Strength Training Without Additional Body Mass – 1

I often hear that cyclists skip strength training to gain additional bodyweight. This series will explain how cyclists can strength train without gaining extra body weight.

Before we start, I will ensure that everyone understands that we don’t know whether strength training makes you a better cyclist. It’s still uncertain, and there is still no evidence (read more on lack of evidence on strength training for cyclists here)

1. Why additional body weight should be avoided

Larger muscle cells (larger square diameter) can generate more power. That is the most commonly known way to increase strength, though it is undesirable for cyclists. The problem is that a large muscle mass is heavy to carry, and there is a dilution of mitochondria.

Additional body weight will slow you down when climbing or accelerating your bike.

Notice that I include accelerations because many riders forget that their body weight also matters when they accelerate their bike out of a corner.

Enthusiasts riding with power meters may have introduced you to the term ‘power to weight ratio.’ That refers to how many watts you can push compared to your body weight. That ratio has a huge impact when you climb (or accelerate.)

If you can increase your power to weight ratio, you will likely improve your performance in mountain stages. Still, other aspects are worth considering while fine-tuning your body weight, like I talk about here: Maximum power output or watts per kilogram?

Thus, increasing maximal strength made through hypertrophy will probably not improve overall cycling performance. Forget about most principles used by bodybuilders, not because I don’t like bodybuilders, but because their training programs are designed to optimize their hypertrophy.

When I recommend strength training for cyclists, I focus on strength gains through neural adaptations. In another post in this series, I will discuss how to train for neural adaptations instead of hypertrophy.

So I should drop strength training to avoid additional body weight?
It is doubtful that you will gain weight if you use the principles I advocate for here in this article series.

There are some simple tricks you can do to minimize or eliminate hypertrophy. As you can imagine, there are millions of people in the world trying to bulk muscles, but only the most dedicated people are succeeding in their projects. This is because, just like in cycling, you will have to be very determined about how you train, eat and live if you want to be successful.

So building muscles is not as easy as you might think.