hello, this winter I want to add strength. I need help developing a cycling-specific (30-40min) workout to do 3x a week. This would only be for about 3 months then when base building begins, I can maintain strength with push-ups and sit-ups.

I want to keep it to 6 or so exercises.

leg curls
leg extension
leg press
bench press
pull downs
bent row
situps

any tips?
how can I improve this?
what do you do?

Is your objective to increase cycling performance or just overall fitness?

There is very little evidence that strength training improves cycling performance except possibly sprinting.

That explains why most training plans have strength training included for winter.

I started with the exercises and periodization in Friel and after a decade of fussing with it, came up with the following exercises, in this order:
Leg sled 30 reps
Seated rows 30 reps
Back machine 30 reps or hyperextensions to failure
Barbell squats 30 reps
Pushups to failure
Standing dumbell presses 30 reps
Two-handed triceps cables 30 reps
One-legged calf raises (no weight) to failure
Roman chair to failure

For a ham exercise, you could add straight-legged deadlifts, but be careful.

Start with comfortable weights and add weight over a period of weeks to result in failure once/week near the last reps. Other days, reduce weights to reasonable. Wear a HRM, let HR come down to about 100 between exercises. The period of waiting will get shorter with practice. Keep your blood sugar up.

Takes me about 30 minutes. I do it after my cardio - riding, rollers, stepmill, whatever. A couple of winters of this definitely made me faster on long rides. If you have time, you can work up to doing 3 sets of 30 done circuit style, same weights each set, failure on the last set. I think that works better, but takes more time. I was never sure whether improvement was commensurate with the extra time spent.

Don't do the leg curls or extensions. Concentrate on same muscles, same range of motion as cycling. I advise only doing core work with back straight, thus no situps/crunches.

Thinking about the OP some more, no, base building starts now. This is a part of base building, not separate. Work on base from now until maybe late January when you quit the 3 sets if you've been doing them and depending on your schedule, stop with the 30 reps around March, going down to 8 reps, stop all weights a few weeks before your first A event.

I don't know about that, I didn't see any recommendations for weight lifting from Dr Coggan, but the research is equivocal at best. For example:

High resistance/low repetition vs. low resistance/high repetition training: Effects on performance of trained cyclists. - " It appears that for this population of cyclists, neither H-Res nor H-Rep resistance training provided any additional performance benefit in a graded incremental cycling test when compared with cycling alone over a training time of this length."

There is some evidence that strength training can be useful for older, 50+, cyclists but I think the OP is young.

Read more training materials. Consult with more trainers.

A little yoga will help your strength training and cycling too.

References?

I am 25. How will more strength not help? I thought strength = speed. I am 6'3'' 190lbs (and do not plan on gaining any weight from this) I don't see how increased strength won't help increase power/help one endure longer rides.

Cycling (except some track events) is an endurance sport, not a strength sport. How will lifting a lot of weight 10 times help you move a tiny amount of weight 80-100 times a second for hours? The adaptations are different.

But if you want to do it anyhow, "Weight Training for Cyclists" is a good book.

I'm 50+ so I need to lift to maintain muscle mass. I also do core work and some upper body so I'll have some muscles to move the bars around when I am standing on climbs. When I was 30 I lifted three days a week and it didn't make me any faster, only more tired.

I guarantee you that strength has more to do with power than endurance.

So explain why increasing your leg strength by 50% provides zero extra FTP.

Unless you're extremely weak you have more than enough strength for cycling. I suspect your FTP is under 400W. Even at 400W the peak force required on the pedals is a little over 100lbs. That's less force than you use to climb the stairs.

Take a look at Andy Schleck. Your legs are very likely stronger than his but you have nowhere near his power.

Andy Schleck's legs are jacked. He has muscle (just very little fat).

He's lean but not strong. Do you think he'd be faster if he started lifting and increased his leg strength by 50%?

I'm not looking for a job. Sorry.

I see. Couldn't find any eh?

