Strength Training for Cyclists Based in NJ
Author: Joseph Paul Coviello, PT, DPT, OCS, Board-Certified Clinical Specialist in Orthopedic Physical Therapy
As a physical therapist who is also an avid cyclist and cares for cyclists, I've developed a training program, particularly for cyclists where you can have a mix of hills and flatlands.
Endurance is the name of the game when it comes to cycling. From the rolling hills around the Great Swamp to the punchy climbs of western New Jersey, building endurance allows for better performance. Due to the repetitive nature of endurance training, a good foundation will allow for better quality riding, giving you the ability to perform harder efforts and recover quicker after your rides.
When we talk about endurance, we often overlook the underlying components of it. Endurance is purely the ability to utilize your strength over and over again. Poor strength will not necessarily guarantee poor endurance, but it will increase injury risk and decrease the peak potential for your fitness. While strength training is easy to neglect as a cyclist, it is important for on-bike performance, injury prevention, and your health off of the bike too.
Strength Training for Cyclists
Strength training for cyclists will look much different than strength training for other activities. It should be part of your routine to complement cycling, not cause so much fatigue that cycling is more challenging. Gone are one hour+ gym sessions, lifting until you can no longer pick up a five pound dumbbell. Focus on controlled movements through a full range of motion, progressing the resistance with quality as the constraint or using increased speed to generate more force.
“If riding your bike at a faster rate is the goal, you need to ride more hours and perform some high effort work.”
When I ride my bike with friends we speak about longest ride goals, Strava segment chasing, and catching that one friend who seems to always get faster. It is easy to focus on these end goals, and not on the best way to get there. As a physical therapist, I treat cyclists who are frequently unable to train at their desired capacity and are held back from their goals. This is frequently due to investing time in unproductive strategies.
If riding your bike at a faster rate is the goal, you need to ride more hours and perform some high-effort work. This is non-negotiable. Off of the bike, time is often invested in band-aids such as foam rolling, stretching, or fitness classes that are not targeted at improving objective fitness markers. Strength training improves your cycling abilities and enjoyment by improving your capacity to tolerate more riding, improving your peak power generation, improving your active mobility, and reducing injury risk.
Strength Reduces Injury Risk
Strength training is your best bet at reducing injury (see our cyclists’ training program chart below) A study by Laurersen et al. 2014 looked at strength training compared stretching, strengthening, and balance work for their effect on injury rates. Strength training was shown to reduce injury risk by at least 66% as compared to 45% for balance training and only 4% with stretching. These are pretty telling numbers!
“Strength training was shown to reduce injury risk by at least 66% as compared to 45% for balance training and only 4% with stretching.”
Strength reduces your risk of injury on the bike in many ways but a few to be aware of are:
Improving your ability to absorb and generate force to protect joints (even arthritic ones!)
Improving tendon health (consider a physical therapy consult with any tendonitis)
Improving Bone density and quality
Improving flexibility and mobility
Strength Improves Active Mobility and Flexibility
Mobility is the ability to actively move a body part through a given range of motion. An example of this standing on one leg while marching your knee toward your chest as high as you can go without slouching forward.
Flexibility is the ability to passive move a body part through a given range of motion. An example of this is using your hands to pull your knee to your chest while lying on your back.
You need flexibility as a prerequisite to mobility. Lucky for you, you can improve both of these variables with strength training. Strength training has been shown in a study by Morton et al. 2011 to be as effective as stretching at improving flexibility. The added benefit of strength training is that it also improves mobility while stretching will only improve your passive abilities. For cycling, athletics, and life as a whole, mobility will have a bigger impact on your function and performance than flexibility.
Strength Improves Peak Power Generation
Your ability to put out high amounts of power comes down to generating torque (lbs of force in a rotational direction), and how fast you can generate that torque (increasing your cadence). These two variables look alot like muscular performance that is trained in the gym.
Improving the maximum force your muscles can generate will improve the torque you can put through the pedals. Speed work such as box jumps and other plyometrics will aid in improving the speed at which you can generate force. These are internal capabilities that you can then bring to the bike to improve your training ability. You will still need to do cycling drills to improve power, cadence and other metrics, but your potential for improvement will greatly increase with stronger, faster muscles.
