Building Strength Training into Your Cycling Training When building strength training into your plan, there are a number of factors to consider. The first is time. Ultimately, the thing that will increase your performance on the bike the most is riding your bike, so you’ll need to consider how much total time to train you have per week to determine how much strength training to build into your plan. Next, make sure that you are planning your strength training sessions in the correct way. Strength training sessions are best done after your cycling training is complete on a harder cycling day so as to not interfere with your ability to perform on the bike. In addition, make sure that your strength training is done mainly on your highest intensity days. This is counterintuitive for many cyclists, but by doing it this way you are just making a hard day slightly harder, instead of ruining an easy day by doing strength training when your body is trying to recover. You also want to look at your cycling goals and your racing season to determine when and how to incorporate strength training. Using the training phases to periodize your strength work alongside your cycling training is a great way to ensure you’re peaking at the proper time and maximizing the effectiveness of that strength training. It is highly recommended you work one on one with a professional trainer in person, especially in the early days of strength training. During the foundation phase of strength training, you are focused on proper movements, strengthening connective tissues and creating neural pathways to set you up for handling harder sessions down the road. This phase will start with higher reps and less weight to get you used to handling strength work before progressing. The build phase of strength training progresses from the foundation phase and is tailored to accompany the higher volume and intensity of cycling training you would be doing during the preparation phase. This means progressing weight and hitting more challenging strength days. The build phase can be started anywhere from 3-4 months out from key events. The specialization phase is typically done in the 8 weeks prior to a goal event. While you increased the volume and intensity of your strength work in the build phase, the specialization phase will actually come down off of that increased load to help you peak properly on the bike and handle your biggest days of cycling training. During this phase you’ll want to only do one or two easy days of strength training per week and the focus should be on maintenance as opposed to building fatigue. | 
