Will lifting weights at the gym concentrating on the leg muscles strengthen the legs to ride longer
and faster than just going out and riding?

I had the thought that interval training and conditioning your heart would be more effective than muscle strength, thoughts?

I don't rule out weight lifting, but in my mind I would think climbing hills might be more effective. Maybe even find a heavier bike with less gears.

I do full body strength and conditioning workouts 3 times per week. I don't do it to improve my cycling but to improve and maintain my overall strength and fitness...IME the best way to improve your cycling and hill climbing is to go out on the road and ride your bike .If you want to improve your cycling endurance, there is no substitute for time spent in the saddle.

I think you'd get more out of working the areas the bike doesn't help. Arms, chest, back, and core. A little power work on the legs would be plenty for low body if you're riding enough.

The idea is to train yourself to be able to ride longer with less pain. Not to actually make yourself faster, this comes with riding.

Weight training willl make your legs bigger and stronger but not necessarily make you last longer. As muscle fibre size increases, you may find that you use up your available energy even faster! I used to go running a lot which helped my cycling endurance.

Cardio workouts mixed with weights for strength might help, but I suspect that just cycling more is probably the answer.

yes it will help, but it will not be the end all be all for gaining more ability. You'll want to max your weights safely to see gains out on the bike when situations do come about.

Will definitely help for sprints and short, quick climbs. As everyone else has said, to be faster it's mostly from riding.

slightly different muscles and weight lifting is mainly anaerobic and not aerobic like bicycling.
will it hurt, no. Will it help, maybe a tiny bit. But if biking is your goal, why not bike?

alternatively try other aerobic sports to train your lungs/heart. Core muscles are also important.

Look how many muscles we need for different movements. for biking you need different muscles than for walking (with some overlap) and so on.

Core muscle weight training, and interval cardio on the bike will help you go faster. As mentioned earlier, the best way to improve riding hills.....is to ride hills.

Sprinters lift. Seems to help them.

I don't do weights but when I added squats and lunges to my workouts my sprints and climbs on short, steep hills improved markedly.

Olympic squats in 5x5 reps

There is aposter here, CarbonFiberBoy, who is 74 ro108 or some rather advanced age, who rides a ton and lifts on his off days. He has a pretty comprehensive program of all-body exercises for general fitness.

Unless you plan to sacrifice much of your body in order to race at the highest levels, this makes a lot of sense. If your whole organism is stronger, you will be able to do everything better for longer.

As noted, leg lifts will increase muscle mass, density, and strength (depending on how you lift,) which will give you more to work with on the bike. You might very very long sets and more sets at lower weights to build less bulk.

If you just want to ride the bike faster .... I think hill repeats, HIIT (high intensity interval training,) and adding rides and miles (with proper recovery days) would be more focused for developing bike-only abilities.

In any case, the same principle applies---You have to stress the organism beyond its normal, comfortable range, so it will develop extra capacity, and then you have to either use or continue to exceed that capacity to maintain or to continue to grow.

If, one day a week, you can ride with a fast group or a faster rider, even f you cannot keep up for long at first, you will gain insight into how hard you can push and for how long, and will have incentive to push harder. Barring that, you would probably need to insert HIIT into your rides, or at least track your rides real-time and ride to a higher number.

Just adding miles helps, but I can tell you from experience it is a very slow way to get faster.

I don't believe it will, but you might get quicker? Especially if you're just starting out. Generally the training between these two operate at opposite ends of the scale. So what strengthens one, typically weakens the other.

In other words, one has to be primary and the other serve as a supplement. Since cycling is an aerobic activity at its core, that's where the bulk of your training should be. Of course, as with all things, there is always a happy balance somewhere in the middle.

Olympic style squats are great, I like them a lot....but the problem is that 90% of American adults including cyclists and most fitness buffs can't even get into a proper squat position because they don't have enough mobility to do so.

The short answer to your question is no in my opinion. Bicycling is an endurance sport, weight lifting is anaerobic. Both are good for you, but the way to improve your performance in each is very different.

Could not agree more!

I perform light weight squats and lunges with 25-40 lbs dumbbells in each hand with 15 to 25 reps. You will get both anaerobic and aerobic benefits. Great for climbing steeper grades. I also perform light weight dead lifts with the same dumbbells to strengthen the hamstrings and lower back muscles.

Going for the Olympic (Track) matched sprint gold medal?

'Cycling' includes a lot of subdivisions of the sport..





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I don't winter bike, so I rely on gym time to keep me in shape through the winter. I do weights for my upper body all year around. Not a lot, but enough so I have some visible muscle.

To keep my legs in shape, I do very long times (up to 2.5 hours straight) on the ellipticals at maximum resistance the entire time. Boring as hell, but it's a great activity for watching a movie on a tablet, and I start biking season in great shape to take hills.

No, just an older recreational cyclist learning to enjoy ascents and building my body to make this a reality.

The thousands of dollars I've spent in physical therapy and doctors say that there's also people who can get into the squat position, but do not have the mobility to squat safely from that position.

I lift in the off-season just because it is too cold and snowy to ride around here...But I'm not sure that lifting helps make me faster in the spring.

Now, if you are a track sprinter, yeah, you should hit the weightroom regularly.

3 years ago I did my last powerlifting contest. Since then, I've ridden my bike far more and lifted far less. I'm a much faster cyclist now (and much weaker in the gym).

Lifting can be a fine supplement to your training, but if your goal is to be a fast cyclist, the main thing you need to do is ride your bike.

Heavy barbell squats is a controversial exercise. Some say it's dangerous, others say it's all good...There are many people who get seriously hurt or sustain injuries from squats, there are others who have been doing squats for a long time and never suffered any serious injuries... It's true that there are some people who are just not built to squat and they need to find other alternatives....For me personally I do front squats ATG with double kettlebells and I also do walking lunges with kettlebells, both of these exercises are a lot safer than barbell back squats.
Weight training is good for improving bone density.