Strength Allows You To Tolerate More Riding
Improving athletic performance requires great tolerance to training. Whether you are a weekend rider or a seasoned racer, the more riding you can tolerate, the better you will get at riding. If you are out for a weekend stroll on your bike, the strength of your legs will dictate how hard your efforts feel for you. The easier the effort, the more you can enjoy your ride! Your endurance will dictate how many times you can perform hard efforts (think about those unexpected hills) during your bike ride!
For those with the goal to ride further and faster, think of a Porsche, with a powerful engine, versus a standard Hyundai sedan. Both are great cars for different reasons. Both can go 90 mph up a hill, but in my comparison the Porsche is barely working while the Hyundai is near its maximum ability. Strength training will improve your maximum ability so that lesser efforts are a smaller percentage of your maximum. The more force you can put out while keeping the effort seemingly low, the faster and further you can ride.
Common Misconceptions
Strength training does not mean that you will become big, bulky, and inflexible. The truth is that you can improve your endurance from strength training when the programming is NOT targeted at improving a specific sport. I will quickly outline how to avoid these common pitfalls of strength training programs.
How To Get Strong Without Getting Big or Bulky
This is the easiest pitfall to avoid since it is very challenging to gain mass through weight lifting without an extreme amount of dedication and time spent both lifting and eating. If it was to gain muscle mass, every testosterone fueled, 18 year old boy would be a world class bodybuilder. Gaining muscle mass requires a very large training stimulus as well as a caloric excess so that your body has building blocks to add more muscle tissue. If you are training as an adjunct to a specific sport and not moving weight lifting to the forefront of your training regiment, it will be nearly impossible to get too big and bulky.
How To Get Strong Without Losing Flexibility
The only time that flexibility or mobility is lost through strength training is when the strength training is not performed through the full range of motion. If you only strength train in a limited range of motion, you will only gain strength through a limited range of motion. Training through a full range of motion will not only keep your mobility, but most likely will improve it while making you stronger through that available range.
How To Get Started Without Getting Too Sore
Unfortunately some muscle soreness is bound to happen. Avoid making exercises too difficult too early. In the program I have designed, the first 4 weeks are solely to get accustomed to weight training. It is important to allow your body the ability to adapt to a new activity as well as learn to perform new movements before making them more difficult. You will be most surprised to learn that training through some muscle soreness by performing more strength training or going for a chilled bike ride can help reduce muscle soreness.
How We Use Strength Training In Physical Therapy For Cyclists
Physical therapists use a wide variety of treatment options to address different injuries. Strength training is part of every rehabilitation process and will be applied by the end or after the pain management phase is complete. Strength imbalances and poor strength capacities are common in cyclists due to the vast amount of time spent on the bike with limited focus on other movement patterns. Physical therapists assess your specific deficits and develop a plan to address them. The order that this is usually performed in is:
Manage and modulate pain
Improve passive range of motion if needed
Maximize control of available range of motion (mobility)
Address muscle strength imbalances as they apply to specific activities
Work on full body strength to reduce further injury risk.
Strength Training Program For Cyclists
This program is specifically designed to target the needs of a cyclist. If there is any question about your ability to perform exercise due to pain or ability, consult a physician or physical therapist for professional assessment and guidance. The program is split into three phases.
Phase 1: Establish Tolerance to Strength training
For those of us who do not partake in strength training, there should be a slow start. This program accounts for this factor. For those of us who already perform strength training, this phase is excellent to slowly increase resistance over a 4 week period to adjust to these movement patterns.
Phase 2: Progress Resistance To Develop Strength
Now that these movements have been practiced for 4 weeks and tolerance to resistance training has been established, it is time to get stronger. A slow progression of resistance will improve strength. This program adjusts the sets and repetitions to account for these increases in weight as you get stronger.
Phase 3: Improve Power (speed) and Single Leg Strength
Power is a combination of force and speed. This program initially works on pure force development, and progresses in this phase to work on speed. Performing these movements with a focus on speed will translate to explosiveness on the bike. Please note that the improvements you will see from speed training will slow after 4-6 weeks of training. This is why the program is designed as a 16 week program where another training program should be considered after completion.
Do you need the help of a physical therapist?
At Summit Physical Therapy we help cyclists and athletes recover from an injury or surgery so you can get back to enjoying your activities. We also help with performance therapy so you can excel in your sport. Want to learn more? Request an appointment or call us at 908.598.9009.