Like the post following this one says, its gotta be case-by-case because injury is a true worry for someone doing it secondarily. Generally, I would recommend a program based on lower reps and more muscle recruitment but you can’t just dive into that first thing.
Right, so that’s a start then. That’s all im getting at. I’m not asking for you to put your neck on the line and give me a highly personal training regime that’s guaranteed to be perfect for me. Just some clarity on the general trends that emerge from basic principals
It is not that hard, you know. If you are after an easy answer, you could just use search. I believe we have addressed some basics in this thread too. It might get complicated if you want to do a concurrent training, however there were some articles and recommendations regarding that too in this thread.
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Just having a conversation here 
If you are after specifics it has been probably answered in scientific literature (ie what is best for strength). How to combine it with endurance, what exercises are preferred, how to do it safely, now that is a different question and probably worth a conversation or at least hearing out experiences of others.
Wow ok. Do you tell everyone to “effing google it” if it’s been covered in scientific literature?
I’ll carry on reading and speaking to others thanks.
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Sorry for the long post. TL;DR; I am not totally making that rate of gain up, it is still just an educated guess but one I think there is enough to stand by. .25-.5lb per month of real muscle gain is a reasonable target.
There is not direct measure for this, it is just an educated guess but I can point you to some interesting stuff so you can draw your own conclusions. The reason there is not, and cannot really be, a clear answer to this is the individual response to lifting is WILDLY variable. For a lot of this stuff I am going to quote articles from stronger by science rather than the studies directly. Those guys are really really solid at pointing out crap science, all the references are included in their articles, and i trust them to boil down the valid stuff into the meaningful bits.
Lets start with what is a reasonable growth response in general. The range is stupid. Turns out some people gain basically no muscle, some people grow by looking at the weights but I suspect we all knew that. In the short term, for people with 0 lifting experience:
In terms of scale weight, a gain of 2-3kg (4-7lbs) of lean body mass (which is composed primarily of muscle) is pretty typical for your first 3 months of training. There’s definitely a huge range with some people gaining 2-3+ times more muscle than the average person, and some people actually losing muscle when they start working out (both of which are rare), but at first, you should expect to gain somewhere around 1kg/2lbs of muscle per month on average, with a “normal” range from .5kg/1lb per month to 2kg/4lbs per month.
So “Normal” is 1-4lbs per month for a young person with no training experience at all for the first 3-4 months. That is just normal, some folks actually lose muscle. Some folks gained 12lbs in the first 3 months.
Thing is, that is just noob gains. What can you expect over the long term (5-10 years)?
Converting the rather arcane units of the fat free mass index to terms that are more easily understandable, that means an average-height guy with no training experience starts with between 57-65.5kg of lean body mass, and ends up with about 66-78.5kg of lean body mass, gaining (on average) between 3.5-18.5kg of lean mass across a training career.
3.5-18.5kg (7.7lbs - 40.7lbs) over the entire lifting career. Fact is if you lift hard after 5 years you struggle to gain anything. For someone in their 20s and 30s you gain most of your lifetime mass in the first 5 years of quality structured consistent training. Without those 3 things, it will take some amount longer. That means you are looking to gain between 1.5 and 8 lbs per year in those 5 years.
From here we wander off script a bit.
- Testosterone drops with age, that is going to slow rate of growth.
- The interference effect is smaller for hypertrophy than for strength, but its not nothing. That will slow growth.
- These studies are generally lifting hard, Often. I lift 4 or 5 hours per week and i can confirm REALLY hard to make it all fit. I assume most cyclists wont make this work. They certainly wont do it year round and will often lose all their gains every year and never make real progress.
- You have to eat, cyclists too often chaise the scale. No food, no grow.
- If you are 6’8" 250 at 12%, i bet you can add more muscle faster but the % holds.
Finally, there is the N of 1. I lift a lot, and have for a long time. I added cycling after I had years of a solid base. I am only 40. If I can add .5lb of real muscle per month, 6 lbs per year to my 5’8" I am THRILLED. You have to understand that 10 lbs of muscle is a LOT, it is a totally different physique on shorter folks.
So, I stand by my .25lb-.5lb per month for an average 60 year old. At the very least if you eat enough to gain .25-.5lb per month I would bet you will gain nearly all muscle and little if any fat. If you eat enough to gain 1lb per month you MIGHT gain more muscle but you could gain some fat. So the trade off is slower but still solid growth without fat gain vs a tiny increase in speed of growth and risk fat gain. I can say losing fat at 40 sucks an awful lot more than it did at 30 and I can only imagine how much it sucks at 60. If you gain 1/lb per week, its mostly fat. I promise.
Unrelated point from the same article I always find super interesting. You can’t lose fat faster than around 25kcal/kg of fat. If you lose weight faster than that, you are losing muscle/water/something else.
A 2005 study found that body fat stores can liberate, at most, about 31kcal/day to be burned. In a subsequent interview (which, unfortunately, I can’t find the link to anymore), the lead researcher admitted he botched a couple of calculations, and the limit was closer to 22kcal/day from each pound of body fat.
With this information, we can use a nifty little formula that can tell you how fast you can shoot to lose fat without unnecessarily increasing your risk of losing much (or any) lean mass in the process.
Body weight x bodyfat percentage = total body fat x 25kcal/day per pound of fat = daily caloric deficit x 7 = weekly caloric deficit ÷ 3500 (since there are roughly 3500kcal per pound of fat tissue) = pounds of fat you can lose per week
Simple, right?
It may look messy, but here’s what it all simplifies to:
Body fat percentage ÷ 20 = percentage of your current bodyweight you should aim to lose per week.
Now, you can certainly aim to lose weight faster than that, but you’ll almost certainly lose muscle in the process. If that doesn’t matter to you (since it’s much faster to gain back muscle you’d previously lost much faster than to build new muscle), then be my guest and crash diet, but your rate of fat loss probably won’t be much faster.
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Hi onemanpeloton,
Let me try to help you here with a few principles I would observe if you are just starting out. As for timing, it looks like today’s podcast will address that.
Don’t do too much: If you have never lifted, you really won’t need much volume to see noticeable gains. Not doing too much will ensure you have enough room to keep on racking gains in the future (minimum effective dose). It will also help minimize DOMS - although that is to be expected, don’t kid yourself! When you get DOMS, just keep on lifting though, after the first few reps you won’t feel it at all.
Keep it “moderate”: If you have never lifted, chances are your technique will be poor. By going relatively “light”, you minimize your risk of injury. I would begin with sets in the 8-12 rep range that challenge you, but at the end of which you still have some in the tank. In fact, always keep some left in the tank. It really won’t impair improvements and help keep injuries at bay.
Stay within a comfortable range of motion: At the beginning, you may be lacking mobility to perform some exercises with complete ROM while maintaining proper technique. Your mobility will gradually and naturally improve, don’t force it. A properly executed deadlift, for instance, requires a good amount of hamstring and glute flexibility. If you lack mobility, after you can’t hinge at the hips anymore, you will start rounding your back to reach the bar on the floor - that’s a no-no! Put the weights on a platform instead so you don’t have to reach that far down. Always keep good form, even if it means slightly reducing the range of motion.
As for sessions themselves, I like the time-efficiency of super sets. Combine exercices together that hit different muscle groups, so you can rotate between both with minimum rest. I would also do “full body” workouts as opposed to “splits” and work through these movement groups: pushing, pulling, legs (quad dominant), legs (posterior chain dominant). Here’s a sample session to get you started:
Go through each mini-circuit 3 times before moving to the next:
A1: Posterior chain exercise (KB swing, deadlift variation) - 8-12 reps where you could do 12 - 15. 30-60sec rest;
A2: Push Variation (push up, DB press, divebombers, handstand pushups, etc). 90-120 sec rest.
B1: Squat variation (Goblet squat, DB squat, lunge variation) 8 - 12 reps where you could do 12 - 15. 30-60 sec rest;
B2: Pull variation (DB/KB rows, pull ups, band pulls, etc). 90-120 sec rest.
You can do just that 3 times a week for the next two months, increasing the resistance as you progress. That’s less than 30 minutes a session and will be plenty to build a very decent foundation that you can later use to transition to more “max strength” oriented set/rep schemes.
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That’s a really helpful answer, thanks! And not all that different from what I’m doing currently/experiencing actually!
Does anyone remember the strength training plan app / provider that @Jonathan recently shared on the podcast? Thanks, elvis
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@onemanpeloton its really worth your time IMHO if you listen to that first podcast at a minimum.
also think this link:
is really helpful if you are getting started. Form is king. Start with the most basic movement (e.g. bodyweight squat) and master the form before moving on (bodyweight squat, then goblet, then barbell front, then barbell back).
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also, FWIW here is a pic of a page in Chapple’s Base Building for Cyclists copyright 2006:
similar info is in Friel’s The Cyclist’s Training Bible
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Is that list of exercises meant to be run through as a single workout or is it just a compile list of exercises meant to be hit in the listed 2-3 sessions/week? Seems like a crazy long workout to complete.
and finally back on the ScientificTriathlon podcast with Menachem Brodie that I linked above, just going to share these two from the transcription:
In the 1980s there was a rookie basketball player in the NBA named Michael Jordan. He went on to revolutionise the game.
We’re seeing the thing in cycling and triathlon with strength training.
Back when Michael Jordan started strength training he was told he would get bulked up, it would mess up his shot, he wouldn’t be able to dribble etc.
and
When you do proper strength training for triathlon, you are working on movements you otherwise don’t get in your sport which will allow the body to work better.
I sit at a desk, and do a lot of hip/core work along with related work of posterior chain and anterior chain. I’ve gone from frequently having knee issues to being able to put down a lot of power in high cadence sprint work a couple times a week. All because I corrected muscle imbalances from 30+ years of working at a desk.
books are cheap, buy one!
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I believe it was Dialed Health (95% sure), which is targeted at strength training for cyclists specifically. They have 8 different strength training plans right now and various standalone workouts on their website.
I signed up with them earlier this week (currently in my 7 day trial period). I will say that the owner, Derek, has been very responsive to my questions. He reviewed my weekly training schedule and recommended optimal times for the strength workouts.
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Who are you talking to here? Me? Because your link didn’t answer my question if this was a reply to me. Use of the quote function would be much appreciated.
Joe
n=1 but I’ve been happy thus far (3-4 months) with the starting strength app / program. I tried 5x5 a couple years ago and injured myself fairly quickly but haven’t had the same issue now. The book did a reasonable job explaining the lifts, too. It follows the low rep / high weight approach with a linear weight progression. I’m hovering between the level 2 and level 3 targets on coach chad’s scale.
@devolikewhoa83 I’ve started warming up prior to lifting with shoulder dislocates (the stretch/movement, not the injury). Grip a yoga strap or a broomstick in both hands in front of you as wide you need to and lift it over your head and behind you. As this gets easier move your hands further in an inch or so at a time.
It’s slowly made my grip for back squats better and I no longer worry that I’m going to smash my fingers re-racking. Still have a ways to go though.
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No, I wasn’t replying to you @Joe. It might be confusing but if you are replying to the latest post (like I did) there is no indication of the original post. I guess because it just above the reply hence no need. If replying to some earlier post there is a link to the original. Besides, what was in that google query wasn’t that specific like you asked.
I don’t know about a blanket recommendation for mixing SSB MV and strength training. More general question of mixing endurance and strength was addressed a couple of times in this thread. Shortly put, you want to be fresh for your most demanding cycling workout hence you want to move strength workout as much away (before) from it as possible. As for me, I did hard cycling workout in the morning, strength workout in the evening and the next day would be an easy endurance. That gave me 36+ hours to the next harder cycling workout and also maximized gains from both cycling and strength (see above about concurrent training).
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Well, you haven’t read the thread, you didn’t bother to read the recommended books or listen to the podcasts and you ignored general recommendations regarding how to start strength training (it is really difficult to do by yourself and don’t hurt yourself).
If you wanted answer just to the
I believe google is much faster and doesn’t bother you with replies you don’t want to read. And it is not a matter of opinion hence I mentioned scientific literature because it was answered there. However, reading some other source you could get confused because people are mostly focusing on looks (body building, hypertrophy).
@Slowsher and @ChippyB before that gave you very good answers. I’ll just once more time stress that if you are starting technique is paramount.
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I’ve a question…
I had been planning to join a gym this winter but now that’s out the window due to ‘rona. All the evidence in the scientific literature seems to show that to improve cycling performance the way to go is relatively few reps with heavy weights. Are there any (evidence based) alternatives it is worth me doing at home? I have an adjustable weight dumbell but no space or money to buy squat rack and bar bell etc.