Strength training for cyclists
Sep 14, 2026
Strength training for cyclists
Sep 14, 2026
Strength training for cyclists
Sep 14, 2026
Cycling is an endurance sport, so it is easy to assume that getting better simply means spending more time on the bike. While aerobic fitness is still the foundation of cycling performance, endurance is only part of the picture.
Think about the moments that often make the biggest difference on a ride: accelerating out of a corner, closing a gap, attacking on a climb, holding power late in a race or sprinting for the line. All of them require you to produce force. That is where strength training can help.
Research shows that adding well-planned strength training to endurance training can improve power production and overall cycling performance, and may improve cycling economy, without necessarily compromising aerobic fitness (Rønnestad & Mujika, 2014; Mujika et al., 2016). The key is not simply lifting more. It is choosing strength training that supports what you want to achieve on the bike.
Cycling is an endurance sport, so it is easy to assume that getting better simply means spending more time on the bike. While aerobic fitness is still the foundation of cycling performance, endurance is only part of the picture.
Think about the moments that often make the biggest difference on a ride: accelerating out of a corner, closing a gap, attacking on a climb, holding power late in a race or sprinting for the line. All of them require you to produce force. That is where strength training can help.
Research shows that adding well-planned strength training to endurance training can improve power production and overall cycling performance, and may improve cycling economy, without necessarily compromising aerobic fitness (Rønnestad & Mujika, 2014; Mujika et al., 2016). The key is not simply lifting more. It is choosing strength training that supports what you want to achieve on the bike.
Cycling is an endurance sport, so it is easy to assume that getting better simply means spending more time on the bike. While aerobic fitness is still the foundation of cycling performance, endurance is only part of the picture.
Think about the moments that often make the biggest difference on a ride: accelerating out of a corner, closing a gap, attacking on a climb, holding power late in a race or sprinting for the line. All of them require you to produce force. That is where strength training can help.
Research shows that adding well-planned strength training to endurance training can improve power production and overall cycling performance, and may improve cycling economy, without necessarily compromising aerobic fitness (Rønnestad & Mujika, 2014; Mujika et al., 2016). The key is not simply lifting more. It is choosing strength training that supports what you want to achieve on the bike.
JOIN amène votre pratique du cyclisme au niveau supérieur
Vous cherchez une façon plus intelligente de vous entraîner ? JOIN crée des programmes de cyclisme personnalisés en fonction de vos objectifs et de votre progression, garantissant que vous êtes toujours sur la bonne voie.
JOIN amène votre pratique du cyclisme au niveau supérieur
Vous cherchez une façon plus intelligente de vous entraîner ? JOIN crée des programmes de cyclisme personnalisés en fonction de vos objectifs et de votre progression, garantissant que vous êtes toujours sur la bonne voie.
JOIN amène votre pratique du cyclisme au niveau supérieur
Vous cherchez une façon plus intelligente de vous entraîner ? JOIN crée des programmes de cyclisme personnalisés en fonction de vos objectifs et de votre progression, garantissant que vous êtes toujours sur la bonne voie.
Why does an endurance cyclist need strength?
Most of the energy you use during a long ride comes from your aerobic system. With consistent endurance training, your body becomes better at delivering oxygen to the working muscles and using that oxygen to produce energy. That is what allows you to ride for hours.
Strength training does not replace that aerobic development. Instead, it can complement it by increasing how much force your muscles are capable of producing. If your maximum strength increases, producing the same amount of power on the bike represents a smaller percentage of your total muscular capacity. In practice, that may help you pedal more efficiently and maintain power for longer before muscular fatigue becomes limiting. We come back to how this works later in this article.
Reviews of endurance athletes have found that heavy strength training can improve cycling efficiency and performance while VO2max remains largely unchanged (Rønnestad & Mujika, 2014; Mujika et al., 2016). So the goal is not to turn an endurance cyclist into a bodybuilder. It is to make the muscles you already use on the bike stronger and more effective.
Strength matters when the pace changes
Steady aerobic power gets you through most of a ride, but many decisive moments happen when the pace suddenly changes. A sprint requires force. So does a short attack. Closing a gap after a corner, accelerating over the top of a climb or repeatedly responding to changes in pace all place a greater demand on your muscles.
In other words, strength is not only useful for sprinters. It is useful for anyone whose ride includes moments where the effort is not steady. And, as the next section shows, it can also help endurance-focused cyclists when fatigue begins to build.
Strength training and durability
In recent years, endurance physiologists have paid more attention to a quality called durability: how well your physiological characteristics hold up over the course of a long ride (Maunder et al., 2021).
Two cyclists can have the same threshold power when fresh, but after three hours one of them may still be able to ride close to that number while the other has lost 10 or 15 percent. In long races and events, that difference often decides the outcome.
Durability is usually thought of as an aerobic quality, and largely it is. But several studies suggest that heavy strength training can improve it too. In well-trained cyclists, adding strength training to normal endurance training improved 5-minute all-out power after 185 minutes of riding, while the control group saw no such improvement (Rønnestad et al., 2011). A similar effect was found in well-trained female athletes after prolonged submaximal work (Vikmoen et al., 2017). In elite cyclists, strength training improved 40-minute all-out performance as well (Rønnestad et al., 2015).
Several mechanisms probably contribute. When your maximum strength increases, each pedal stroke requires a smaller fraction of what your muscles can produce, which may delay the recruitment of less economical, more fatigable Type II fibres. Heavy strength training also tends to shift the fastest-fatiguing Type IIX fibres towards the more fatigue-resistant Type IIA profile (Rønnestad et al., 2015; Van Hooren et al., 2024). And a stronger muscle can produce the required force more quickly, which leaves a longer relaxation phase within each pedal revolution and may improve blood flow to the working muscle.
The practical message is that strength training is not only for the moments when the pace changes. It can also help you stay closer to your fresh numbers late in a long ride, which is exactly when fatigue resistance matters most.
Heavy strength training has the strongest evidence
For cyclists looking to improve strength while continuing to prioritise endurance, relatively heavy resistance training has some of the strongest scientific support.
That does not mean walking into a gym for the first time and immediately lifting the heaviest weight possible. Heavy strength training is something you build towards. First learn the movements, develop control and good technique, and then gradually increase the resistance as your body adapts.
For experienced athletes, this often means working with heavier loads and relatively low-to-moderate repetitions rather than doing large volumes of lighter bodybuilding-style work.
Reviews suggest that this approach can improve maximum strength and endurance performance while limiting unnecessary training volume and muscle growth (Rønnestad & Mujika, 2014; Van Hooren et al., 2024). The principle is simple: Technique first and then load second.
Which exercises work well for cyclists?
Cycling requires repeated force production through the hips, knees and ankles, so strength training should focus primarily on movements that strengthen those areas.
Useful exercises include:
Squats - build overall lower-body strength, particularly in the quads and glutes
Split squats - develop single-leg strength and stability
Step-ups - strengthen the legs independently and challenge balance
Deadlifts or Romanian deadlifts - target the glutes, hamstrings and posterior chain
Calf raises - develop strength around the ankle
Core exercises - help maintain stability while the legs generate force
That does not mean there is one perfect list of exercises. The best exercise is one you can perform well, progress safely and fit consistently into your training.
Free weights can add coordination and stability demands, but there is no need to make strength training unnecessarily complicated or overly “cycling-specific.” The goal is simply to become stronger in movements that transfer well to the bike.
Can you build strength on the bike?
Low-cadence, high-torque intervals are often described as cycling-specific strength training. Because each pedal stroke requires more force at a lower cadence, these sessions certainly feel muscular. They can also be useful when preparing for situations where you need to push a larger gear, such as long climbs or certain racing conditions. But low-cadence riding should not automatically be considered a replacement for resistance training.
A systematic review by Hansen and Rønnestad found mixed evidence for deliberately imposed low-cadence training. Some studies reported performance benefits, while others found little difference compared with training at a freely chosen cadence (Hansen & Rønnestad, 2017).
More recent research suggests that carefully structured high-resistance work performed on the bike may also improve strength and cycling performance, so there may be several useful ways to develop force (Pallarés et al., 2025).
The takeaway is not that low-cadence training is useless. It is that simply grinding a big gear is not automatically the same as following a progressive strength programme.
Will strength training make you too heavy?
For cyclists, extra muscle mass can matter, especially when climbing, but strength training does not automatically make you significantly heavier. The outcome depends on how you train.
A cycling-focused strength programme aims to improve force production and neuromuscular efficiency without maximising muscle growth, and research shows that cyclists can become stronger while maintaining endurance performance without problematic increases in body mass (Rønnestad & Mujika, 2014; Mujika et al., 2016; Van Hooren et al., 2024).
The better question is not whether strength training will make you too heavy, but whether you are doing the right type and amount for your cycling goals.
How much strength training do you need?
More is not automatically better. Strength sessions create fatigue just like hard cycling workouts do, and they need to fit into the bigger picture of your training week. For most cyclists, two focused strength sessions per week are enough to develop strength when combined with cycling, and one session per week is enough to maintain what you have built (Rønnestad & Mujika, 2014).
If strength is a priority, you may temporarily train it more frequently. Later, once you have built a good strength base and your cycling intensity increases, a smaller maintenance dose may be enough. The important thing is to avoid stacking so much gym work onto your cycling that the quality of your key bike sessions suffers.
A useful rule of thumb: strength training should always be something you can add on top of your cycling, not something your cycling has to make room for. If you find that you need to cut endurance rides or skip key interval sessions to recover from the gym, the strength training is too heavy for your current situation. Reduce the load, the volume or the frequency until it fits alongside your riding. Strength work that costs you bike sessions is not supporting your cycling; it is competing with it.
How to combine strength and cycling
This is where planning becomes important. A hard strength session can leave your legs tired for the next day or two, especially when you are new to lifting. If you place it directly before an important Threshold or VO2Max workout, you may not be able to perform that cycling session properly.
If strength and cycling fall on the same day, do the strength session after an easy ride, or leave several hours between the two, and never put it right before an interval session.
Instead of viewing strength sessions in isolation, think about the entire week. Your most important cycling sessions should still be completed with enough freshness to execute them well. Strength training should support your cycling, not constantly compete with it. Just like on the bike, progression matters. Start with an amount you can recover from, then build gradually.
Which approach is right for you?
There is no single strength programme that suits every cyclist.
If you are new to strength training, start with learning the movements. Use manageable loads and focus on technique before gradually increasing resistance.
If you want to improve general cycling performance, progressive heavy lower-body strength training has some of the strongest evidence behind it (Rønnestad & Mujika, 2014).
If sprinting and acceleration matter, maximum strength can provide a foundation, while sprint and explosive work can help translate that strength into power.
If you mainly ride long events or climbs, strength can still be useful. Improving maximum force can reduce the relative muscular demand of each pedal stroke and may help you hold your power late in a long ride (Mujika et al., 2016; Vikmoen et al., 2017).
If you already train a lot, be more careful with additional load. Another hard session is only useful if you can actually recover from it.
Your goal, training history, current fitness and available time should determine how strength training fits into your week.
Strength is another tool in your training
Strength training will not replace Endurance rides, Threshold intervals or VO2Max work.
Cycling performance still depends heavily on aerobic fitness. But being able to produce force efficiently matters too, whether you are responding to an attack, sprinting for the line, pushing over the top of a climb or trying to hold strong power after several hours on the bike.
The important part is getting the balance right. With JOIN, your training is built around your fitness, goals, available time and the load you are already carrying. Strength training should follow the same principle: the right stimulus, at the right time, for the cyclist you want to become.
References
Hansen, E. A., & Rønnestad, B. R. (2017). “Effects of Cycling Training at Imposed Low Cadences: A Systematic Review.” International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 12(9), 1127–1136. DOI: 10.1123/ijspp.2016-0574.
Maunder, E., Seiler, S., Mildenhall, M. J., Kilding, A. E., & Plews, D. J. (2021). “The Importance of ‘Durability’ in the Physiological Profiling of Endurance Athletes.” Sports Medicine, 51, 1619–1628. DOI: 10.1007/s40279-021-01459-0.
Mujika, I., Rønnestad, B. R., & Martin, D. T. (2016). “Effects of Increased Muscle Strength and Muscle Mass on Endurance-Cycling Performance.” International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 11(3), 283–289. DOI: 10.1123/IJSPP.2015-0405.
Pallarés, J. G., Barranco-Gil, D., Rodríguez-Rielves, V., et al. (2025). “Cyclists Do Not Need to Incorporate Off-Bike Resistance Training to Increase Strength, Muscle-Tendon Structure, and Pedaling Performance: Exploring a High-Intensity On-Bike Method.” Biology of Sport, 42(3), 185–195. DOI: 10.5114/biolsport.2025.146790.
Rønnestad, B. R., Hansen, E. A., & Raastad, T. (2011). “Strength Training Improves 5-Min All-Out Performance Following 185 Min of Cycling.” Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 21(2), 250–259. DOI: 10.1111/j.1600-0838.2009.01035.x.
Rønnestad, B. R., Hansen, J., Hollan, I., & Ellefsen, S. (2015). “Strength Training Improves Performance and Pedaling Characteristics in Elite Cyclists.” Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 25(1), e89–e98. DOI: 10.1111/sms.12257.
Rønnestad, B. R., & Mujika, I. (2014). “Optimizing Strength Training for Running and Cycling Endurance Performance: A Review.” Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 24(4), 603–612. DOI: 10.1111/sms.12104.
Vikmoen, O., Rønnestad, B. R., Ellefsen, S., & Raastad, T. (2017). “Heavy Strength Training Improves Running and Cycling Performance Following Prolonged Submaximal Work in Well-Trained Female Athletes.” Physiological Reports, 5(5), e13149. DOI: 10.14814/phy2.13149.
Why does an endurance cyclist need strength?
Most of the energy you use during a long ride comes from your aerobic system. With consistent endurance training, your body becomes better at delivering oxygen to the working muscles and using that oxygen to produce energy. That is what allows you to ride for hours.
Strength training does not replace that aerobic development. Instead, it can complement it by increasing how much force your muscles are capable of producing. If your maximum strength increases, producing the same amount of power on the bike represents a smaller percentage of your total muscular capacity. In practice, that may help you pedal more efficiently and maintain power for longer before muscular fatigue becomes limiting. We come back to how this works later in this article.
Reviews of endurance athletes have found that heavy strength training can improve cycling efficiency and performance while VO2max remains largely unchanged (Rønnestad & Mujika, 2014; Mujika et al., 2016). So the goal is not to turn an endurance cyclist into a bodybuilder. It is to make the muscles you already use on the bike stronger and more effective.
Strength matters when the pace changes
Steady aerobic power gets you through most of a ride, but many decisive moments happen when the pace suddenly changes. A sprint requires force. So does a short attack. Closing a gap after a corner, accelerating over the top of a climb or repeatedly responding to changes in pace all place a greater demand on your muscles.
In other words, strength is not only useful for sprinters. It is useful for anyone whose ride includes moments where the effort is not steady. And, as the next section shows, it can also help endurance-focused cyclists when fatigue begins to build.
Strength training and durability
In recent years, endurance physiologists have paid more attention to a quality called durability: how well your physiological characteristics hold up over the course of a long ride (Maunder et al., 2021).
Two cyclists can have the same threshold power when fresh, but after three hours one of them may still be able to ride close to that number while the other has lost 10 or 15 percent. In long races and events, that difference often decides the outcome.
Durability is usually thought of as an aerobic quality, and largely it is. But several studies suggest that heavy strength training can improve it too. In well-trained cyclists, adding strength training to normal endurance training improved 5-minute all-out power after 185 minutes of riding, while the control group saw no such improvement (Rønnestad et al., 2011). A similar effect was found in well-trained female athletes after prolonged submaximal work (Vikmoen et al., 2017). In elite cyclists, strength training improved 40-minute all-out performance as well (Rønnestad et al., 2015).
Several mechanisms probably contribute. When your maximum strength increases, each pedal stroke requires a smaller fraction of what your muscles can produce, which may delay the recruitment of less economical, more fatigable Type II fibres. Heavy strength training also tends to shift the fastest-fatiguing Type IIX fibres towards the more fatigue-resistant Type IIA profile (Rønnestad et al., 2015; Van Hooren et al., 2024). And a stronger muscle can produce the required force more quickly, which leaves a longer relaxation phase within each pedal revolution and may improve blood flow to the working muscle.
The practical message is that strength training is not only for the moments when the pace changes. It can also help you stay closer to your fresh numbers late in a long ride, which is exactly when fatigue resistance matters most.
Heavy strength training has the strongest evidence
For cyclists looking to improve strength while continuing to prioritise endurance, relatively heavy resistance training has some of the strongest scientific support.
That does not mean walking into a gym for the first time and immediately lifting the heaviest weight possible. Heavy strength training is something you build towards. First learn the movements, develop control and good technique, and then gradually increase the resistance as your body adapts.
For experienced athletes, this often means working with heavier loads and relatively low-to-moderate repetitions rather than doing large volumes of lighter bodybuilding-style work.
Reviews suggest that this approach can improve maximum strength and endurance performance while limiting unnecessary training volume and muscle growth (Rønnestad & Mujika, 2014; Van Hooren et al., 2024). The principle is simple: Technique first and then load second.
Which exercises work well for cyclists?
Cycling requires repeated force production through the hips, knees and ankles, so strength training should focus primarily on movements that strengthen those areas.
Useful exercises include:
Squats - build overall lower-body strength, particularly in the quads and glutes
Split squats - develop single-leg strength and stability
Step-ups - strengthen the legs independently and challenge balance
Deadlifts or Romanian deadlifts - target the glutes, hamstrings and posterior chain
Calf raises - develop strength around the ankle
Core exercises - help maintain stability while the legs generate force
That does not mean there is one perfect list of exercises. The best exercise is one you can perform well, progress safely and fit consistently into your training.
Free weights can add coordination and stability demands, but there is no need to make strength training unnecessarily complicated or overly “cycling-specific.” The goal is simply to become stronger in movements that transfer well to the bike.
Can you build strength on the bike?
Low-cadence, high-torque intervals are often described as cycling-specific strength training. Because each pedal stroke requires more force at a lower cadence, these sessions certainly feel muscular. They can also be useful when preparing for situations where you need to push a larger gear, such as long climbs or certain racing conditions. But low-cadence riding should not automatically be considered a replacement for resistance training.
A systematic review by Hansen and Rønnestad found mixed evidence for deliberately imposed low-cadence training. Some studies reported performance benefits, while others found little difference compared with training at a freely chosen cadence (Hansen & Rønnestad, 2017).
More recent research suggests that carefully structured high-resistance work performed on the bike may also improve strength and cycling performance, so there may be several useful ways to develop force (Pallarés et al., 2025).
The takeaway is not that low-cadence training is useless. It is that simply grinding a big gear is not automatically the same as following a progressive strength programme.
Will strength training make you too heavy?
For cyclists, extra muscle mass can matter, especially when climbing, but strength training does not automatically make you significantly heavier. The outcome depends on how you train.
A cycling-focused strength programme aims to improve force production and neuromuscular efficiency without maximising muscle growth, and research shows that cyclists can become stronger while maintaining endurance performance without problematic increases in body mass (Rønnestad & Mujika, 2014; Mujika et al., 2016; Van Hooren et al., 2024).
The better question is not whether strength training will make you too heavy, but whether you are doing the right type and amount for your cycling goals.
How much strength training do you need?
More is not automatically better. Strength sessions create fatigue just like hard cycling workouts do, and they need to fit into the bigger picture of your training week. For most cyclists, two focused strength sessions per week are enough to develop strength when combined with cycling, and one session per week is enough to maintain what you have built (Rønnestad & Mujika, 2014).
If strength is a priority, you may temporarily train it more frequently. Later, once you have built a good strength base and your cycling intensity increases, a smaller maintenance dose may be enough. The important thing is to avoid stacking so much gym work onto your cycling that the quality of your key bike sessions suffers.
A useful rule of thumb: strength training should always be something you can add on top of your cycling, not something your cycling has to make room for. If you find that you need to cut endurance rides or skip key interval sessions to recover from the gym, the strength training is too heavy for your current situation. Reduce the load, the volume or the frequency until it fits alongside your riding. Strength work that costs you bike sessions is not supporting your cycling; it is competing with it.
How to combine strength and cycling
This is where planning becomes important. A hard strength session can leave your legs tired for the next day or two, especially when you are new to lifting. If you place it directly before an important Threshold or VO2Max workout, you may not be able to perform that cycling session properly.
If strength and cycling fall on the same day, do the strength session after an easy ride, or leave several hours between the two, and never put it right before an interval session.
Instead of viewing strength sessions in isolation, think about the entire week. Your most important cycling sessions should still be completed with enough freshness to execute them well. Strength training should support your cycling, not constantly compete with it. Just like on the bike, progression matters. Start with an amount you can recover from, then build gradually.
Which approach is right for you?
There is no single strength programme that suits every cyclist.
If you are new to strength training, start with learning the movements. Use manageable loads and focus on technique before gradually increasing resistance.
If you want to improve general cycling performance, progressive heavy lower-body strength training has some of the strongest evidence behind it (Rønnestad & Mujika, 2014).
If sprinting and acceleration matter, maximum strength can provide a foundation, while sprint and explosive work can help translate that strength into power.
If you mainly ride long events or climbs, strength can still be useful. Improving maximum force can reduce the relative muscular demand of each pedal stroke and may help you hold your power late in a long ride (Mujika et al., 2016; Vikmoen et al., 2017).
If you already train a lot, be more careful with additional load. Another hard session is only useful if you can actually recover from it.
Your goal, training history, current fitness and available time should determine how strength training fits into your week.
Strength is another tool in your training
Strength training will not replace Endurance rides, Threshold intervals or VO2Max work.
Cycling performance still depends heavily on aerobic fitness. But being able to produce force efficiently matters too, whether you are responding to an attack, sprinting for the line, pushing over the top of a climb or trying to hold strong power after several hours on the bike.
The important part is getting the balance right. With JOIN, your training is built around your fitness, goals, available time and the load you are already carrying. Strength training should follow the same principle: the right stimulus, at the right time, for the cyclist you want to become.
References
Hansen, E. A., & Rønnestad, B. R. (2017). “Effects of Cycling Training at Imposed Low Cadences: A Systematic Review.” International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 12(9), 1127–1136. DOI: 10.1123/ijspp.2016-0574.
Maunder, E., Seiler, S., Mildenhall, M. J., Kilding, A. E., & Plews, D. J. (2021). “The Importance of ‘Durability’ in the Physiological Profiling of Endurance Athletes.” Sports Medicine, 51, 1619–1628. DOI: 10.1007/s40279-021-01459-0.
Mujika, I., Rønnestad, B. R., & Martin, D. T. (2016). “Effects of Increased Muscle Strength and Muscle Mass on Endurance-Cycling Performance.” International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 11(3), 283–289. DOI: 10.1123/IJSPP.2015-0405.
Pallarés, J. G., Barranco-Gil, D., Rodríguez-Rielves, V., et al. (2025). “Cyclists Do Not Need to Incorporate Off-Bike Resistance Training to Increase Strength, Muscle-Tendon Structure, and Pedaling Performance: Exploring a High-Intensity On-Bike Method.” Biology of Sport, 42(3), 185–195. DOI: 10.5114/biolsport.2025.146790.
Rønnestad, B. R., Hansen, E. A., & Raastad, T. (2011). “Strength Training Improves 5-Min All-Out Performance Following 185 Min of Cycling.” Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 21(2), 250–259. DOI: 10.1111/j.1600-0838.2009.01035.x.
Rønnestad, B. R., Hansen, J., Hollan, I., & Ellefsen, S. (2015). “Strength Training Improves Performance and Pedaling Characteristics in Elite Cyclists.” Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 25(1), e89–e98. DOI: 10.1111/sms.12257.
Rønnestad, B. R., & Mujika, I. (2014). “Optimizing Strength Training for Running and Cycling Endurance Performance: A Review.” Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 24(4), 603–612. DOI: 10.1111/sms.12104.
Vikmoen, O., Rønnestad, B. R., Ellefsen, S., & Raastad, T. (2017). “Heavy Strength Training Improves Running and Cycling Performance Following Prolonged Submaximal Work in Well-Trained Female Athletes.” Physiological Reports, 5(5), e13149. DOI: 10.14814/phy2.13149.
Why does an endurance cyclist need strength?
Most of the energy you use during a long ride comes from your aerobic system. With consistent endurance training, your body becomes better at delivering oxygen to the working muscles and using that oxygen to produce energy. That is what allows you to ride for hours.
Strength training does not replace that aerobic development. Instead, it can complement it by increasing how much force your muscles are capable of producing. If your maximum strength increases, producing the same amount of power on the bike represents a smaller percentage of your total muscular capacity. In practice, that may help you pedal more efficiently and maintain power for longer before muscular fatigue becomes limiting. We come back to how this works later in this article.
Reviews of endurance athletes have found that heavy strength training can improve cycling efficiency and performance while VO2max remains largely unchanged (Rønnestad & Mujika, 2014; Mujika et al., 2016). So the goal is not to turn an endurance cyclist into a bodybuilder. It is to make the muscles you already use on the bike stronger and more effective.
Strength matters when the pace changes
Steady aerobic power gets you through most of a ride, but many decisive moments happen when the pace suddenly changes. A sprint requires force. So does a short attack. Closing a gap after a corner, accelerating over the top of a climb or repeatedly responding to changes in pace all place a greater demand on your muscles.
In other words, strength is not only useful for sprinters. It is useful for anyone whose ride includes moments where the effort is not steady. And, as the next section shows, it can also help endurance-focused cyclists when fatigue begins to build.
Strength training and durability
In recent years, endurance physiologists have paid more attention to a quality called durability: how well your physiological characteristics hold up over the course of a long ride (Maunder et al., 2021).
Two cyclists can have the same threshold power when fresh, but after three hours one of them may still be able to ride close to that number while the other has lost 10 or 15 percent. In long races and events, that difference often decides the outcome.
Durability is usually thought of as an aerobic quality, and largely it is. But several studies suggest that heavy strength training can improve it too. In well-trained cyclists, adding strength training to normal endurance training improved 5-minute all-out power after 185 minutes of riding, while the control group saw no such improvement (Rønnestad et al., 2011). A similar effect was found in well-trained female athletes after prolonged submaximal work (Vikmoen et al., 2017). In elite cyclists, strength training improved 40-minute all-out performance as well (Rønnestad et al., 2015).
Several mechanisms probably contribute. When your maximum strength increases, each pedal stroke requires a smaller fraction of what your muscles can produce, which may delay the recruitment of less economical, more fatigable Type II fibres. Heavy strength training also tends to shift the fastest-fatiguing Type IIX fibres towards the more fatigue-resistant Type IIA profile (Rønnestad et al., 2015; Van Hooren et al., 2024). And a stronger muscle can produce the required force more quickly, which leaves a longer relaxation phase within each pedal revolution and may improve blood flow to the working muscle.
The practical message is that strength training is not only for the moments when the pace changes. It can also help you stay closer to your fresh numbers late in a long ride, which is exactly when fatigue resistance matters most.
Heavy strength training has the strongest evidence
For cyclists looking to improve strength while continuing to prioritise endurance, relatively heavy resistance training has some of the strongest scientific support.
That does not mean walking into a gym for the first time and immediately lifting the heaviest weight possible. Heavy strength training is something you build towards. First learn the movements, develop control and good technique, and then gradually increase the resistance as your body adapts.
For experienced athletes, this often means working with heavier loads and relatively low-to-moderate repetitions rather than doing large volumes of lighter bodybuilding-style work.
Reviews suggest that this approach can improve maximum strength and endurance performance while limiting unnecessary training volume and muscle growth (Rønnestad & Mujika, 2014; Van Hooren et al., 2024). The principle is simple: Technique first and then load second.
Which exercises work well for cyclists?
Cycling requires repeated force production through the hips, knees and ankles, so strength training should focus primarily on movements that strengthen those areas.
Useful exercises include:
Squats - build overall lower-body strength, particularly in the quads and glutes
Split squats - develop single-leg strength and stability
Step-ups - strengthen the legs independently and challenge balance
Deadlifts or Romanian deadlifts - target the glutes, hamstrings and posterior chain
Calf raises - develop strength around the ankle
Core exercises - help maintain stability while the legs generate force
That does not mean there is one perfect list of exercises. The best exercise is one you can perform well, progress safely and fit consistently into your training.
Free weights can add coordination and stability demands, but there is no need to make strength training unnecessarily complicated or overly “cycling-specific.” The goal is simply to become stronger in movements that transfer well to the bike.
Can you build strength on the bike?
Low-cadence, high-torque intervals are often described as cycling-specific strength training. Because each pedal stroke requires more force at a lower cadence, these sessions certainly feel muscular. They can also be useful when preparing for situations where you need to push a larger gear, such as long climbs or certain racing conditions. But low-cadence riding should not automatically be considered a replacement for resistance training.
A systematic review by Hansen and Rønnestad found mixed evidence for deliberately imposed low-cadence training. Some studies reported performance benefits, while others found little difference compared with training at a freely chosen cadence (Hansen & Rønnestad, 2017).
More recent research suggests that carefully structured high-resistance work performed on the bike may also improve strength and cycling performance, so there may be several useful ways to develop force (Pallarés et al., 2025).
The takeaway is not that low-cadence training is useless. It is that simply grinding a big gear is not automatically the same as following a progressive strength programme.
Will strength training make you too heavy?
For cyclists, extra muscle mass can matter, especially when climbing, but strength training does not automatically make you significantly heavier. The outcome depends on how you train.
A cycling-focused strength programme aims to improve force production and neuromuscular efficiency without maximising muscle growth, and research shows that cyclists can become stronger while maintaining endurance performance without problematic increases in body mass (Rønnestad & Mujika, 2014; Mujika et al., 2016; Van Hooren et al., 2024).
The better question is not whether strength training will make you too heavy, but whether you are doing the right type and amount for your cycling goals.
How much strength training do you need?
More is not automatically better. Strength sessions create fatigue just like hard cycling workouts do, and they need to fit into the bigger picture of your training week. For most cyclists, two focused strength sessions per week are enough to develop strength when combined with cycling, and one session per week is enough to maintain what you have built (Rønnestad & Mujika, 2014).
If strength is a priority, you may temporarily train it more frequently. Later, once you have built a good strength base and your cycling intensity increases, a smaller maintenance dose may be enough. The important thing is to avoid stacking so much gym work onto your cycling that the quality of your key bike sessions suffers.
A useful rule of thumb: strength training should always be something you can add on top of your cycling, not something your cycling has to make room for. If you find that you need to cut endurance rides or skip key interval sessions to recover from the gym, the strength training is too heavy for your current situation. Reduce the load, the volume or the frequency until it fits alongside your riding. Strength work that costs you bike sessions is not supporting your cycling; it is competing with it.
How to combine strength and cycling
This is where planning becomes important. A hard strength session can leave your legs tired for the next day or two, especially when you are new to lifting. If you place it directly before an important Threshold or VO2Max workout, you may not be able to perform that cycling session properly.
If strength and cycling fall on the same day, do the strength session after an easy ride, or leave several hours between the two, and never put it right before an interval session.
Instead of viewing strength sessions in isolation, think about the entire week. Your most important cycling sessions should still be completed with enough freshness to execute them well. Strength training should support your cycling, not constantly compete with it. Just like on the bike, progression matters. Start with an amount you can recover from, then build gradually.
Which approach is right for you?
There is no single strength programme that suits every cyclist.
If you are new to strength training, start with learning the movements. Use manageable loads and focus on technique before gradually increasing resistance.
If you want to improve general cycling performance, progressive heavy lower-body strength training has some of the strongest evidence behind it (Rønnestad & Mujika, 2014).
If sprinting and acceleration matter, maximum strength can provide a foundation, while sprint and explosive work can help translate that strength into power.
If you mainly ride long events or climbs, strength can still be useful. Improving maximum force can reduce the relative muscular demand of each pedal stroke and may help you hold your power late in a long ride (Mujika et al., 2016; Vikmoen et al., 2017).
If you already train a lot, be more careful with additional load. Another hard session is only useful if you can actually recover from it.
Your goal, training history, current fitness and available time should determine how strength training fits into your week.
Strength is another tool in your training
Strength training will not replace Endurance rides, Threshold intervals or VO2Max work.
Cycling performance still depends heavily on aerobic fitness. But being able to produce force efficiently matters too, whether you are responding to an attack, sprinting for the line, pushing over the top of a climb or trying to hold strong power after several hours on the bike.
The important part is getting the balance right. With JOIN, your training is built around your fitness, goals, available time and the load you are already carrying. Strength training should follow the same principle: the right stimulus, at the right time, for the cyclist you want to become.
References
Hansen, E. A., & Rønnestad, B. R. (2017). “Effects of Cycling Training at Imposed Low Cadences: A Systematic Review.” International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 12(9), 1127–1136. DOI: 10.1123/ijspp.2016-0574.
Maunder, E., Seiler, S., Mildenhall, M. J., Kilding, A. E., & Plews, D. J. (2021). “The Importance of ‘Durability’ in the Physiological Profiling of Endurance Athletes.” Sports Medicine, 51, 1619–1628. DOI: 10.1007/s40279-021-01459-0.
Mujika, I., Rønnestad, B. R., & Martin, D. T. (2016). “Effects of Increased Muscle Strength and Muscle Mass on Endurance-Cycling Performance.” International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 11(3), 283–289. DOI: 10.1123/IJSPP.2015-0405.
Pallarés, J. G., Barranco-Gil, D., Rodríguez-Rielves, V., et al. (2025). “Cyclists Do Not Need to Incorporate Off-Bike Resistance Training to Increase Strength, Muscle-Tendon Structure, and Pedaling Performance: Exploring a High-Intensity On-Bike Method.” Biology of Sport, 42(3), 185–195. DOI: 10.5114/biolsport.2025.146790.
Rønnestad, B. R., Hansen, E. A., & Raastad, T. (2011). “Strength Training Improves 5-Min All-Out Performance Following 185 Min of Cycling.” Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 21(2), 250–259. DOI: 10.1111/j.1600-0838.2009.01035.x.
Rønnestad, B. R., Hansen, J., Hollan, I., & Ellefsen, S. (2015). “Strength Training Improves Performance and Pedaling Characteristics in Elite Cyclists.” Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 25(1), e89–e98. DOI: 10.1111/sms.12257.
Rønnestad, B. R., & Mujika, I. (2014). “Optimizing Strength Training for Running and Cycling Endurance Performance: A Review.” Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 24(4), 603–612. DOI: 10.1111/sms.12104.
Vikmoen, O., Rønnestad, B. R., Ellefsen, S., & Raastad, T. (2017). “Heavy Strength Training Improves Running and Cycling Performance Following Prolonged Submaximal Work in Well-Trained Female Athletes.” Physiological Reports, 5(5), e13149. DOI: 10.14814/phy2.13149.
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Rejoignez des milliers de cyclistes qui ont amélioré leurs performances grâce aux plans d'entraînement de JOIN.
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