Hey, you're cherry picking. And that abstract doesn't tell us anything, really. % of 1RM? # of reps? # of sets? The other thing in this particular study is that the weights were added to a regular cycling program, rather than replacing part of it. As you and those of us who've done serious weight programs know, it's a huge training hit. I give it a sport factor of 2 for calculating TRIMPS, which seems about right in practice. So it's easy to see that if lifting riders were not able to recover as well a non-lifting riders, they might not get the benefit of it.

Clicking on the sidebar of the provided link, we also find:

Combining explosive and high-resistance training improves performance in competitive cyclists. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16287351)

Effects of low- vs. high-cadence interval training on cycling performance. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19675486) Which (surprise!) concludes that low cadence intervals are more beneficial.

In-season strength maintenance training increases well-trained cyclists' performance. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20799042)

The effects of resistance training on road cycling performance among highly trained cyclists: a systematic review (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20072042) Which found that studies which replaced endurance training with resistance training, and studies which used explosive resistance training found improved performance from these training modalities.

Maximal strength training improves cycling economy in competitive cyclists. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19855311) Which found that even adding maximal strength training to an existing endurance program improved cycling.

I think a take-away might be that the devil's in the details. In my reviews of the literature, I've found few studies like the last one above, which find all-round improvements from maximal strength training, and several which show benefits from explosive weight work.

All that said and read, my experience is that little benefit is found from less than maximal effort, whether it be low or high rep or explosive work. I would caution on the explosive work - that's how I got the only serious injury I've ever sustained from cycling training. I'd also emphasize that replacing time in the gym with interval work on the bike may yield substantially greater gains.

On the subject of Andy Schleck's legs: we don't know what he squats or whether or not he weight trains. Anyone who believes anything an elite pro says about their training is a little naive. I suggest that he could squat one heck of a lot, well over 2X body weight. When I was weight training hard, before I did my meniscus, I could press 4X body weight on the sled, and I'm an old man who does not have large legs. A great deal of strength training is about muscle fiber recruitment, not adding mass, hence my stated emphasis on training to failure. I'll bet his recruitment is pretty darn good. Climbing is all about the ratio of the size of one's lungs and heart to the weight of one's body. Hence most pros find they climb better the more weight, including protein, they lose. Big legs are unhelpful.

IME strength training helps me, plus I enjoy it. I live in the PNW and my riding in the winter is restricted because it's dark after work, and I hate wasting training time on bike maintenance. So weights make sense for me because I'm giving up little if any cycling time to do it. And I'm taking up piste skiing again this winter after a hiatus of 20 years - I'm only 4 years from being able to ski almost for free! Life goals can be funny.

Friel has a big section advocating weight training in the Cyclist's Training Bible, at least in my 1st edition copy.

Just stay on the bike through the cold months.

I have a life. Sorry.
Perhaps when I have time. In the meantime it appears that carbonfiberboy has done a splendid job.

...and Chris Carmichael.

Forget the three first excercises: do squats. A lot of squats, heavy squts, half squats and full squats. Improvements are faster and more muscles are involved.
For the back muscles I do pull-ups. Bench press is good, but use dumbells instead.

Overall: use free weights (but learn the technique!!!) and use base excercises: squats, pullups, bench presses. Abs and back extentions and other core work benefits also, so do those on a separate day.

Well that's probably the most important thing. It won't hurt you and if you enjoy it there's no reason not to lift.

If you want to get faster on the bike though, I suggest you would have far more success following Hunter Allen's: The Next Level. It's tougher than lifting 3 times a week but more productive.

Like I said the research is equivocal. From the study you listed: "Although it is evident that high-intensity interval training is beneficial for endurance athletes, effects of traditional resistance training have been less conclusive." And then they go on to show that combining explosive resistance training with high intensity intervals on the bike is beneficial. Well that's not really surprising given that every study looking at interval training shows improvement. It's not clear what role the resistance training had on the improvements.

The point is that it appears much more difficult to definitively show that weight lifting improves cycling. Certainly, some people (including older men) are strength limited and can benefit from some amount of strength training. There are lots of riders, however, who are not strength limited and for these riders weightlifting provides little or no benefit.