There is only so much that can be achieved on the bike. The problem with only doing “on the bike” training is that you will plateau and find it increasingly challenging to improve performance.
For professional riders, it is often the 1% differences that result in a win or a loss. These 1% differences come from off-bike training, be that true and pure strength training or mobility and movement training such as yoga.
If you consider mountain biking, there is a lot of control that is required when either going down a tricky descent or climbing a technical ascent. This type of strength and control is built from off-bike training that focuses on strengthening the tissue structures that are called upon in racing scenarios.
Besides the performance benefits that are associated with strength training, it also strengthens the muscles that surround the different joints in the body and this reduces the risk of injury when you fall, for example.
It also reduces discomfort that one would feel on the bike, such as lower back pain. Although this has a lot to do with your fitness level and how “bike fit” you are, lower back pain on the bike can often be mitigated by including strength training in a workout plan. This is why it is not only important for professional riders to do off-bike training, but also novice riders and those that are just starting out.
Movement patterns
The foundation of off-bike training is working the body’s movement patterns. Once you have set up a strong base of movement patterns, you are able to reduce the risk of injury that may be associated with resistance training. Even more importantly, becoming efficient at the various movement patterns will allow you to get the most out of the exercises that are prescribed, and in turn this will lead to performance benefits on the bike.
Type of training
The type of training that we do with all our riders is periodised. We break down their training plan into various phases with a specific focus on each phase.
This means that the resistance training or rather the off-bike training falls in line with specific cycling and physical needs, as well as the overall annual plan. An athlete’s pure strength training would be done far out from racing, when it will not have a negative impact on race performance.
This would involve higher resistance in specific exercises with lower reps and more sets. Here, they would work at a low intensity but complete a larger volume of training.
As they get closer to their races they would move into a power phase and use the strength they built up to this point to develop new power.
This will increase the intensity of the exercise and overall session, but drop the volume and resistance so that they are not as fatigued and are able to complete their key sessions (intervals) during the week.
Type of exercises
The types of exercises are highly dependent on the training age of the individual. The training age is the amount of experience an individual has had with resistance training in the past.
More complex movements, such as a single leg deadlift, would be a great exercise for a cyclist to do but they need to be proficient and strong enough to maintain the correct technique. If they are inexperienced, they would find more benefit in doing an exercise such as a leg press for actual load, and then learn the basic technique of the more complex movement.
How it carries over to performance on the bike
Lumbo-pelvic mobility
Lumbo-pelvic mobility, which is hip and lower back control and mobility, is very important for cyclists. The position that the athletes sit in for extended periods — often not doing anything else exercise-wise — results in cyclists carrying a great deal of stiffness and tension in their hips and lower back.
This can result in discomfort in the lower back and sometimes in the hips while on the bike. Often, just incorporating exercises that encourage you to explore the full range of motion in your hips will lessen the discomfort.
It also allows you to place your pelvis in the correct position for riding, which takes strain off the back and allows you to use all the muscles around the pelvis. This could then increase your efficiency on the bike.
Glute and hamstring strength
Glute and hamstring strength is also paramount. Often cyclists do not have the correct pelvic position or mobility on the bike, which means they often end up not using their glutes and hamstrings when riding.
This doesn’t mean these muscles don’t work at all, it means they are not activated to their full potential. This will cause an imbalance between the quadriceps muscles and hamstrings and glutes, meaning the athlete would become dependent on the quadriceps to produce power, and this would lead to decreased pedal technique and efficiency, and a faster time to fatigue in the quadriceps.
Doing exercises that strengthen the glutes and hamstrings such as deadlifts, hip thrusters, squats, lunges and step ups, to name just a few, would not only improve pelvic control but also take a lot of strain off the quadriceps and increase the strength and power of an athlete’s pedal stroke.
The difference this enables can be felt just after a difficult climb. At the top of the climb, athletes are able to carry on putting down watts rather than trying to recover from the effort up the hill.
Core
Almost every cyclist that has ever seen anyone about how to improve their riding has been told to do core training. However, the core training they do needs to be more complex than the sit ups and standard planks that are normally prescribed. The focus of the core training should initially be around the stability of the thoracic and lumbar spine, and involve exercises that require isometric contralateral stability such as a superman plank.
The carryover from this would be the ability to control the body on a bike during a technical descent.
Other core movement patterns include the ability to move through the shoulders while maintaining stability in the pelvis. This would directly carry over into more efficiency in the pedal stroke.
What should you do?
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to prescribing a resistance-training programme. Each rider will have different areas that need more, or less, focus in order to achieve better performance and balance.
For instance, some people do not respond well to, or don’t need, heavy resistance training. For these people, we design very specific and targeted activation programmes.
Riders who are interested in doing off-bike training should see a professional who has experience in the sport and understands its physiological demands rather than follow a generic programme.
Cross, high-performance biokineticist at SSISA Academy, the newly launched digital division of the Sports Science Institute of SA, has worked with a broad spectrum of professional and semi-professional road and off-road cyclists. He wrote the resistance training programmes for the majority of the Tour de France’s UAE Emirates Cycling team in partnership with Dr Adrian Rotunno, one of the team’s sport physicians.
