calendar averaging over 70 race days a year. If they can find the space for it, a club cyclist with a standard training week can too. The most common mistake is treating strength training as a seasonal habit that gets dropped when the race calendar fills up. You end up rebuilding the same foundation every autumn — which is inefficient and limits long-term development. Consistent maintenance through the season costs you relatively little; dropping it and restarting costs you a lot.
If you want help structuring how strength sessions fit alongside your cycling blocks — so the load is complementary rather than cumulative — LeCoach's AI cycling coach can do that planning for you. Understanding how to sequence training across multiple modalities is exactly the kind of nuanced, season-long thinking that separates a good training year from a frustrating one. You can also read more about how to think about your overall training structure in the guide to structuring your training week.
Sources
- Rønnestad, B.R. et al. (2025). Heavy strength training effects on physiological determinants of endurance cyclist performance: a systematic review with meta-analysis. European Journal of Applied Physiology. springer.com
- Vikmoen, O. et al. (2025). Strength training among professional UCI road cyclists: Practices, challenges, and rationales. PLOS One. journals.plos.org
- Hammarström, D. et al. (2024). Strength training among male master cyclists — practices, challenges, and rationales. Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov