I’m trying to come up with a balanced cycling and strength program and would love some input on the schedule I’ve tentatively created. My background is strength training and I only started structured cycling training at the beginning of 2024. (Prior to that I was riding but just doing whatever I felt like for 2-3 rides a week.) I’m not competing in anything and have no plans to do so, I’m just trying to keep my muscle mass and hopefully continue to get fitter on the bike.
With that background, any thoughts on the schedule below? (Leg day in the gym is leaving my legs pretty sore for a few days, which is why I’m giving them two days off after that day.) Edit: When I’m lifting, I’m lifting heavy – sets of 6-12 with one or two reps in reserve.
I think you’re gonna have to do some self-experimentation.
i had a coach for a while and he told me to lift weights then hop directly on my bike
I think it’ll be different for everyone though.
i’ve felt my best when I get more full days off…like what if you pushed your 60-90 min easy right to tuesday right after your workout? then you get a full monday off? (or move the Push workout to Monday may be better to spread days off?
I followed a similar trajectory, former lifter turned cyclist. The biggest mistake I made was trying to go hard on both, 3 weight sessions a week with 4 cycling sessions. Just led to stalling both. I switched to a similar compressed lifting schedule to you, and accepted that my goal should be to just maintain strength. I usually do a strength block each fall, then in December switch to a cycling focus with maintenance lifting.
Lately I’ve been trying to do weights and intervals on same day. I think that’s the optimum, but makes for a busy and full day. But it gives you more rest and recovery.
I’ve been debating between two full days off and doing one double day or sticking with six days on and only one off. What I like about the idea of moving the ride to Tuesday is that it gives me the day after hard intervals off.
I consider myself an advanced lifter – I have the beat up joints to prove it! I’ve been considering going to an upper/lower/full split to hit every muscle twice. I haven’t done that simply because that ends up being five total days of leg work. Then again, lifting for legs more frequently would probably mean they’d be less sore…
I’d say I’m newish to interval training since I’ve only been doing it since January. For priorities, I want to keep my current level of muscle mass – even if I focused exclusively on hypertrophy at this point in my lifting career all I would be doing is eking out some marginal gains – and get continue to get somewhat fitter on the bike.
I’ve thought about this but lately my interval workouts have been hard enough that I doubt I’d have the energy to lift afterwards. Perhaps an upper body session later in the day. What have you been pairing with them?
You are new to cycling, and if you could increase your weekly rides from three to five (just adding 90 minute endurance rides) your cycling fitness would improve significantly. Of course you need time (sigh) to be able to do that.
I find that if I don’t do legs twice a week I feel like I’m losing strength. Once just isn’t enough. So, I have one very difficult workout (leg curls 5x12, pendulum squat 8/9/10/11/12 reps with weight dropping 5 pounds each set, leg press 3x12) and one not so difficult workout (5x12 leg curls, 3x8 squats, 3x8/8/8 single-leg extension drop sets (i.e. 3 sets of 24 total reps per set). After the very difficult workout I ride 2 hours endurance; after the not so difficult workout I ride 1.5 hours on the trainer including a 30 min SS or 3x10 threshold efforts. If you lift and ride same day my advice is always do legs first, ride second (yes the first 10 minutes will be extremely painful you’ll get through it) or, if doing upper body, ride first, lift second.
I don’t think you should do VO2 max intervals on the same day you do legs. If you go against my advice and do intervals first, you won’t be able to lift as it is. If you lift first, you might be able to do the intervals, but you will lose too many days recovering so it isn’t worth it. Maybe for a week or two you’ll get away with it, but it will catch up to you and you’ll end up taking too many days off. Consistency matters.
The best bet is twice a week do intervals in am, weights in pm. However, I ignore this because I hate am training. My week is as follows:
Monday: weights at lunch, sweet spot pm
Tuesday: off
Wednesday: threshold
Thursday: weights
Friday: v02 max
Saturday: long ride
Sunday: off or a very easy ride
I find sweet spot manageable on same day as weights, threshold and v02 max very hard.
During cycling focussed season, I accept some strength loss, particularly with squat and deadlift. In my experience, semi regular lifting to failure is the only way to maintain high strength. And lifting to failure absolutely cooks you. For example, my PR for deadlift is 450. During cycling season I usually do between 225-275, whatever I can do 2x5 with and still have gas in the tank.
As someone who has tried and is still trying to balance a strength, physique and cycling goal I wish you good luck. I have had phases where my bike fitness has improved massively during a 12-16 week period but my gym work and body composition has suffered. Conversely when I have focussed on strength and hypertrophy, my cycling has suffered. I have decided that, for me, the best option is to get to a strength/physique that I am happy with whilst doing the minimum bike work then slowly transition to maintenance gym work (3 days of PPL or full body) and build bike fitness.
Currently I am using the Omnia Training philosophy of doing intensity at the start of the week when I am fresh, then more endurance work towards the end of the week when fatigue is higher.
Doing VO2 work in the PM after a leg session sucks but it is effective.
Doing VO2 work in the PM after a leg session sucks but it is effective.
Frustratingly; that is the opposite of what the studies so far say in relation to achievement in both.
If you’re going to train hard twice, bike first. In lay terms; the signalling pathways for gains from lifting last longer than those from aerobic training - and so are more affected by a subsequent session of the opposite type.
Unless you’re a complete beginner, and you need to go into your lifting not fatigued because your base form isn’t there yet to avoid an injury.
I was never a bodybuilder like you; I always did (by and large) full body compound work in the gym (I think maybe incline dumbbell press was the only deviation from this - because it meant I could get shoulders and chest and shoulder girdle stability in one exercise).
The key bits I have learned in 5 years of combining (c.5wkg threshold, c.400kg combined b/s/d).
Periodise your lifting and bike. Do more lifting away from when you want to be fittest on the bike (eg winter), and accept a period of less progress in your strength and more on the bike at another point (e.g summer). In practice this might be 3-4 lifts, 1 intensity in winter. 2 lifts, 2 intensity in spring, 1 lift 2-3 intensity in summer.
Don’t swap out rest days for lifting or “easy bike”. Have proper rest days.
If doubling up, double up hard days, because that allows you to get easy or rest days before hard days.
If doubling up, do bike first to minimise the interference effect.
If doubling up, leave at least 4 hours after your bike to do strength.
Accept that you probably have all of the nmj and pure strength you need for the bike, and beyond maintainance and injury prevention any gains you make in strength are going to cost you speed on the bike - especially if you like going up hills.
Whilst this is true with immediately riding and training, if we are talking about training before work and in the evening (how most employed people are likely setting it up) then you want to do the skilled work (lifting) and then cycling on fatigued legs.
Another thing I thought of that maybe can spark a thought on your end. I switched from cycling 3 workouts to two. Like instead of push-pull-legs, I do Squat / Bench + accessories then Deadlift / Overhead Press plus accessories and rotate those two workouts. Then if I miss a weight session or wanna add one, it’s easier. And if I ever wanna shorten a workout, I at least get the two main lifts in.
I would say I’m advanced in how long I’ve been lifting but I’m not super strong or anything…so maybe if I was stronger I wouldn’t be able to do that? I dunno. I guess you could alternate too and just decide day by day if you’re gonna crush a certain lift or you’re in maintenance that day.
I have lost no leg muscle mass even though I’ve basically eliminated leg lifting over the last year+. I’ve probably actually put on leg muscle and maybe lost a little upper body, but hard to tell as net / net I’m the same. I’ll be picking it back up in the fall, but too close to my target event now.
I’ve maintained upper body mass on 2 days a week Upper Body / Core Routine, and have also maintained strength. I’ve had to take a month off here and there for injury / sickness, but always bounce back quickly.
In the past 2-3 years I’ve added 100W of FTP by prioritizing cycling even though I’ve probably lost a little Sprint / Anaerobic power (haven’t trained it at all)
80Kg 5’10". Not “ripped” lean, but can sort of see a six pack - My lying Garmin will tell me I’m anywhere from 8% - 11% BF so somewhere in the 15% range would be my guess.
This offseason I will be transitioning back to more leg and total body strength work mainly for all around / total body fitness. I want to make sure I don’t start to lose muscle mass over time and would even be okay putting on a little, and would like to work back to regular leg lifting along with cycling, but I also keep it light / full ROM and don’t go to failure and try and crush myself.
This is all super helpful. My understanding of the interference effect research is the same as yours. Practically it also fits with how I prefer to train when I do double days – I just don’t do well lifting in the morning.
In my situation this could look like bike intensity in the morning and then a push or pull session in the evening. Or I could also do legs but that sounds painful.
I do like climbing and live in an area with some great climbs. I am already way smaller than I was at my lifting peak and don’t want to get any lighter. So have accepted this.
I’m guessing your weight session are full body sessions? It’s been a while since TR has given me sweet spot intervals so I had to remind myself what those were. Those do seem doable to me with weights on the same day.
Out of season I’ll just get under the bar and do 3x5 on all of the compound lifts or a GZCLP progression until I max out, but in season, another option to reduce the time and food and fatigue load is to adopt more ‘minimalist’ training methodologies for stuff that’s less important.
I like reducing total volume because a lot of the evidence on the interference effect confounds it with simply underfuelling - like the load won’t necessarily be met by the total calorie intake and so it might be that some of what we worry about comes about just because it’s hard to eat enough to lift heavy AND train hard in one day.
E.g. When I do a full body workout, it will be
Prehab
Plyometrics
2 Heavy Leg Exercises (most of the time)
Then I’ll do the vanity work after as efficiently as I can - so 2-3 sets to failure, supersetting opposing parts.
e.g.
3x3 Depth Jumps
3x6 Barbell Reverse Lunges
3x5 Leg Press
Superset 2x6 Incline Dumbell Press / Chest Supported Dumbell Row (second set to failure)
I do a similar thing on the opposing lifting days with Pullups and Dips (thereby hitting everything in the upper body).
Hitting each muscle only once a week is probably not sufficient.
If you’re wanting to keep at 3 days lifting and also limit leg training for being fresher on the bike. Do Upper/Lower/Upper so at least your upper body muscles are getting hit twice a week.
Training each muscle once per week is enough to maintain both strength and size as far as I understand the current research.
I’ve toyed with the idea of the upper/lower/upper split before but have never actually used it. I might give that a go – my shoulders seem happier when I train back before I press and right now my split doesn’t do that.
Some basic fiber recruitment physiology for the forum: as force production increases, greater numbers of slow twitch fibers are recruited first, fast twitch second. When you are doing a heavy 6 rep leg press or squat, you have recruited all your slow twitch fibers and some portion of your fast twitch fibers. If you have preceded your workout with a two hour endurance ride you will have fatigued the slow twitch fibers. This fatigue will prevent you from lifting sufficiently heavy weight to activate fast twitch fibers, which are the ones of primacy focus when you are lifting. At this point you are basically just delaying recovery from your ride.
Lifting first fatigues your fast twitch fibers, which is the primary reason for lifting. While it is true that your slow twitch fibers are also used, they are fatigue resistant unlike fast twitch, and the total amount of work-time in a lifting session is actually quite small, so they will recover and can ride endurance on the bike. Example: 3x6 squats, 3x6 deadlift, 3x6 leg press, 3x6 leg curls is, for most people, a high volume leg day, but total work-time is only around 12 minutes - you can get on the bike and ride Z2 and get the stimulus appropriate for that intensity.
I do F45 for my strength training - so I’m not doing traditional weightlifting at the moment, but I do it up to 3 days a week. I combine that with six days of riding, two days of dedicated interval days doing sweet spot and tempo right now, and then the rest is endurance and one day with a long ride.
Since you’re more focused on maintaining muscle, I’d say just stick to endurance type rides and maybe add a day or two of active recovery riding. I don’t know what your intervals are now, but I’d periodize those too and start at the easy end, doing tempo, then working your way up the ladder.
This makes sense to me in the context of concurrent training that happens back to back. However, if you have at least 4-6 hours between sessions, I don’t think this matters nearly as much, especially with respect to strength and hypertrophy. If training for power, it probably matters quite a bit more.
I’ve recently been doing a TR polarized plan and so it has been giving me threshold intervals and will now be switching to VO2 max this week.
I’ve been considering going to an upper/lower/full split to hit every muscle twice. I haven’t done that simply because that ends up being five total days of leg work. Then again, lifting for legs more frequently would probably mean they’d be less sore…